A Look into February 2023 Destruction in EVE Online

This is my third post looking into monthly destruction based on the kill dump file that is included as part of the Monthly Economic Report, and I am already seeing some of the limitations of this as a recurring monthly post, at least when it comes to keeping it somewhat fresh and interesting.

For example, the baseline stat, the total number of ships and structures destroyed in New Eden in February was 400,617.

That is 94% of the January total, which was 425,629, but February only has 90% of the days that January has, so that is pretty close to a consistent result.

Likewise, 110,089 of those were capsules, compared to 115,904 the previous month, and 25,384 of those were corvettes while in January the number was 27,221.

34.97 trillion ISK was reported in the loss column as a result of destruction, which lines up exactly with the destruction data in the MER from the produced/destroyed/mined chart, which means they must be drawing from the same source, and is in line with the regional destruction data, though that is lower because it does not count wormhole space.

There is still the lack of alignment between the regional data in the MER, which puts these as the top ten regions for destruction

1. The Forge – 1.67 trillion 4.82% (Caldari High Sec)
2. Pure Blind – 1.61 trillion 4.68% (B2 Coalition)
3. The Citadel – 1.52 trillion 4.40% (Caldari High Sec)
4. Vale of the Silent – 1.45 trillion 4.19% (Fraternity)
5. Fade – 1.43 trillion 4.15% (B2 Coalition)
6. Sinq Laison – 1.40 trillion 4.05% (Gallente High Sec)
7. Lonetrek – 1.38 trillion 3.99% (Caldari High Sec)
8. Delve – 1.32 trillion 3.83% (B2 Coalition)
9. Perrigen Falls – 1.23 trillion 3.56% (PanFam)
10. Metropolis – 1.08 trillion 3.12% (Minmata High Sec)

While the data from the kill dump file puts the top ten regions as:

1. Pure Blind – 1.51 trillion
2. Fade – 1.32 trillion
3. Vale of the Silent – 1.30 trillion
4. The Citadel – 1.28 trillion
5. The Forge – 1.22 trillion
6. Sinq Laison – 1.10 trillion
7. Perrigen Falls – 1.08 trillion
8. Delve – .97 trillion
9. Lonetrek – .91 trillion
10. Heimatar – .77 trillion

And that list is based on the total value of the ship’s loss, including modules that dropped, and not just what was destroyed. That list is actually the same regions in the same order, but the numbers are a bit smaller to account for the approximately 10 trillion ISK in modules and cargo that was left on the field to be recovered.

By the way, if you want a safer place to hang out, try Khanid.  That region saw a mere 41.71 billion ISK in destruction.  The only locations lower were a few under used wormhole systems.  Omist was the null sec region with the lowest destruction, ringing in at 57.53 billion ISK destroyed, but it is also in that area that FI.RE departed that hasn’t yet found a new permanent owner.

When we drill down to the solar system level, Jita does win out when we are counting ISK lost:

1. Jita 478.89 billion
2. C4C-Z4 475.29 billion
3. Auga 469.22 billion
4. F-NMX6 452.31 billion
5. Ahbazon 424.01 billion
6. Sivala 304.61 billion
7. Gheth 255.11 billion
8. MJ-5F9 252.15 billion
9. Miroitem 233.06 billion
10. 4-HWWF 198.13 billion

But Jita is only in third place when we count total individual losses:

1. Auga 11,499
2. Deepari 10,278
3. Jita 10,226
4. Ahbazon 6,909
5. Nagamanen 6,800
6. C4C-Z4 6,638
7. F-NMX6 5,983
8. Miroitem 4,846
9. Tama 4,654
10. Oinasiken 4,461

Deepari isn’t quite the outlier it was before, but it still has a lot of destruction even for a new player system.  I would expect to see the other empire new player starting system on the list, unless there is some advantage to Amarr for Alpha Clone alts or bots/

If we take capsules and corvettes out of the equation, which pares down total destruction to 266,144, the most destroyed classes of ships in February were:

1. Frigate 64,906
2. Cruiser 33,130
3. Destroyer 27,144
4. Shuttle 18,726
5. Combat Battlecruiser 13,359
6. Mobile Tractor Unit 10,900
7. Heavy Assault Cruiser 10,556
8. Hauler 7,970
9. Interdictor 7,667
10. Interceptor 6,877
11. Battleship 6,099
12. Assault Frigate 5,949
13. Stealth Bomber 4,614
14. Tactical Destroyer 4,198
15. Strategic Cruiser 3,938
16. Mobile Warp Disruptor 3,676
17. Mining Barge 3,206
18. Covert Ops 3,134
19. Marauder 2,203
20. Command Destroyer 2,049

And, when we get down to specific hulls, the usual suspects are there in the top 20 as well.

1. Mobile Tractor Unit 10,467
2. Venture 10,290
3. Heron 7,328
4. Caldari Shuttle 6,696
5. Ishtar 6,070
6. Caracal 5,234
7. Amarr Shuttle 5,156
8. Vexor 4,663
9. Thrasher 4,252
10. Sabre 4,052
11. Catalyst 3,809
12. Tristan 3,620
13. Gallente Shuttle 3,554
14. Hurricane 3,235
15. Kikimora 3,175
16. Punisher 3,091
17. Merlin 2,817
18. Atron 2,720
19. Rifter 2,701
20. Minmatar Shuttle 2,638

There is a little change.  Herons beat Caldari Shuttles this month.  But it is about the same.  The people of New Eden seem set in their routine.

So we haven’t seen anything really new and different so far.  Kind of cool if you just like to see the details every month, but I like to chart changes and see if they track to events.  For March we’ll have some battles in Pure Blind and the Frigate Free For All in Ouelletta that should stand out.  I’ll look for those.  But I have been fishing around for something else to look into.

One thought was new battles graphic that CCP included in the MER.  As I noted, as an image it is not very useful or enlightening unless you just happen to know what those circles are referencing.

Feb 2023 – Battles in New Eden by Participants

However, even though the data is provided in the form of a JSON file (named kill_dump.json, which is a bit confusing next to kill_dump.csv), it is somewhat incomplete.  I could not reproduce that chart with the data provided.

The problem is that they exported some of the key data, but in creating the chart they had access to additional data they did not include.  For example, they do not system name, only system ID, so I had to made a translation table to map the names to the IDs because I am pretty sure few of us know off hand that system ID 30000142 refers to Jita.

And then there are participants, which I haven’t figured out how to tease out of the data structure in Power BI and the fact that the ISK value of battles is given in two forms, CCP valuation and ZKill valuation, and they can be pretty far apart.

All told CCP’s valuation for battles only totals up to 28.29 trillion ISK, while ZKill valuation rings in at 60.37 trillion ISK.  That is kind of a big gap, and it is unevenly distributed.

For example, the top five battles in cost using CCP’s valuation system are in:

1. 8-4GQM – Feb 21 – 242.26 billion
2. DFH-V5 – Feb 26 – 216.82 billion
3. Egghelende – Feb 21 – 175.29 billion
4. Dooz – Feb 7 – 168.42 billion
5. T-RPFU – Feb 5 – 148.31 billion

While using the ZKill valuation the top five battles were:

1. Urlen- Feb 8 – 377.12 billion
2. K4YZ-Y – Feb 22 – 236.10 billion
3. J5A-IX – Feb 9 – 208.40 billion
4. Sadana – Feb 1 – 182.03 billion
5. B3QP-K – Feb 1 – 109.59 billion

I ended up feeling like the ZKill valuations are just wrong, in part because it is difficult to find supporting evidence.

So, going back to the CCP valuation list, I went looking for that top battle and was able to find it on the HTML version of the map CCP provided, which lets you mouse over the circles to get details.

CCP’s map at 8-4GQM battle details

With that, I went to go make a battle report for that time frame on Feb 21st, and came up with what looked like an actual battle in Branch on that date.  Here is the header from the battle report.

8-4GQM Battle Report Header

Pandemic Horde and Fraternity got into it with B2 Coalition and capital ships were deployed, with Karter Viper of Siberian Squads (they left the Imperium after some internal drama and went and joined Fraternity as part of WinterCo) losing a titan as part of the mix.

Then I let ZKill generate its own battle report (which might have caught a mistake in mine, as I have Banderlogs on the the Fraternity side and ZKill puts them on our side, but I can’t remember where they actually sit) and then I tried to compare all the data.

The side totals from ZKill

And for the battle we have the following valuations:

• CCP value – 242.26 billion ISK
• BR Tool value – 136.6 billion ISK
• ZKill Related kills value – 136.3 billion ISK
• CCP ZKill value – 31.73 billion ISK

So I am not sure how valuable that is.  I know the data is going to vary from site to site based on the parameters around collecting it, but I feel a bit like the old saying about how a man with one watch always knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never quite sure.

Anyway, as a reason to continue doing these sorts of posts CCP’s battle data isn’t going to sustain me.  It is a bit too much for somewhat inconsistent results.  Then again, when we get the March MER it will include some battles that I was in.  And maybe they will have gotten some feedback on the data presentation.

The February EVE Online Monthly Economic Report and the Build Up to War in Pure Blind

We had the Monthly Economic Report for February 2023 land the week before last… I’m only just now getting to it due to a several day power outage… and it was tempting to once again declare it to be something of a benchmark to consider before events.  In this case, the Imperium moving north to war in Pure Blind.

EVE Online nerds harder

Except, of course, that the Imperium is joining a war already in progress.  Fraternity and its WinterCo allies have been going after B3 in the north and things have advanced to the point where even CCP has taken a moment out of their usual blinkered focus on their marketing plan to note that null sec was up to something again.

The region of Pure Blind has seen a massive uptick in activity, with Winter Co, Panfam, B2, and Imperium brawling outrageous.

As the large ships clash, industrialists and traders of all sorts get ready to match the demand. #Tweetfleet #EVEOnline pic.twitter.com/qRodzHMbcJ

— EVE Online (@EveOnline) March 7, 2023

So we should go straight into destruction.

Destruction

And, after all of that, destruction overall was down in February.  You can see the blue line representing destruction trending down in the back half of the month.

Feb 2023 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

The data for that chart shows the total value of destruction at 34.97 trillion ISK in value, down from 41.09 trillion ISK in January.

