14 | June | 2022 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

I was not ready to get the May MER so early in June. It historically doesn’t land in single digit dates. But CCP has a new data scientist working on it now, CCP Estimate, and they have gone to town both on speed of delivery and expanding the data presented. It is nice to have good things to say about CCP.

EVE Online nerds harder

I could probably spend a full post charting the new and updated items in the MER, but if I want to keep this to a reasonable length I had better just show rather than tell. So on to the usual format, going through production, destruction, trade, ISK, and mining, with the enhanced information.

Production

As usual I will open with production and the chart I always use, though this time it has some extra spice to it.

May 2022 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

The usual chart has three new sub charts that break out where the three things tracked happen by area of space. Honestly, I’d like those sub-charts full size with data, but I’ll take them as is because they give a simple graphical view about where things happen in New Eden.

When it comes to production, we did see an uptick with the reduction in cost to manufacture some capital ships, notably dreadnoughts, that came with the Siege Green update in May. They are still much more expensive than they were before the April 2021 blueprint change… a dreadnought hull still costs more ISK than I can afford to lose, so I won’t be buying/flying one again… but the price has been reduced enough to make them viable for some groups.

However, because people knew the change was coming, there was also a anticipatory dip in production between the announcement and the patch, which evened out the total production for May. The data from the chart above indicates that there was 80.25 trillion ISK in production in May, up slightly from the 76.07 trillion ISK recorded April.

In the regional stats, the top ten regions for production were:

The Forge – 19.03 trillion (High Sec)
Delve – 11.17 trillion (Imperium)
Vale of the Silent – 9.17 trillion (Fraternity)
Lonetrek – 6.76 trillion (High Sec)
The Citadel – 5.50 trillion (High Sec)
Tribute – 4.87 trillion (Fraternity)
Fade – 4.59 trillion (WE FORM BL0B)
Malpais – 3.35 trillion (PanFam)
Domain – 2.94 trillion (High Sec)
Heimatar – 2.88 trillion (High Sec)

As usual, regions that feed Jita and null sec top the list. Overall the regional stats data showed a total of 105.9 trillion ISK produced, up a bit from 101.56 trillion ISK in April.

And supporting my “Jita/null sec” production statement there, we have the security band chart, which I have pulled out from the chart above to be its own thing.

May 2022 – Production by Security Band

There is a bit of production in wormhole space and low sec, but it is dominated by null sec and high sec.

Destruction

Using the chart at the top of the post, destruction somewhat flat across April and May, with the data showing that 30.65 trillion ISK was destroyed in New Eden in May, up slightly from the 29.59 trillion ISK the same data showed for April. Things were blowing up and there was a small conflict brewing in the southeast of null sec.

The regional data showed the following as the top ten regions for destruction in May:

The Forge – 2.16 trillion (High Sec)
Pure Blind – 1.55 trillion (Brave/V0LTA)
Pochven – 1.53 trillion (Triglavian)
The Citadel – 1.50 trillion (High Sec)
Lonetrek – 1.28 trillion (High Sec)
Delve – 1.15 trillion (Imperium)
Vale of the Silent – 1.11 trillion (Fraternity)
Sinq Laison – 1.08 trillion (High Sec)
Metropolis – 1.06 trillion (High Sec)
Tenerifis – 1.05 trillion (FI.RE)

All told, the regional data says that 32.37 trillion ISK in value was destroyed, up from 29.78 trillion ISK in April. The regional data, however, does not include Wormhole space, and I would really like to be able to reconciled the produced/destroyed/mined data with it.

But we do have one of those sub-charts to give us some insights.

May 2022 – Destruction by Security Band

I love this chart because it debunks a series of regularly regurgitated myths, wishes, and outright whole cloth lies that get trotted out every CSM election season, and the past election was no exception. Clearly some people think it is a requirement to call for null sec to be nerfed and blame it for any and all game woes. The ghost of Olmeca Gold continues to haunt us.

What the chart says is that things get blown up in null sec and foot stomping statements about it being perfectly safe or that only some tiny minority of players ever go there are just nonsense. (Also, you can see the two battles of M2-XFE sticking out in that chart. Not only did the second battle reset a couple of Guinness Book records, according to CCP 35% of the logged in accounts during the battle were in Delve.)