Likewise, the region stats also show about a 6 trillion drop in destruction, with the total there being 34.54 trillion ISK.  The top ten regions for destruction were:

1. The Forge – 1.67 trillion 4.82% (Caldari High Sec)
2. Pure Blind – 1.61 trillion 4.68% (B2 Coalition)
3. The Citadel – 1.52 trillion 4.40% (Caldari High Sec)
4. Vale of the Silent – 1.45 trillion 4.19% (Fraternity)
5. Fade – 1.43 trillion 4.15% (B2 Coalition)
6. Sinq Laison – 1.40 trillion 4.05% (Gallente High Sec)
7. Lonetrek – 1.38 trillion 3.99% (Caldari High Sec)
8. Delve – 1.32 trillion 3.83% (B2 Coalition)
9. Perrigen Falls – 1.23 trillion 3.56% (PanFam)
10. Metropolis – 1.08 trillion 3.12% (Minmata High Sec)

While The Forge remains on top, Pure Blind is in the second spot.  All told those ten regions made up 40.79% of the destruction in February.

So it feels like Pure Blind was indeed warming up when it came to the war, really there appeared to be less destruction elsewhere.  PB was in fifth position last month, with 1.57 trillion ISK destroyed, very close to the February value.  FI.RE and their move op disasters last month were no doubt part of what built up those numbers.

The security band chart shows null sec was still the place for destruction, though it was down by a bit.

Feb 2023 – Destruction over time by Security Band

CCP has also included a new graphic this month in an attempt to illustrate the largest battles every month.  Unfortunately, the version I can post here, the PNG graphic, is pretty useless.  It does not impart any information of value beyond something akin to a heat map.

Feb 2023 – Battles in New Eden by Participants

The HTML version has data embedded in it that gives more information and context.

A battle example from Pure Blind

But I cannot embed that in the blog because it would be too large to fit in my format and WordPress.com doesn’t allow that sort of thing in any case. (Too easy to embed trojans and such.)

However, they do provide the data for the charts.  If I get to another look at just kills in another post this month, I will draw some data from it.  I have already pulled the data into Power BI.  The main pain is that they don’t map the system IDs to their names in that table, so I have to go elsewhere to find the mapping.

Production

Meanwhile, production numbers were also off a bit, though not by as much as destruction.  The regional stats recorded 152.90 trillion ISK in production in February, off by a little less that 3 trillion, with the top ten regions being:

1. The Forge – 22.49 trillion 14.71% (Caldari High Sec)
2. Delve – 20.74 trillion 13.56% (Imperium)
3. Vale of the Silent – 16.34 trillion 10.68% (Fraternity)
4. The Citadel – 10.00 trillion 6.54% (Caldari High Sec)
5. Lonetrek – 7.99 trillion 5.23% (Caldari High Sec)
6. Heimatar – 7.72 trillion 5.05% (Minmatar High Sec)
7. Perrigen Falls – 5.13 trillion 3.35% (PanFam)
8. Fade – 5.12 trillion 3.35% (B2)
9. Fountain – 4.86 trillion 3.18% (Imperium)
10. Deklein – 4.12 trillion 2.70% (Fraternity)

As usual, the regions feeding Jita remain at the top of the list, while those ten regions made up 68.35% of the production in New Eden.

Trade

February saw 736.23 trillion ISK in trade value, down 61.35 trillion from January.  That feels like a lot, but the total averaged out over 28 days is about 26 trillion ISK, so that drop could very much just be the fact that February is three days shorter than January.

1. The Forge – 494.07 trillion 73.21% (Jita)
2. Domain – 40.52 trillion 6.00% (Amarr)
3. Delve – 22.04 trillion 3.27% (Imperium)
4. Lonetrek – 19.68 trillion 2.92% (Caldari High Sec)
5. Perrigen Falls – 14.45 trillion 2.14% (PanFam)
6. Sinq Laison – 13.30 trillion 1.97% (Dodixie)
7. Metropolis – 12.09 trillion 1.79% (Hek)
8. Heimatar – 7.74 trillion 1.15% (Rens)
9. Vale of the Silent – 7.06 trillion 1.05% (Fraternity)
10. Fade – 5.28 trillion 0.78% (B3)

As always, The Forge, home to Jita, tops the list representing almost 3 out of every 4 ISK spent on trade.

And, furthering my statement about the lower value being more a matter of fewer days in the month, the velocity of ISK continued to rise.

Feb 2023 – Velocity of ISK

That points to a healthier economy, especially after the doldrums of the economic strangulation era that CCP went through a while back.  We still haven’t full recovered… you can see grim moments in CCP decision making in the big dips in the line… but we are at least back on the rise.

Still, the bottom line on that chart, the one absent PLEX or contracts, isn’t rising all that much, so the activity of the top line, which includes PLEX, is something CCP can manipulate with in-game sales on game time for PLEX.

ISK Faucets

Here is where we talk about the money and where all that ISK comes from.  The top faucets for February 2023 were the usual suspects.

Feb 2023 – ISK Faucet Totals

Commodities remained above the combo of NPC bounty prizes and ESS payouts, but only just.  Commodities were actually down by about 8 trillion ISK in value when compared to January, while bounties were up a bit.  Commodities are always a bit odd though, because they only get counted when people cash them in to an NPC, while bounties are collected and counted immediately.

Feb 2023 – Top Faucets Over Time

You can see that, after the big climb for commodities in December and January due to the holiday event, there was a fairly big dip in both commodities and bounty prizes, followed by a resurgence for both, with commodities leading the way again.

Drilling in to commodities over time we see the holiday event spike and then the rise in Sleeper drops.

Feb 2022 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

Breaking that out to the total values for the month shows us this.

Feb 2023 – Commodity Value by Type

Then, on the NPC bounty and ESS payout side of things, the top regions on that front were:

1. Vale of the Silent – 4.29 trillion 10.26% (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 3.73 trillion 8.93% (Imperium)
3. Perrigen Falls – 2.94 trillion 7.04% (PanFam)
4. Fountain – 2.66 trillion 6.36% (Imperium)
5. Querious – 2.59 trillion 6.20% (Imperium)
6. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.27 trillion 5.43% (PanFam)
7. Deklein – 1.73 trillion 4.15% (B2)
8. Branch – 1.69 trillion 4.05% (Fraternity)
9. Tribute – 1.39 trillion 3.33% (Fraternity)
10. Malpais – 1.36 trillion 3.26% (PanFam)

Overall the regional stats showed the combined bounties and ESS payouts added up to 41.77 trillion ISK in value, about a trillion less than January.  Those ten regions added up to 59.00% of the total payouts.

All of that drove the money supply up in February.

Feb 2023 – Money Supply

The big jump was still in November, when we got the Uprising expansion and CCP loosened up on the dynamic bounty system.  In December we saw a flat month due to money being taken out of the economy due to players who came back for the 7 days of free omega leaving again.  But since then the money supply has continued to grow.

Feb 2023 ISK Balance

This is not a bad thing.  Players with ISK in their pockets feel better about putting assets at risk.  The whole CCP scarcity theory, that making us poor and resource starved would drive conflict, proved to be false.  I have said this before, and will no doubt say it again, but applying real world economic theory to a game like this comes with risks.  The players don’t live in New Eden.  If life gets expensive and miserable for them in game, if they feel poor and are afraid to lose the assets they have, that doesn’t drive them to conflict, that drives them to log off and play something more fun.

Mining

Mining remains as boring to write about as it is to do for me, but still I have some numbers.  From the regional stats, the top ten regions for mining value were:

1. Delve – 1.49 trillion 6.79% (Imperium)
2. The Forge – 1.14 trillion 5.19% (Caldari High Sec)
3. Vale of the Silent – 1.07 trillion 4.86% (Fraternity)
4. Lonetrek – .99 trillion 4.49% (Caldari High Sec)
5. Metropolis – .93 trillion 4.22% (Minmatar High Sec)
6. Domain – .87 trillion 3.97% (Amarr High Sec)
7. Aridia – .75 trillion 3.40% (Amarr Low Sec)
8. The Kalevala Expanse – .73 trillion 3.31% (PanFam)
9. Sinq Laison – .71 trillion 3.25% (Gallente High Sec)
10. Perrigen Falls – .68 trillion 3.09% (PanFam)

Those totaled up to 21.95 trillion ISK in value and 42.58% of the mining value done in New Eden.

Overall, mining was broken out in February in the following security bands.

Feb 2023 – Mining volume by security band

That might be a little hard to read, but you can click on it to see it full size.

Loyalty Points

And then there are loyalty points, which I started listing on a whim, but which don’t really change enough from month to month to really be worth writing about.  So, for one final list from the regional stats, here are the top ten regions.

1. Lonetrek – 1556.97 million 16.15% (Caldari High Sec)
2. Venal – 1491.29 million 15.47% (Guristas)
3. Metropolis – 1274.95 million 13.22% (FW low Sec)
4. Placid – 851.11 million 8.83% (FW low Sec)
5. Delve – 427.98 million 4.44% (Blood Raiders)
6. Curse – 344.73 million 3.58% (Angel Cartel)
7. Stain – 343.42 million 3.56% (Sansha)
8. Aridia – 332.41 million 3.45% (Low Sec Paragon Agent)
9. Essence – 322.24 million 3.34% (FW low Sec)
10. Pure Blind – 286.73 million 2.97% (Mordu/SOE)

There was a total of 9,641.26 million loyalty points earned, with the ten regions above accounting for 75.01% of those earned.

And so it goes, another month in the books.  All of the sources and other places I could find where this was being discussed are linked below.

Related

• CCP – February 2023 Monthly Economic Report
• CCP – February 2023 MER Forum Thread
• Reddit – February 2023 MER thread
• TNG – Looking at EVE Online in February
• TAGN – Last month’s MER Post

A Look into January Ship Destruction in EVE Online

Once again I am playing with data analytics tools… Microsoft Power BI now since, as I noted in my post about the MER, I couldn’t justify a Tableau license at work… and so I went digging into the kill_dump.csv file again.  That file, which comes with the MER, lists out all the kills CCP recorded for the month.

EVE Online nerds harder

I did this for the December data as well, but later realized I made a mistake.  I did not discern the difference between the ISK destroyed and ISK lost data and reported on the former as if it were the later.  I believe destroyed is what is taken out of the game.  That is always the hull and some, but not all, of the modules and cargo.  ISK lost looks to be what the value taken from the person whose ship or structure was destroyed.

So the total value lost was 41 trillion ISK in value, which lines up with the MER for January, or at least the total from the produced, destroyed, mined chart data.  The regional data shows a bit more, which is odd because doesn’t include WH space.  Once again, different data from different sources.

The total destroyed was 30 trillion ISK in value, so the loot fairy granted about 11 trillion ISK in drops in January.

Oddly, going back to the MER and the regional stats, the kill file tells a different tale.  The MER regional data gave the following for the top ten regions for destruction:

1. The Forge – 2.04 trillion 4.99% (Caldari High Sec)
2. Lonetrek – 1.78 trillion 4.36% (Caldari High Sec)
3. The Citadel – 1.67 trillion 4.10% (Caldari High Sec)
4. Syndicate – 1.58 trillion 3.88% (NPC Null Sec)
5. Pure Blind – 1.57 trillion 3.83% (B2 Coalition)
6. Delve – 1.54 trillion 3.77% (Imperium)
7. Sinq Laison – 1.31 trillion 3.21% (Gallente High Sec)
8. Vale of the Silent – 1.30 trillion 3.17% (Fraternity)
9. Metropolis – 1.27 trillion 3.11% (Minmatar High Sec)
10. Tenerifis – 1.26 trillion 3.08% (FI.RE)

However, the kill data sorts the top ten for ISK lost as:

1. Syndicate – 1.54 trillion
2. The Forge – 1.53 trillion
3. Pure Blind – 1.52 trillion
4. The Citadel – 1.37 trillion
5. Tenerifis – 1.21 trillion
6. Vale of the Silent – 1.15 trillion
7. Insmother – 1.15 trillion
8. Perrigen Falls – 1.13 trillion
9. Delve – 1.13 trillion
10. Genesis – 1.06 trillion

This leads me to make another assumption, that possibly the kill_dump is only PvP destruction.  I certainly don’t seen CONCORD on the list of corporations with kills.  Then again, I do see Vigilant Tyrannos, which are wormhole and abyssal NPCs, so I am not sure what to think.  They are on the list for 827 billion ISK in kills.  I hate when the data raises more questions than it answers.

Anyway, the numbers are different and I am just going to roll with that.

Still, we know why Syndicate is at the top of the kill dump list.  That is where FI.RE got caught in its move ops to the northwest of null sec to join B2 coalition.  Sorting out value lost by system shows that very clearly.  Here are the top ten systems with the most destruction by value lost:

1. KFR-ZE – 1.11 trillion
2. Jita – .76 trillion
3. Ahbazon – .75 trillion
4. Q-5211 – .71 trillion
5. MJ-5F9 – .38 trillion
6. RH0-EG – .35 trillion
7. Miroitem – .28 trillion
8. J-RXYN – .26 trillion
9. J-ZYSZ – .25 trillion
10. Gheth – .25 trillion

You can see on the move op route map that is where FI.RE took a big hit.  The battle report listed 850 billion ISK lost for that one ambush alone, and I am sure there were more stragglers killed along the way.

When I turn the data to just look at raw number of kills per system, the top ten are:

1. Deepari – 12,805
2. Jita – 9,729
3. Ahbazon – 9,499
4. Auga – 6,879
5. Aldranette – 6,455
6. Nagamanen – 5,686
7. Tama – 5,247
8. Miroitem – 5,222
9. MJ-5F9 – 4,878
10. Sujarento – 4,557

I kind of expected Jita to be at the top, but now I wonder what the hell is going on in Deepari?

Digging into the data, 12,799 of those losses were corvettes.  Is somebody staging newbie ship battles in there?  It was second on the list last month, so clearly something happens there.

This is why I don’t include corvettes or capsules in some of my stats… though only 2 capsules were lost in Deepari.

Jita, second on the list, is a little more diverse.  The top ten ship groups lost there in January were:

1. Shuttle – 2,881
2. Capsule – 2,577
3. Frigate – 1,089
4. Corvette – 965
5. Destroyer – 509
6. Attack Battlecruiser – 469
7. Hauler – 245
8. Blockade Runner – 237
9. Cruiser – 170
10. Combat Battlecruiser – 116

People think they can move through hostiles in a shuttle learn the hard way that there is no safety once you undock.

Overall there were 425,629 kills recorded in the kill dump for January.

Of those, 115,904 were capsules and another 27,221 were corvettes.

Excluding those two gives us a total of 282,504 losses, with the top 20 ship groups being:

1. Frigate 69,831
2. Cruiser 32,777
3. Destroyer 32,330
4. Shuttle 20,005
5. Combat Battlecruiser 14,423
6. Mobile Tractor Unit 10,741
7. Heavy Assault Cruiser 9,913
8. Hauler 8,847
9. Interdictor – 7,464
10. Interceptor – 7,387
11. Battleship – 6,990
12. Assault Frigate – 5,623
13. Tactical Destroyer – 4,488
14. Strategic Cruiser – 4,145
15. Stealth Bomber – 3,935
16. Mining Barge – 3,895
17. Mobile Warp Disruptor – 3,740
18. Covert Ops – 3,205
19. Force Recon Ship – 2,479
20. Marauder – 2,385

When we get down to specific hulls, the top 20 losses by total count were:

1. Venture – 12,318
2. Mobile Tractor Unit – 10,215
3. Caldari Shuttle – 7,765
4. Heron – 7,030
5. Caracal – 5,445
6. Ishtar – 5,306
7. Thrasher – 4,962
8. Amarr Shuttle – 4,441
9. Catalyst – 4,202
10. Sabre – 4,171
11. Tristan – 4,166
12. Vexor – 4,101
13. Gallente Shuttle – 3,991
14. Merlin – 3,413
15. Cormorant – 3,391
16. Punisher – 3,383
17. Rifter – 3,370
18. Atron – 3,035
19. Algos – 2,942
20. Minmatar Shuttle – 2,734

Ventures continue to top the list while MTU hunters are still very active.

Meanwhile, capital losses, which totalled up to just shy of 7 trillion ISK in losses, saw the following types destroyed:

1. Dreadnought – 516
2. Freighter – 198
3. Carrier – 141
4. Force Auxiliary – 90
5. Capital Industrial Ship – 47
6. Supercarrier – 44
7. Jump Freighter – 41
8. Titan – 12
9. Dreadnought – 11

I’m guessing that the second Dreadnought entry might be faction dreads.

Over a trillion of the capital ship losses, including 7 of the titans, were part of FI.RE’s losses in KFR-ZE, and 3 more of the titans lost were their’s in other systems along the way.

So it goes.  Another month goes by.

Related:

• Reddit – Ship Losses from zKill over the last 90 days

The January EVE Monthly Economic Report and the FI.RE Evac

It is time once again for the EVE Online monthly economic report, this time for January of 2023.

EVE Online nerds harder

As is often the case, I am interested in both how the New Eden economy carried on and how events that took place in space might have influenced the numbers being reported.

For January one of the larger events was the collapse and flight of the FI.RE coalition, as they evacuated their home in the southeast of null sec to swing clockwise around the map to seek shelter with the B2 coalition in the northwest… though one of their alliances, East Wind, just kept on going clockwise, deciding to join Fraternity and its Winter Coalition in the northeast.

The retreat of FI.RE has been the usual trail of tears as mistakes, miscommunication, and eager predators combined to inflict heavy losses on their move ops.

That means I’ll start with the destruction numbers… and will probably do another post based on the kill dump file just to detail how heave a price FI.RE might have paid last month.

Destruction

So what happened in January?

Jan 2023 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

So the blue line, the destruction line, was clearly trending up as January wore on, aligning with the level of desperation that FI.RE was facing.

The data for that chart shows the total destruction for the month as 41.09 trillion ISK in value, up from 36.9 trillion in December, so there was a few trillion extra ISK destroyed.

The break-out chart that displays by security band indicates that the rise was in part in null sec space.

Jan 2023 – Destruction over time by Security Band

Meanwhile, the regional stats also show an uptick in destruction, totaling up to 40.84 trillion ISK destroyed, a bit more than the 38.8 trillion ISK measured in December, with the following regions topping the charts:

1. The Forge – 2.04 trillion 4.99% (Caldari High Sec)
2. Lonetrek – 1.78 trillion 4.36% (Caldari High Sec)
3. The Citadel – 1.67 trillion 4.10% (Caldari High Sec)
4. Syndicate – 1.58 trillion 3.88% (NPC Null Sec)
5. Pure Blind – 1.57 trillion 3.83% (B2 Coalition)
6. Delve – 1.54 trillion 3.77% (Imperium)
7. Sinq Laison – 1.31 trillion 3.21% (Gallente High Sec)
8. Vale of the Silent – 1.30 trillion 3.17% (Fraternity)
9. Metropolis – 1.27 trillion 3.11% (Minmatar High Sec)
10. Tenerifis – 1.26 trillion 3.08% (FI.RE)

I have updated my data output to include the percentage of total destruction those regions represent, with the top ten together accounting for 37.50% of the overall.

The only obvious FI.RE location is Tenerifis.  But if you follow the route FI.RE took out of the southeast (you should totally look at that map, it is some quality work), you can spot some other locations, like KFR-ZE in Syndicate, where their move op was mauled badly, losing 850 billion ISK.

Their losses didn’t move the destruction needle by a huge amount, but if they were totaled up they might be in contention with the back half of the top ten regions on the list above.

Production

The flip side of destruction is production, and looking at the first chart above production was somewhat flat in January… though, it has been up since the last expansion, so there is that.  The data for that chart puts production at 113.81 trillion trillion ISK in value in January, up from the 102.98 trillion ISK reported the previous month.

The regional stats data puts the production number at 155.70 trillion ISK, up from 152.94 in December.  So both numbers are up, though there is almost a 42 trillion ISK gap in there.  Oh well.

The top ten regions for production were:

1. The Forge – 24.66 trillion 15.84% (Caldari High Sec)
2. Delve – 17.70 trillion 11.37% (Imperium)
3. Vale of the Silent – 13.91 trillion 8.93% (Fraternity)
4. The Citadel – 8.98 trillion 5.77% (Caldari High Sec)
5. Lonetrek – 8.04 trillion 5.17% (Caldari High Sec)
6. Heimatar – 7.65 trillion 4.91% (Minmatar High Sec)
7. Perrigen Falls – 5.91 trillion 3.80% (PanFam)
8. Cloud Ring – 5.63 trillion 3.62% (B2/Imperium)
9. Fountain – 5.44 trillion 3.49% (Imperium)
10. Tribute – 5.19 trillion 3.33% (Fraternity)

Those ten regions added up to 66.22% of the total production number for the month.  As usual, regions around Jita were strong, supplying the market, but Delve and Vale were also doing quite a bit of industry.