I will say that it is heartening for low sec to see that they aren’t as dead as some claim either. And high sec, while a lot blows up around Jita and along the trade routes, isn’t quite the massacre it can be made out to be.

Trade

This is the one section where I do not having something new from the MER to throw into the mix. But that is fine, the next section, about ISK, will more than make up for it. The top regions for trade in May were:

The Forge – 436.1 trillion (Jita)
Domain – 42.58 trillion (Amarr)
Sinq Laison – 15.51 trillion (Dodixie)
Lonetrek – 15.13 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
Delve – 12.68 trillion (Imperium)
Metropolis – 9.55 trillion (Hek)
Perrigen Falls – 7.96 trillion (PanFam)
Heimatar – 7.86 trillion (Rens)
Vale of the Silent – 5.9 trillion (Fraternity)
The Citadel – 4.44 trillion (Caldari High Sec)

That is pretty much all the usual suspects, the main trade hubs and the center of some of the null sec coalitions. I all there was a total of 595.15 trillion in ISK traded, up from 572.52 trillion ISK in April.

ISK Faucets

Now into where the money comes from, starting with the top of the sinks and faucets chart.

May 2022 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

For those who cannot read the chart, which includes me, the top items listed are:

Commodity – 51.3 trillion
Bounty Prizes – 23.3 trillion
Incursion Payouts – 14 trillion
Trig Invasion Payouts – 13.1 trillion
ESS Bounty Payouts – 9.7 trillion
Agent Mission Rewards 3.6 trillion

Bounty prizes and ESS payouts, which go hand in hand, were both down for May while the rest of the list was up, with commodities especially so jumping almost 10 trillion ISK from April to May.

You can see that happening in the sinks and faucets over time chart.

May 2022 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

The two were already diverging last month, a trend that continued in May, with Sleeper components, the wormhole loot, continuing to top the chart, though there was a surge in incursion loot as well.

May 2022 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

Bounty encrypted bonds, the loot from robbing ESS main and reserve banks, was also up noticeably. We even have some updated charts on that.

May 2022 – ESS Regional Stats

You can see that Vale of the Silent, the home of Fraternity topped the list. Interesting that other regions with nearly as much ISK tucked away in reserve banks did not see nearly as much robbed from them, but we’ll get to that.

The next chart, which shows the largest main bank thefts, includes a number of systems in that region that were robbed repeatedly.

May 2022 – Main Bank Thefts

That is anecdotally interesting, that Fraternity gets robbed more so than other groups. More interesting though, to me at least, is the reserve bank chart.

May 2022 – Reserve Bank Thefts

This chart has been updated since last month and answers the magical question of how many reserve bank robberies are just the locals siphoning off the banks in their territory. And the answer seems to be “most of them.” All of the ones listed in brown on the list on the left side of the chart are “friendly robberies” where groups are just harvesting banks in territory they own.

This is, of course, not surprising. A number of null sec groups, including Fraternity, declared their reserve banks to be “nationalized” back when the reserve keys were put into the game, and to be looted only for the benefit of the alliance. So there, at the top of the list… and appearing three more times on the list… is TVN-FM in the middle of Fraternity space, all of which are friendly robberies.

As noted above, regions held by PanFam and the Imperium, which have nearly as much ISK tied up in reserve banks, have almost no robberies. The fanfare to which the reserve bank keys were released almost a year ago… the Great Heist event, complete with login rewards… hasn’t lived up to the hype.

Moving on to bounty prizes, the top ten regions were:

Vale of the Silent – 2.57 trillion (Fraternity)
Perrigen Falls – 1.92 trillion (PanFam)
Delve – 1.74 trillion (Imperium)
The Kalevala Expanse – 1.54 trillion (PanFam)
Fountain – 1.28 trillion (Imperium)
Pure Blind – 1.10 trillion (Brave/V0LTA)
Malpais – 1.07 trillion (PanFam)
Querious – 1.01 trillion (Imperium)
Insmother – 962 billion (FI.RE)
Metropolis – 923 billion (High Sec)

Bounty prizes in the region data, which is bounties plus ESS payouts, added up to a total of 32.06 trillion ISK, up from 28.13 trillion ISK in April. So bounties were up, but commodities were up even more.