Trade

On the trade front things were up mid-month, but were tapering down a bit by the end.

January 2023 – Velocity of ISK

There was a total of 736.23 trillion ISK in value traded on the market in New Eden in January, with the following ten regions accounting for 94.15% of the total.

1. The Forge – 541.09 trillion 73.50% (Jita)
2. Domain – 45.10 trillion 6.13% (Amarr)
3. Lonetrek – 21.44 trillion 2.91% (Caldari High Sec)
4. Delve – 20.14 trillion 2.74% (Imperium)
5. Sinq Laison – 17.30 trillion 2.35% (Dodixie)
6. Perrigen Falls – 15.66 trillion 2.13% (PanFam)
7. Metropolis – 12.19 trillion 1.66% (Hek)
8. Heimatar – 9.32 trillion 1.27% (Rens)
9. Vale of the Silent – 5.92 trillion 0.80% (Fraternity)
10. Fountain – 5.01 trillion 0.68% (Imperium)

Of course, The Forge, home to both Jita and the Perimeter Tranquility Trading Tower, was responsible for almost three quarters of all trade.  If you can’t find it in Jita… well, it must be a capital ship.

ISK Faucets

Money time.  Here is the part where I usually try to crop down the top of the big sinks and faucets graph and then end up with something with print so tiny I then have to write it out anyway.  This month I have been playing with Microsoft Power BI… because the analytics team wouldn’t give me one of their licenses for Tableau Desktop… and so I loaded up the sinks and faucets data and made my own little chart.

Jan 2023 – ISK Faucet Totals

That probably took me longer than it would have taken to just do it the usual way, but I was having fun while I did it.

Once again commodities are at the top of the chart, even when we combine Bounty Prizes and ESS Payouts.

Jan 2023 – Top Faucets Over Time

I suspect that dip in the back half of January might be related to FI.RE packing up and leaving home… and other groups trying to take advantage by dropping their crabbing for a bit in order to take a shot at them.  But the

The commodities themselves were broken out as:

Jan 2022 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

The hangover from the Winter Nexus, which gave out Overseer’s Personal Effects lingered into January, after which Sleeper Components picked up sharply.  Their totals break out to:

• Sleeper Components – 24.44 trillion (up 4.09 trillion)
• Overseer Personal Effects – 16.72 trillion (down 2.54 trillion)
• Bounty Encrypted Bonds – 6.10 trillion (down 0.84 trillion)
• Triglavian Data – 5.56 trillion (up 0.51 trillion)
• Rogue Drone Analysis Data – 1.94 trillion (down 0.3 trillion)
• Miscellaneous – 459 billion (down 186 billion)

Overall faucets drove the money supply up a bit over the course of the month.

Jan 2023 – Money Supply

We can see that in the ISK balance as well.

Jan 2023 ISK Balance

Faucets out ran sinks by a little more that 20 trillion ISK, largely due to a lower Active ISK delta, which accounts for ISK leaving the game via players going inactive or GM actions.  In December that number was 20 trillion ISK higher.

Mining

On the mineral front CCP hasn’t solved the isogen shortage quite yet, but the mineral price index looks to have at least tapered off its race to get back to an all time high.

Jan 2023 – Economic Indices

Isogen is still expensive and I made some ISK last month reprocessing NPC drops and selling the minerals on the market.

Still, mining carried on.  The data for that first chart at the top of the post indicates that 31.35 trillion ISK in value was mined in January, up from 29.94 trillion ISK in December.

The regional data puts the sum at 26.78 trillion ISK in value, which was up considerably from the 17.51 trillion ISK reported in December, a jump that makes me think there was an error somewhere in the December accounting.

The top ten regions for ISK value mined were:

1. Delve – 2.14 trillion 7.98% (Imperium)
2. Fountain – 1.40 trillion 5.23% (Imperium)
3. The Forge – 1.29 trillion 4.83% (Caldari High Sec)
4. Vale of the Silent – 1.11 trillion 4.15% (Fraternity)
5. Lonetrek – 1.02 trillion 3.81% (Caldari High Sec)
6. Domain – .98 trillion 3.65% (Amarr High Sec)
7. Metropolis – .90 trillion 3.38% (Minmatar High Sec)
8. The Kalevala Expanse – .89 trillion 3.33% (PanFam)
9. Perrigen Falls – .86 trillion 3.20% (PanFam)
10. Sinq Laison – .83 trillion 3.09% (Gallente High Sec)

Those ten regions accounted for 42.64% of the total in the regional data.

I do like to post the volume over time charts now and then.  Those are good charts.  But this month I decided to do some charts… once again, playing with Power BI… that broke out the security band output just for the month of January.

First up, asteroid mining.

Jan 2023 – Asteroid mining volume by security band

High sec remains far and away the largest asteroid mining location, with null sec making up for less volume with by having more expensive minerals.  Low sec is a distant third, and is the source of the mineral bottle neck that is driving up prices currently.  Still, if CCP keeps its current measures up, supply might catch up with demand in a bit and cause prices to subside a bit.

Ice comes next.

Jan 2023 – Ice mining volume by security band

For ice mining it is high sec dominating the way Jita dominates trade, then null sec at almost a third that amount, then low sec and wormhole space barely registering.  Is there even ice in wormholes?  I guess there must be.

Then there is gas.

Jan 2023 – Gas mining volume by security band

Here is where wormhole space comes into its own, and even low sec is riding high.  Both security bands have gas sites that are needed for capital ship production.  Why will people gas mine but not asteroid mine in low sec?  You can slip in with a mining frigate and get a decently valuable cargo of gas, while asteroid mining really needs barges or exhumers to make real ISK, and those ships die in low sec.  Of course, so do mining frigates.  As I pointed out in a past post, more than 11K Ventures died in December alone.

Finally, there is moon mining.

Jan 2023 – Moon mining volume by security band

This one always makes me a bit sad for the way things have turned out.  In the old school days of passive income moon mining low sec would have been a much bigger slice of the pie.  But nobody wants to run barges or exhumers or Rorquals in low sec now… or even put up an Athanor to frack a moon in the first place.  Snuffed Out will just drop caps on it and blow it up.

Of course, the value of moon mining is pretty low right now as well.  In January all of 4.14 billion ISK in moon products were harvested.  These were the top ten regions, which make up almost half of the total:

1. Vale of the Silent – 366.65 million 8.86% (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 351.18 million 8.49% (Imperium)
3. Domain – 296.72 million 7.17% (Amarr High Sec)
4. Metropolis – 172.84 million 4.18% (Minmatar High Sec)
5. Fountain – 161.61 million 3.91% (Imperium)
6. The Citadel – 159.40 million 3.85% (Caldari High Sec)
7. The Kalevala Expanse – 153.58 million 3.71% (PanFam)
8. Perrigen Falls – 143.47 million 3.47% (PanFam)
9. Sinq Laison – 125.99 million 3.05% (Gallente High Sec)
10. The Bleak Lands – 122.91 million 2.97% (Amarr High Sec)

Null sec keeps on mining it because we still need the moon goo for T2 ships.  There is a reason we run so many T2 doctrines.  Cheap moon goo means a T2 heavy assault cruiser is a pretty good value compared to a T1 cruiser.  But the ISK amounts being registered here aren’t very big compared to the value of the other resources.  Even CCP cutting the moon output by half didn’t buoy the price up because people know that CCP will eventually clamp down so there are huge stockpiles of moon goo being stored up for that day.

Loyalty Points

And my final category, which I do just because it interests me.  This month I tried to better work out what might be driving loyalty point collection in the top ten regions.  I might be wrong, but they seemed likely.

1. Metropolis – 1,53 billion 15.68% (FW low Sec)
2. Venal – 1,40 billion 14.31% (Guristas)
3. Lonetrek – 1.12 billion 11.45% (Low Sec Paragon Agent)
4. Placid – 985.94 million 10.08% (FW low Sec)
5. Delve – 449.58 million 4.60% (Blood Raiders)
6. Essence – 368.01 million 3.76% (FW low Sec)
7. Aridia – 319.12 million 3.26% (Low Sec Paragon Agent)
8. Stain – 310.58 million 3.18% (Sansha)
9. Molden Heath – 293.45 million 3.00% (Minmatar Low Sec)
10. Pure Blind – 290.05 million 2.97% (Mordu/SOE)

Those ten regions made up 72.29% of the 9.78 billion loyalty points earned in January.

And so it goes.  Another month has gone by.

Related:

• CCP – January 2023 Monthly Economic Report
• CCP – January 2023 MER Forum Thread
• Reddit – January 2023 MER thread
• TAGN – Last month’s MER Post

December Ship Destruction in EVE Online

The EVE Online Monthly Economic Report includes a data dump of all the ships destroyed in that month, which is usually a data set I am too lazy to start digging through.  I tend to be satisfied with the ISK totals, which ran between 36.92 trillion and 38.8 trillion ISK in December, depending on which numbers you tally up.

EVE Online nerds harder

I could work up the formulas in Excel if I put my mind to it.  COUNTIF is my friend.  But I generally don’t care enough.  But this month I was playing around with Tableau, a data analysis tool, for work and wondered if it would sort things out for me… take that csv file and organize some nice summaries.  And, sure enough, it did.  I needed to poke at it for about 15 minutes to figure out what I was doing, but I managed to get it to cough up some data.

So I thought I would start with something easy.  How many ships and structures were destroyed in December?

415,796.  That is the total number.

Of course, 112,341 of those were capsules, which hardly count.  I mean, sure, some of them are expensive, full of implants and such.  But most are just the normal, 10K ISK a pop default units.

I remain glad that CCP got rid of capsule upgrades.

Likewise, there were 23,822 corvette losses, most of which were freebies and hardly worth accounting for.

So that leaves 279,633 ships, deployables, or structures that were blown up.

The top 20 destroyed, leaving out capsules and corvettes, were:

Frigate               71,295 25.50%
Cruiser               35,162 12.57%
Destroyer             32,535 11.63% 
Shuttle               15,881  5.68%
Combat Battlecruiser  13,212  4.72%
Mobile Tractor Unit   10,047  3.59%
Heavy Assault Cruiser 10,020  3.58%
Battleship             7,765  2.78%
Hauler                 7,749  2.77%
Interdictor            7,600  2.72%
Interceptor            6,638  2.37%
Assault Frigate        5,296  1.89%
Tactical Destroyer     4,261  1.52%
Mining Barge           4,092  1.46%
Strategic Cruiser      4,067  1.45%
Stealth Bomber         3,907  1.40%
Covert Ops             3,749  1.34%
Mobile Warp Disruptor  3,505  1.25%
Marauder               3,262  1.17%
Expedition Frigate     3,176  1.14%

Those total up to 253,219 ships or deployables blown up, or 91% of the total for December.

More than a quarter were frigates, which is no surprise I am sure.  Cruisers and destroyers add up to close to that number as well.  Down a couple more are mobile tractor units, beloved of ratters and mission runners, little deployables that haul in and loot all the wrecks in the site you are running.  There are players who just target those.  I did a bit of MTU hunting back in the day myself.

My MTU collecting wrecks in a forsaken hub

I suppose the only surprise in the top 20 is marauders.  Those are expensive, but being T2 battleships, with T2 materials depressed, I suppose they are that much more expensive than their T1 brethren anymore.

As for individual hull types lost, the top ten were:

Venture              11,277 4.03%
Mobile Tractor Unit   9,624 3.44%
Heron                 8,464 3.03%
Caracal               6,138 2.20%
Caldari Shuttle       5,232 1.87%
Ishtar                5,217 1.87%
Thrasher              4,813 1.72%
Stabber               4,387 1.57%
Tristan               4,271 1.53%
Vexor                 4,064 1.45%

Ventures are mining frigates, so count in that 71K frigate losses above.  But 1 in 7 of those were a Venture.

When it comes to capital ships, these were the losses in December:

Dreadnought             351 
Freighter               156 
Carrier                 143 
Force Auxiliary          88 
Capital Industrial Ship  67 
Jump Freighter           26 
Supercarrier             20 
Titan                     6

That is a few dreadnoughts.  Not exactly war time numbers otherwise, but there wasn’t much in the way of wars going on for most of December.

For structures the numbers were:

Customs Office      926
Athanor             272
Astrahus            193
Raitaru             106
Ansiblex Jump Gate   46
Fortizar             29
Tatara                9
Tenebrex Cyno Jammer  6
'Marginis' Fortizar   1
'Horizon' Fortizar    1

I went to the individual named list for those.  A couple of unreplaceable legacy station Fortizars on that list.

Then I was sort of interested in where things were being blown up.  We get the regional summary in the MER, but which systems were the most dangerous in December?  Here are the top 20 for total hull losses.

Jita         10,597 
Deepari       8,615 
Tama          6,758 
Aldranette    6,435 
Ahbazon       5,512 
Kourmonen     5,302 
Miroitem      4,868 
4-HWWF        4,607 
Sujarento     4,371 
Nagamanen     4,184 
F-NMX6        3,987 
Oicx          3,863 
Huola         3,661 
J111011       3,272 
Aunenen       3,251 
Hasmijaala    3,244 
Kamela        3,168 
H-PA29        3,104 
Uitra         2,792

I guess Jita is no surprise.  More people hang out there than any other system, and more people mean more kills.  It is also where war dec kill crews hang out, waiting for unwary war targets to undock.

But hull losses are not the only measure, so I pulled out the top 20 system based on value destroyed.

Jita             655,792,417,291 
Tama             299,788,005,609 
H-PA29           261,607,799,598 
Ahbazon          260,759,437,592 
1DQ1-A           229,569,075,143 
4-HWWF           218,299,175,054 
Miroitem         203,325,454,675 
TA3T-3           198,160,439,834 
F-NMX6           188,624,728,769 
Kourmonen        153,194,897,181 
Aunenen          149,169,376,918 
Aldranette       145,006,331,232 
J111011          143,186,537,391 
Sivala           137,777,830,149 
Kinakka          135,049,636,379 
J125101          131,145,192,638 
Egmar            126,026,434,303 
F7C-H0           111,313,563,703 
Misaba           111,206,036,052 
MJ-5F9           108,637,603,996

Jita remained on top, but H-PA29 rose up the ranks.  I was there for that battle back in December.  And coming to 1DQ1-A in Delve is a hazard it seems.

The total of destruction in that data set only adds up to 26.55 trillion ISK, so once again the numbers in the MER data don’t match up.  But it is the only data we’re going to get I suppose.

Anyway, that kept me amused last night, so I thought I would make a blog post about it.  If you are interested in the data you can, of course, find it all in the download data package for the MER.  But I exported the discreet data sets I referenced above into comma separated text files (.txt extension, because WP.com doesn’t like .csv files), so if you want a closer look into that you can find them linked below.

Addendum – I had to move those files to pastebin because WP.com was only letting people access them if they were logged into the domain.

• Kills by Ship Groups
• Kills by Ship Types
• Kills by System
• Kills by Region and System
• Value Destroyed by System

The December EVE Online Monthly Economic Report and How the Holidays Fared in New Eden

We’re into the new year so it is time for a look back at what happened in December in New Eden with the Monthly Economic Report.

EVE Online nerds harder

This time around I am once again going to dive straight into ISK because that is the most interesting section of the MER.

ISK Faucets

October saw CCP relent on the dynamic bounty system, raising the floor on bounty amounts to 100%.  That seemed likely to get more people undocked and shooting rats in null sec… thus providing more targets for wandering gangs… and the November numbers seemed to bear that out.  But now we have another month to look at to see if the draw of improve bounties would hold.

So we’ll start right away with the big Sinks and Faucets chart.

December 2022 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

As usual, for those who cannot read those tiny numbers:

• Commodity – 55 trillion (up 5 trillion)
• Bounty Prizes – 35 trillion (up 1.1 trillion)
• ESS Bounty Payouts – 16.1 trillion (down 1.2 trillion)
• Incursion Payouts – 11.3 trillion (up 0.2 trillion)
• Trig Invasion Payouts – 8.2 trillion (down 7.2 trillion)
• Agent Mission Rewards 3.2 trillion (down 0.3 trillion)

Perhaps surprisingly to some, commodities are still up at the top of the list.  Null sec ratting, while up a bit, was about on par with November, so it seems like the number of people drawn to the higher payouts is somewhat consistent.  (I was responsible for about 500 million of those bounties in December.)  ESS payouts were down a bit, but that may be due to the fact that, with the change to bounties, CCP initially put the floor at 110% as a draw, then dropped it down to 100%.  Maybe?

So, bounties and ESS payouts combined added up to 51.1 trillion ISK on the big chart.

When it comes to the regional data, the number is only 45.72 trillion ISK, up just a bit from the 44.8 trillion recorded in November.  That number is supposed to be combined bounties and ESS payouts, but there are always discrepancies between the different data sources.

The top ten regions for bounties were:

1. Vale of the Silent – 4.98 trillion (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 3.12 trillion (Imperium)
3. Perrigen Falls – 3.11 trillion (PanFam)
4. Fountain – 2.49 trillion (Imperium)
5. Querious – 2.16 trillion (Imperium)
6. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.15 trillion (PanFam)
7. Tribute – 1.78 trillion (Fraternity)
8. Malpais – 1.29 trillion (PanFam)
9. Branch – 1.19 trillion (Fraternity)
10. Tenerifis – 1.16 trillion (FI.RE)

Those ten add up to almost 21 of the 45.72 trillion ISK collected in December.

That is NPC bounties, and what seems to be the new normal for them for now.  On to commodities, which remained the largest faucet and which saw something of a jump in December.

December 2022 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

You can see that commodities, the blue line, were up quite a bit after a decline. (You can also see where the nerf to Trig invasions occurred with the yellow line, but that is another story.)  And it was one type in particular.

December 2022 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

Here are the totals for each of those lines for the month of December and how much they changed compared to November:

• Sleeper Components – 20.35 trillion (down 1.09 trillion)
• Overseer Personal Effects – 19.26 trillion (up 9.79 trillion)
• Bounty Encrypted Bonds – 6.94 trillion (down 0.61 trillion)
• Triglavian Data – 5.05 trillion (down 1.05 trillion)
• Rogue Drone Analysis Data – 2.24 trillion (up .03 trillion)
• Miscellaneous – 645 billion (down 2.23 trillion)

Those all add up to about 54.5 trillion of the 55 trillion recorded.

You can’t take small changes to seriously.  All of these are a tally of drops people have turned in, and sometimes they sit on them for a while before doing so.  But drastic changes, those generally mean something.

As it turns out, as with last year, Overseer Personal Effects were a drop in the Winter Nexus sites.  Generally something you get as a drop from incursions, they almost doubled in pay outs due to the holiday event.

Miscellaneous, on the other hand… I really don’t know why that fell off almost 78%.

And with all of that… the money supply fell off in New Eden across the month of December.

December 2022 – Money Supply

We can see a little more detail from the ISK balance statement.

December 2022 ISK balance

Once again, the starting number doesn’t match last month’s ending number.  But the total of faucets for December were actually almost three trillion ISK from November while sinks were about a half a trillion higher.

But the active ISK delta, which counts ISK coming and going from the the economy due to GM confiscations or accounts going dormant is hugely off.  In November the active ISK delta was +74.5 trillion as people came back to the game for the expansion and the offer of seven days free Omega time.  People who didn’t stay faded quickly and now those accounts are on the other side of the balance sheet.

So December saw a drop in total ISK in the economy.

Trade

In December on of the key indicators of trade activity, the velocity of ISK, actually went up.

December 2022 – Velocity of ISK

That probably isn’t surprising in a month where the total ISK in the economy went down.  The same volume of trade would see the velocity go up is the ISK total went down.  And how did trade do overall?

The regional stats show that trade rang in at 696.19 trillion, up from 683 trillion in November.  More trade, less ISK, greater ISK velocity.  It is nice when the number support the theory.

As for where trade was going on, the region stats show the usual suspects on the list.

1. The Forge – 504.88 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 44.86 trillion (Amarr)
3. Lonetrek – 20.71 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
4. Delve – 17.89 trillion (Imperium)
5. Sinq Laison – 16.7 trillion (Dodixie)
6. Perrigen Falls – 14.22 (PanFam)
7. Metropolis – 12.85 trillion (Hek)
8. Heimatar – 8.61 trillion (Rens)
9. Vale of the Silent – 5.9 trillion (Fraternity)
10. The Citadel – 5.22 trillion (Caldari High Sec)

Everybody comes to Jita, with it and Perimeter making up more than 70% of the trade value in New Eden in December.

Production

Industry is the engine of the economy, the thing that provides most of the hulls and modules that player use and lose every day.

December 2022 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

The red production line is down in December, and the data that drives that chart indicates that total production rang in at 102.98 trillion ISK in value, down from 138 trillion ISK in November.