All of that caused the money supply to go up. No surprise in that.

May 2022 – Money Supply

There was more drawn from faucets and any impact of the subscription price increase was unlikely to have hit yet, so no huge quantity of money was counted as out of the economy due to inactivity caused by people unsubscribing.

And then there is the velocity of ISK, a chart I have tended to shy away from due to the possibility of manipulation by CCP… how it is counted is somewhat opaque. But this month it comes with something new and interesting.

May 2022 – Velocity of ISK

The blue line is the one that CCP has been using for as long as this chart has been a part of the MER. But now we have the red line which represents the velocity minus PLEX related activities. That is essentially the velocity of ISK from actually playing the game rather than exchanging PLEX for ISK and related activities. The PLEX related market looks to be considerably more volatile than the part related to simply playing the game.

Mining

Finally, the various forms of resource harvesting in New Eden. Again, mineral prices remain well above historical levels… they are down from their peak, but still well above the norm of the history of the game and back on the rise still.

May 2022 – Economic Indices

So rising prices should be taken into account when looking at the regional stats.

May 2022 – Mining Value by Region

The May MER saw the return of the region mining values to the .csv files, so I haven’t had to go through and try to manually add up all the regions. I was able to just use Excel to sum them all up, for a total of 17.84 trillion ISK value mined. That is about 5 trillion more than the hand tally I made for April. Prices were up and I guess activity was up as well.

The top ten regions for mining value were:

Vale of the Silent – 1.54 trillion (Fraternity)
The Forge – 750 billion (High Sec)
Delve – 747 billion (Imperium)
Metropolis – 602 billion (High Sec)
Domain – 581 billion (High Sec)
Tribute – 528 billion (Fraternity)
Lonetrek – 510 billion (High Sec)
The Kalevala Expanse – 481 billion (PanFam)
Sinq Laison – 462 billion (High Sec)
Derelik – 454 billion (High Sec)

High sec and null sec dominate the top of the list, but that seems to align with the sub chart we got back at the start of the post:

May 2022 – Mining by security band

Null sec and high sec still represent the widest bands, but low sec and wormhole space are growing, no doubt related to the gas requirements to create parts for capital production. Now that capital blueprints are in the “still complicated and expensive but no longer completely nonviable” state, production of capitals will drive demand for gas and get more people out huffing. The Imperium is running gas huffing classes now to try and bootstrap capital production to get it running again.

Meanwhile, the first chart in the post, way back up at the top, indicated that a total of 21.77 trillion ISK in value was mined, which includes wormhole space, so maybe these numbers agree in some way now?

Speaking of gas huffing, you can see it is on the rise, as noted, both in anticipation of demand and then based on actual demand that came from the blueprint changes we finally got.

May 2022 – Gas mining over the last 12 months by volume mined

It is the resource stream that wormhole space dominates and where low sec is strong as well.

Asteroid mining, which is basically the old school rock harvesting that many think of when mining is mentioned, remains steady, with high sec being the dominant location still.

May 2022 – Asteroid mining over the last 12 months by volume mined

Null sec, which has no asteroid belts anymore, remains as big as it is via mining anomalies.

Ice mining, another high sec and null sec activity, remained steady.

May 2022 – Ice mining over the last 12 months by volume mined

And finally there is moon mining.

May 2022 – Moon mining over the last 12 months by volume mined

This is one area where low sec should be much more significant than it currently is. Back in the passive moon mining days there was a lot of activity with moons in low sec. Now, however, they don’t seem to be worth the effort.

And so it goes, another month with the New Eden economy. What I will be looking for when we get the June MER is the impact that the decline in the online activity might be having on the economy. EVE Offline has been showing numbers dropping.

The concurrent user chart of late

2022 so far peaked back in January during the Doctor Who event and has started seeing a downturn since the price hike. We shall see if that carries on.

As always, all of these charts and more along with the data underlying many of them is available for download from the MER dev blog.