But the regional data tells a different story, adding up to a total of Total 152.94 trillion in ISK value produced, up from 138.28 trillion in November.

That is quite a gap.  Production was either down almost 36 trillion ISK in December or up about 15 trillion ISK.  I am use to different data sets diverging, even having wide gaps in values, but having one set go down while the other goes up by that much… I don’t know which side to believe.

As for where things were produced, the region data gives the following as the top ten:

1. The Forge – 24.44 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 17.04 trillion (Imperium)
3. Vale of the Silent – 15.36 trillion (Fraternity)
4. Lonetrek – 7.72 trillion (High Sec)
5. The Citadel – 7.10 trillion (High Sec)
6. Heimatar – 6.87 trillion (High Sec)
7. Cloud Ring – 5.66 trillion (Imperium)
8. Fountain – 5.64 trillion (Imperium)
9. Tribute – 5.60 trillion (Fraternity)
10. Perrigen Falls – 5.06 trillion (PanFam)

Those numbers are all steady or up for December, coming from the regional stats.  It does feel like something is very much amiss between these two sets of data.

Destruction

Meanwhile, the data from that chart above shows destruction was at 36.92 trillion ISK, up from 31.96 trillion ISK in November.  This closely tracks the regional data, which pegged destruction at 38.8 trillion ISK, up from the 32.01 trillion reported in November.

So those two data sets seem in alignment.

The top ten regions for destruction were:

1. The Forge – 2.32 trillion (High Sec)
2. The Citadel – 2.08 trillion (High Sec)
3. Lonetrek – 1,69 trillion (High Sec)
4. Delve – 1.66 trillion (Imperium)
5. Sinq Laison – 1.41 trillion (High Sec)
6. Vale of the Silent – 1.38 trillion (Fraternity)
7. Placid – 1.34 trillion (Low Sec)
8. Domain – 1.10 trillion (High Sec)
9. Black Rise – 1.07 trillion (Low Sec)
10. Pochven – 989 billion (Triglavian)

The biggest change there is Pochven, which had been riding in the top half of the list for a while.  But since it was nerfed a bit as an income source, only the more dedicated triangle heads are hanging out and blowing each other up.

For where things are happening overall, we have the break out of the security band chart above.

December 2022 – Destruction by Security Band

While null sec is still the largest area of destruction, low sec continues to rise.

Mining

Then there is resource gathering, which is still having an inflationary impact on the economy according to the mineral price index as it continues its climb to challenge the previous all time high recorded during CCP’s economic starvation phase.

December 2022 – Economic Indices

While CCP has attempted to ease that by creating new ore, the price of Isogen and Nocxium still remain high, pushing up the price of just about everything, all the way down to T1 frigate hulls.

Once again, we have some discrepancy between data sets, though this might be more explicable.  The data from the prosecution/destruction/mined chart above indicates that the value of all things mined in December was 29.94 trillion ISK, up from 23.97 trillion in November.

However, the regional stats show a downturn in mining, hitting just 17.51 trillion ISK in value, down from 20.25 trillion recorded in November.  The first set of stats does at least include wormhole space, while the regional data doesn’t, so it should be larger.  Whether the gap should be that big and whether one should be trending up while the other down… once more, I do not know the answer to that one.

As for where mining happened, the regional data shows these as the top ten areas:

1. Delve – 1.05 trillion (Imperium)
2. Vale of the Silent 949 billion (Fraternity)
3. The Forge – 855 billion (High Sec)
4. The Kalevala Expanse – 795 billion (PanFam)
5. Metropolis – 670 billion (High Sec)
6. Lonetrek – 670 billion (High Sec)
7. Perrigen Falls – 654 billion (PanFam)
8. Domain – 607 billion (High Sec)
9. Sinq Laison – 567 billion (High Sec)
10. Malpais – 516 billion (PanFam)

High sec remains in the mix, but null sec is back at the top of the list.  I do wonder how much of that is happening in systems with blue stars, where the new ore spawns.

Loyalty Points

Finally, I just like to track loyalty points.  Loyalty points are earned by running missions for various factions.  In high sec there are a wide range of different corporations that you can run missions for.  Out in NPC null sec, and pockets of sov null, there are some very specific factions you earn loyalty points with that offer ship BPCs and implants as rewards.

The top ten regions for them were:

1. Venal – 1,363,505,939 (NPC Null – Gurristas)
2. Metropolis – 1,245,354,804 (High Sec)
3. Placid – 964,350,323 (Low Sec)
4. Lonetrek – 928,507,865 (High Sec)
5. Delve – 480,195,793 (Sov Null – Blood Raiders)
6. Stain – 456,100,603 (NPC Null – Sansha)
7. Curse – 333,542,273 (NPC Null – Angel Cartel)
8. Molden Heath – 325,317,103 (Low Sec)
9. Essence – 309,681,426 (High Sec)
10. Pure Blind – 305,661,070 (Sov Null – SOE and Mordu’s Legion)

Total LP earned was 9,122,942,360, down from 9,654,442,272 in November.  People were probably running the lucrative Winter Nexus event sites instead.

Related:

• CCP – December 2022 Monthly Economic Report
• CCP – December 2022 MER Forum Thread
• Reddit – December 2022 MER thread
• TAGN – Last month’s MER Post

The November EVE Online Monthly Economic Report Featuring Uprising and Free Omega Time

We got the November Monthly Economic Report for EVE Online on Friday, and it is an interesting one as it covers the scope of both the Uprising expansion that landed in November, but also some of the additional things CCP has done promote the expansion, such as giving out 7 days of free Omega time and changing up how referrals work.

EVE Online nerds harder

And because I can’t wait to get to the big topic this time around, I am going to break with my usual order once more and go straight to ISK faucets.

ISK Faucets

What happens when you have a big expansion that brings people back and some free Omega time and when you are suddenly allowed to retroactively recruit your own accounts to collect the bonuses and you hand out skill points like candy as part of login rewards?

Well, first off, a lot more people log into to game.  We have seen a very obvious increase in players in New Eden.  After the long down stretch that came after the price increase, when the peak concurrent player count struggled to close in on 25K characters we suddenly saw days where the game peaked past the 30K mark.

And with all those accounts, some of which were previously dormant, suddenly counted as active again, the money supply goes up.

November 2022 – Money Supply

How do I know that isn’t, for example, null sec running amok because CCP fixed NPC bounties to get more people out ratting?

Well, the fact that corporation ISK holdings didn’t go up is a pretty good sign.  But I like this sign better because it is more obvious.

November 2022 ISK balance

Yes, more ISK came into the game from faucets, up from the 114 trillion ISK in October, but the key item here is the Active ISK Delta.  That number has been negative for so many months in a row that I cannot recall the last time it was a positive value.

Active ISK Delta is ISK being removed from the economy either by players being inactive or through GM action.  But in November so many people came back to the game that the ISK accounts of those returning players swamped whatever GMs took out of the game and swelled the total active ISK by almost 75 trillion.

For October, as an example, the Active ISK Delta was -50 trillion ISK.

(Also, the end value for last month doesn’t line up with the start value for this month… again.. but what is a couple trillion ISK between friends I guess?)

So 211 trillion ISK arrived or went active in the New Eden economy in November.  I’ll go over the faucets first, then when we get to Trade we’ll have a peek at what all that ISK was up to.

November 2022 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

As usual, for those who cannot read those tiny numbers:

• Commodity – 50 trillion (up 3.1 trillion)
• Bounty Prizes – 33.9 trillion (up 10.4 trillion)
• ESS Bounty Payouts – 17.3 trillion (up 6.9 trillion)
• Trig Invasion Payouts – 15.4 trillion (up 0.7 trillion)
• Incursion Payouts – 11.1 trillion (up 0.4 trillion)
• Agent Mission Rewards 3.5 trillion (up 0.3 trillion)

Everything was up.  Commodities remained the single biggest category, but since Bounty Prizes and ESS Payouts are linked activities in null sec, and those two together add up to 51.2 trillion ISK, it looks like ratting is back in business.  The changes to the dynamic bounty system had a tangible impact.  More people were back and earning ISK, but ratting looks like it was up well beyond that.

You can see it on the faucets over time chart.

November 2022 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

That is a pretty obvious spike for that dark blue line.  Total NPC bounty and ESS payouts combined to a total of… well, the big chart says 51.2 trillion ISK, but the regional data says it is 44.8 trillion ISK, up from 31.8 trillion in October.  But the charts never quite line up.  They didn’t last month and they probably won’t next month.

According to the regional data, here are the top ten regions for NPC bounties:

1. Vale of the Silent – 5.71 trillion (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 3.28 trillion (Imperium)
3. Perrigen Falls – 3.14 trillion (PanFam)
4. Fountain – 2.54 trillion (Imperium)
5. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.11 trillion (PanFam)
6. Querious – 2.07 trillion (Imperium)
7. Tribute – 1.71 trillion (Fraternity)
8. Malpais – 1.36 trillion (PanFam)
9. Period Basis – 1.31 trillion (Imperium)
10. Deklein – 1.18 trillion (Fraternity)

Look at that, three of the big power blocks in null sec, Fraternity, PanFam, and the Imperium, all look to be bulking up their ISK wallets, no doubt with an eye towards future conflicts.

Not that commodities were completely slacking off.  They were a close second, with the following in the running.

November 2022 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

The data for that chart shows the following breakout totals for November:

1. Sleeper Components 21.44 trillion
2. Overseer Personal Effects 9.47 trillion
3. Triglavian Data 6.10 trillion
4. Bounty Encrypted Bonds 7.55 trillion
5. Miscellaneous 2.87 trillion
6. Rogue Drone Analysis Data 2.21 trillion

That totals up to 49 trillion and change, or pretty much all of the 50 trillion declared on the main faucets chart.

Trade

This is very much related to CCP turning on the ISK tap though bounties and newly active accounts.  If things aren’t fun and active, dumping 114 trillion ISK into the economy could really flatten out something like the velocity of ISK.  The more ISK in the system, the more that needs to change hands in order for velocity to remain constant.  So what does that chart say?

November 2022 – Velocity of ISK

Hey, velocity actually went up, and not just for PLEX related transactions.  You can see that red line, which is sans PLEX and contracts, took a jump on its own.  Not as big as the PLEX jump, but the market was clearly more active in the presence of more ISK.  Imagine that.

According to the regional stats, trade in November totaled 683 trillion ISK, way up from the 559 trillion ISK reported in October.  People were out there in the market buying and selling.  The top regions for trade in November were:

1. The Forge – 506 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 42.54 trillion (Amarr)
3. Lonetrek – 20.44 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
4. Delve – 18.29 trillion (Imperium)
5. Sinq Laison – 15.53 trillion (Dodixie)
6. Perrigen Falls – 11.81 trillion (PanFam)
7. Metropolis – 11.13 trillion (Hek)
8. Heimatar – 8.84 trillion (Rens)
9. Vale of the Silent – 5.66 trillion (Fraternity)
10. Essence – 4.49 trillion (Gallente High Sec)

Nearly 3 in every 4 ISK exchanged did so in The Forge, home of Jita and the Tranquility Trading Tower in Perimeter.

Surprisingly, all that ISK did not cause the price of PLEX to go up in November… or, at least it didn’t spike like it did during that sale in September.

Production

Related via demand is production.

November 2022 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

That red line shows production going up as the month carried on.  The data for that chart shows that 94.53 trillion in ISK value was produced in November, up from 82.14 trillion in October.

The regional stats but the number at 138.28 trillion in ISK value produced, up from 113.93 trillion in October.  So up either way.

The top ten producing regions were:

1. The Forge – 24.62 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 14.85 trillion (Imperium)
3. Vale of the Silent – 13.76 trillion (Fraternity)
4. Lonetrek – 7.4 trillion (High Sec)
5. Heimatar – 6.14 trillion (High Sec)
6. The Citadel – 6.1 trillion (High Sec)
7. Cloud Ring – 4.88 trillion (BL0B and Shadow Ultimatum)
8. Fountain – 4.51 trillion (Imperium)
9. Perrigen Falls – 4.15 trillion (PanFam)
10. Tribute – 3.83 trillion (Fraternity)

Again, feeding Jita kept production in the three adjacent regions going.  I will have to change the identifier for Cloud Ring if it makes the list in December as Shadow Ultimatum has joined the Imperium as a candidate alliance.

Mining

As with the previous categories, mining was up as well.  The produced, mined, destroyed graph data puts mining value at 23.97 trillion, up from 19.32 trillion in October.

The regional stats put the numbers at 20.25 trillion ISK in value, up from 16.48 trillion in October.  The top regions were:

1. Vale of the Silent – 979 billion (Fraternity)
2. The Kalevala Expanse – 950 billion (PanFam)
3. Delve – 929 billion (Imperium)
4. The Forge – 769 billion (High Sec)
5. Metropolis – 758 billion (High Sec)
6. Domain – 743 billion (High Sec)
7. Malpais – 708 billion (PanFam)
8. Perrigen Falls – 698 billion (PanFam)
9. Lonetrek – 680 billion (High Sec)
10. Sinq Laison – 640 billion (High Sec)

With all that mining though, the price of minerals continues to climb.

November 2022 – Economic Indices

The mineral price index continued its ascent, climbing ever closer to a new all-time high.

This is reported to largely be due to a shortfall in minerals that are restricted to low sec asteroids, and isogen in particular.  Just a year ago isogen was going for around 100 ISK per unit, now it is past the 500 ISK per unit mark.

Apparently that is insufficient financial incentive to go mine in low sec.  If you go alone or in a small group you’ll get blown up for sure, and if you go in large group… Snuffed Out will drop on you with the same result.

November 2022 – Mining by Security Band

So while low sec’s percentage of the mining effort has grown, it still isn’t enough to meet the demands of New Eden.

In response to this, CCP has announced that a new mechanic is coming to help alleviate the mineral shortfall and keep us from having to go get blown up constantly in low sec.  We shall see how this plays out.  It does also reduce moon mining output, which might make T2 moon goo more expensive eventually… but people have now been piling that up for a year, so there are stockpiles to burn through before we get there.

Addendum: Some further details on this plan.

Destruction

All of that economic stuff is great, but unless it enables us to blow stuff up, what good is it?

Fortunately, more people and more money seemed to also lead to at least slightly more ships blowing up.  The produced, mined, destroyed chart data showed 31.96 trillion ISK in destruction, up from 30 trillion in October.

The regional data also showed a mild rise, totalling to 32.01 trillion ISK in value, up slightly from 30.99 trillion ISK in October.  The top regions for destruction were:

1. The Forge – 2.06 trillion (High Sec)
2. Pochven – 1.61 trillion (Triglavian)
3. Delve – 1.4 trillion (Imperium)
4. Lonetrek – 1.4 trillion (High Sec)
5. The Citadel 1.4 trillion (High Sec)
6. Vale of the Silent – 1.31 trillion (Fraternity)
7. Pure Blind – 1.16 trillion (Brave/V0LTA)
8. Sinq Laison – 1.02 trillion (High Sec)
9. Placid – 1 trillion (Low Sec)
10. Metropolis – 964 billion (High Sec)

Meanwhile, the security band chart shows

November 2022 – Destruction by Security Band

I would have expected a bit more of an increase in the low sec band given the expansion was largely focused on faction warfare.  But maybe my very limited experience with FW has me believing it is all about blowing things up.

Loyalty Points

Finally, from the regional stats, another look at loyalty point earning.

A total of 9,654,442,272 loyalty points were earned in November, up a bit from the 9,473,307,417 collected in October.

The key regions were:

1. Venal – 1,647,891,942 (NPC Null – Gurristas)
2. Metropolis – 1,370,026,564 (High Sec)
3. Lonetrek – 939,247,128 (High Sec)
4. Placid – 928,298,329 (Low Sec)
5. Stain – 525,324,197 (NPC Null – Sansha)
6. Delve – 452,003,840 (Sov Null – Blood Raiders)
7. Aridia – 327,702,373 (Low Sec)
8. Pure Blind – 313,659,207 (Sov Null – SOE and Mordu’s Legion)
9. Curse – 309,520,447 (NPC Null – Angel Cartel)
10. The Forge – 278,744,569 (High Sec)

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, Venal is a key location for loyalty point missions.

And so it goes for another month.  December is now upon us, and it is traditionally a busy time in New Eden.  We shall see how that looks once we get to the cold opening of 2023.

Related

• CCP – November 2022 Monthly Economic Report
• CCP – November 2022 MER Forum Thread
• Reddit – November 2022 MER thread
• TAGN – Last month’s MER Post

The October EVE Online Monthly Economic Report as the Uprising Expansion Looms

The Uprising expansion launches tomorrow, CCP’s attempt to generate enthusiasm in its diminishing user base by bringing back a huge content drop.  The word is that the patch notes are already 15 pages long and still growing.  We’ll see that when it drops.  There will be a lot to digest.

But before that we have the Monthly Economic Report for October 2022, which will be a nice benchmark for the state of the game before the expansion.  Yes, I know, I somehow find a way to declare almost every report a benchmark to measure something, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true!

EVE Online nerds harder

So let’s just dive in and look at some numbers.

Production

Going down the list of the usual first three, I’ll bring out the first chart about production, destruction, and mining.

October 2022 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

The chart shows a bit of a rise to about mid month, the a bit of a drop off. (Also, I think the legend did not get updated. It says September at the bottom, but comparing it with last month’s chart, and looking at the data, it is clearly October.)

Over all the chart data shows a total of 82.14 trillion in ISK value produced, up from 77.35 trillion in September.

The regional stats show a similar rise, ringing in at 113.93 trillion in ISK value produced, up from 108.58 trillion in September.  The usual suspects are in the top ten regions:

1. The Forge – 18.26 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 13.44 trillion (Imperium)
3. Vale of the Silent 13.16 trillion (Fraternity)
4. Lonetrek – 7.72 trillion (High Sec)
5. The Citadel – 4.45 trillion (High Sec)
6. Cloud Ring – 4.08 trillion (BL0B and Shadow Ultimatum)
7. Heimatar – 3.89 trillion (High Sec)
8. Tribute – 3.07 trillion (Fraternity)
9. Sinq Laison – 3.03 trillion (High Sec)
10. Perrigen Falls – 2.97 trillion (PanFam)

Well, I am not sure Cloud Ring fits that description, but it was on the list last month as well, so something is going on there.

October 2022 – Production by Security Band

The production by security band chart shows null sec’s share of the production pie rising as the month closed out.

Destruction

The value of ships being destroyed in game also went up some in October, which is always a positive sign for the game.  The data for the first chart in this post show 30 trillion ISK in ships, up from 28.21 trillion in September.  Not a huge boost, but it is something.

The regional data also shows a rise, registering 30.99 trillion in ISK value destroyed, up from 27.49 trillion in September.  The top ten regions for destruction… again, if you’re paying attention you probably know half the list by now:

1. The Forge – 2.25 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 1.72 trillion (Imperium)
3. Pochven – 1.65 trillion (Triglavian)
4. The Citadel – 1.51 trillion (High Sec)
5. Metropolis – 1.47 trillion (High Sec)
6. Lonetrek – 1.37 trillion (High Sec)
7. Pure Blind – 1.15 trillion (Brave/V0LTA)
8. Vale of the Silent – 1.09 trillion
9. Sinq Laison – 1.06 trillion (High Sec)
10. Genesis – 907 billion (High Sec)

More interesting is the break out by security band.

October 2022 – Destruction by Security Band

That seems to show low sec grabbing a larger percentage of total destruction.  Is that being fueled by the pre-expansion events in Faction Warfare?

Trade

Last month trade got is own post.  The whole Omega PLEX thing.  This month it is back to its usual place.  The velocity of ISK chart shows the effects of that sale in the upward notch in September, which you can see is not reflected on the red line, which excludes PLEX related transaction.

October 2022 – Velocity of ISK

Still, the velocity started to rise again as this month ended.  Trade itself stayed almost level in October, with 559 trillion ISK in transactions being recorded, down slightly from the 560 trillion in September and the big PLEX sale.  That is also some good news for the game.  The market is the life blood of the game and the velocity of ISK is akin to its pulse, which has been slowing down for quite a while now.

The top regions for trade were… the usual trade hubs and some key null sec regions:

1. The Forge – 411 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 37.34 trillion (Amarr)
3. Lonetrek – 17.3 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
4. Delve – 16.61 trillion (Imperium)
5. Sinq Laison – 12.92 trillion (Dodixie)
6. Metropolis – 8.8 trillion (Hek)
7. Perrigen Falls – 8.29 trillion (PanFam)
8. Heimatar – 6.71 trillion (Rens)
9. Vale of the Silent – 4.7 trillion (Fraternity)
10. The Citadel – 3.85 trillion (Caldari High Sec)

ISK Faucets

We had some news about NPC bounties in October, with CCP finally relenting a bit on the dynamic bounty system.  The set the floor amount to 100% and actually cycled the system that were stuck down at 50% to that level by the next day.  That was less than a week before the end of the month, but you can clearly see its impact on the sinks and faucets over time chart.

October 2022 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

That likely means that more people were out ratting, which means more targets for hunters which feeds destruction and so on.  Perhaps CCP finally got the memo that incentivizing people to undock drives content.

That chart also shows commodities booming as well, but we’ll get to all of that in a bit.  First the top faucet totals from the big chart.

October 2022 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

The totals on that teeny tiny chart are:

• Commodity – 45.3 46.9 trillion (up 1.6 trillion)
• Bounty Prizes – 23.5 trillion (up 3.8 trillion)
• Trig Invasion Payouts – 14.7 trillion (up 1.4 trillion)
• Incursion Payouts – 10.7 trillion (down 2 trillion)
• ESS Bounty Payouts – 10.4 trillion (up 1.6 trillion)
• Agent Mission Rewards 3.2 trillion (up 0.2 trillion)

So things were up, save for Sansha incursions, which were down 2 trillion ISK.  People found better things to do or there were not as many handy incursions in October I suppose.  But more ISK earning means more people out doing those things.  Even agent mission rewards were up.

The in game ISK balance saw about 7 trillion more ISK come into the game when compared to last month.  But about the same amount came out of the game due to other factors.

October 2022 ISK balance

The problem is, that top number, 1,525.7, is 2.6 trillion ISK higher than the end of month number for September.  That isn’t a huge margin of error, but I remember Gevlon building a conspiracy theory about CCP manipulating the economy because of a similar discrepancy back in the day.

Still, if we take those numbers above as the correct set, people made more ISK but sinks and GMs pulled as much out, so we had a rare decline in the total ISK.

October 2022 – Money Supply

On the regional data, the top ten regions for NPC bounties were:

1. Vale of the Silent- 3 trillion (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 2.31 trillion (Imperium)
3. Perrigen Falls – 1.93 trillion (PanFam)
4. Fountain – 1.57 trillion (Imperium)
5. Querious – 1.42 trillion (Imperium)
6. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.23 trillion (PanFam)
7. Tribute – 1 trillion (Fraternity)
8. Metropolis – 980 billion (High Sec)
9. Malpais – 975 billion (PanFam)
10. Pure Blind – 911 billion (Brave/V0LTA)

Those are all up over last month, with the NPC bounty totals in the regional stats data coming in at 31.8 trillion ISK (bounties and ESS payouts), up from 27.09 trillion in September.  Signs are that the NPC bounty numbers will be up considerably in November.

Speaking of ESS payouts, there is the chart for that.

October 2022 – ESS Regional Stats

The big numbers at the top:

• Main Bank Thefts – 404.1 billion (up 42.6 billion)
• Reserve Bank Thefts – 8.76 trillion (up 1.04 trillion)
• Total Amount in Reserve Banks – 41 trillion (down 4 trillion)

The systems being milked in the reserve bank data shows that PanFam has learned from Fraternity and has begun draining the reserve banks in the systems they hold.  Still, there were some actual big reserve bank thefts in October compared to last month’s chart, which was almost entirely milking efforts.

October 2022 – Reserve Bank “Thefts”

And then there are commodities.  CCP Estimate has given us some additional data on that front, though we’ll start with the usual commodities over time chart.

October 2022 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

This chart actually got a bit of a revamp, which did not make it easier to read, and the data for it isn’t broken up into nice columns like the region data of the produced/destroyed/mined chart, so pulling the raw data is a bit of a chore.  I had to make a real Excel formula with SUMIF.  I am surprised I remembered how to do it. (I’m just a project manager these day, so when I do more that just SUM it is an event.)

So from that data, the totals for the month were:

1. Sleeper Components – 20.86 trillion
2. Bounty Encrypted Bonds – 9.04 trillion
3. Overseer Personal Effects – 7.52 trillion
4. Triglavian Data – 5.39 trillion

That gives us 42 of the 45 trillion ISK in commodity faucets for October.

The bounty encrypted bonds are those redeemed at the NPC stations, which is distinct from the ESS robberies noted above.  Like all commodities, you have to get them back to the right NPC station to cash them in and a fair amount get blown up or sit around in somebody’s hangar.  I personally have about 50 million in bounty encrypted bonds sitting around in the Keepstar in 1DQ1-A.

Now I am going to have to track that break-out every month I suppose.  I’ll save the formula for later.

Finally, we have a new chart about Abyssal Deadspace, where people run those filaments and the value of the loot obtained this month.

October 2022 – Abyssal Deadspace Data

That puts the market value of all of the loot from Abyssal Deadspace runs in October at 21.4 trillion ISK, though only the Triglavian Data represents an ISK faucet into the game.

As for why the number on that chart shows 9.1 trillion ISK in Triglavian Data commodities looted but the faucet chart only shows 5.39 trillion ISK paid out… well, as with the bonds I mentioned, you have to bring them to the right NPC station to get your payout.  Some are no doubt sitting in hangars, others were possibly lost on the way to be turned in, the stations being in low sec.

But the chart also shows why CCP is making changes to where you can run Abyssal Filaments.  You won’t be able to run those high level filaments… or any filaments… in 1.0 or 0.9 systems after the update tomorrow.

Mining

I am going to keep mining short because it I find writing about it as dull as doing it these days.  Mineral prices have continued to climb.

October 2022 – Economic Indices

According to Angry Mustache in the Reddit thread about the MER, this is being driven by demand for Isogen, Nocxium, and Pyerite.  A shortage of those minerals is driving up production prices.  At some point CCP will notice and perhaps open the spigot a little wider on those items.

The regional data showed a total 16.48 trillion in ISK value mined, a pretty big bump from the 12.07 trillion in September.  The top ten regions were:

1. Vale of the Silent – 729 billion (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 713 billion (Imperium)
3. The Forge – 705 billion (High Sec)
4. Metropolis – 624 billion (High Sec)
5. Lonetrek – 619 billion (High Sec)
6. Domain – 608 billion (High Sec)
7. Malpais – 532 billion (PanFam)
8. Sinq Laison – 523 billion (High Sec)
9. The Kalevala Expanse – 523 billion (PanFam)
10. Insmother – 480 billion (FI.RE)

The mining spread by security band was:

October 2022 – Mining by Security Band

I am also giving up on posting the moon mining numbers monthly.  They were useful as an illustration of how little value there is in moon mining for a few months, but I think I made my point there.

Wormhole Movements

CCP Estimate gave us a brand new chart about wormhole imports and exports, which fits in a with a couple sections because blue loot, Sleeper Components, and mined gas are part of the mix.

October 2022 – Wormhole Imports and Exports

Angry Mustache has an evaluation of what this means in the Reddit thread discussing the MER, which I had linked at the end of the post.

Loyalty Points

Finally, the regional data has a new column that charts Loyalty Points (LPs) being earned in game.  Another big cheer for CCP Estimate.  LPs are what you earn from factions by running missions or doing other tasks for them.  They can be used to buy things from the special stores that each faction runs, though there is also a complex LPs bartering market in the game which is hard to explain, but it apparently works.

Anyway, a total of 9,473,307,417 LPs were earned in October, with the top regions for earning them being:

1. Venal – 1,664,921,825 (Guristas)
2. Metropolis – 1,287,415,762
3. Lonetrek – 987,722,107
4. Placid – 852,496,790
5. Delve – 455,261,152 (Blood Raiders)
6. Stain – 432,730,340
7. Aridia – 316,010,839
8. Molden Heath – 282,717,824
9. Pure Blind – 268,796,170 (Mordu’s Legion / Sisters of EVE)
10. Curse – 259,526,162

I have noted, where I can recall, which specific factions are covered by which regions.

And that is all I have.  Next month we will see the ongoing impact of the dynamic bounty changes plus what sort of effect the Uprising expansion has on the economy.

Related:

• CCP – October 2022 Monthly Economic Report
• CCP – October 2022 MER Forum Thread
• Reddit – October 2022 MER thread
• TAGN – Last month’s MER Post

The September EVE Online Monthly Economic Report and Things Besides PLEX and Trade

I decided to break up my writing about the September EVE Online Monthly Economic Report into two posts because yesterday I was very much carried away with trade and the impact the Omega PLEX sale had on it.  So this post will cover the other four categories I touch on every month.

EVE Online nerds harder

And so off we go.

Production

Production looked flat on the big Production, Destruction, and Mining chart

September 2022 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

According to the data for that chart, 77.35 trillion in ISK value was produced in September, down a bit when compared to the 79.25 trillion in August.

Likewise, the regional data shows 108.58 trillion in ISK value produced, down from the 113.52 trillion in August.  Yes, as always, these two data sources do not line up, but at least show the same trend, a shallow decline in September.

The top ten regions for production were:

1. The Forge – 18.18 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 12.36 trillion (Imperium)
3. Vale of the Silent – 11.62 trillion
4. Lonetrek – 6.5 trillion (High Sec)
5. Tribute – 4.4 trillion (Fraternity)
6. The Citadel – 4.24 trillion (High Sec)
7. Heimatar – 3.61 trillion (High Sec)
8. Cloud Ring – 3.48 trillion (BL0B and Shadow Ultimatum)
9. Sinq Laison – 3.18 trillion (High Sec)
10. Malpais – 2.9 trillion (PanFam)

And, to further clarify where production takes place, we have a break out of the sub-charts.

September 2022 – Production by Security Band

Null sec and high sec rule the roost there, with small amounts of industry producing in low sec and wormhole space.

Destruction

Destruction in New Eden, when looking at the big Production, Destruction, and Mining chart posted above, was up a bit, at least at mid-month.

The data for that chart says that overall destruction was 28.21 trillion, up somewhat from the 26.57 trillion destroyed in August.  The uptick is good, but it isn’t a huge “Summer is over and people are playing again!” sort of boost.

The regional data, which excludes wormhole and abyssal space, has the following as the top ten regions for destruction:

1. The Forge – 1.81 trillion (High Sec)
2. Pochven – 1.71 trillion (Triglavian)
3. Vale of the Silent – 1.38 trillion (Fraternity)
4. Genesis – 1.3 trillion (High Sec)
5. Lonetrek – 1.27 trillion (High Sec)
6. The Citadel – 1.26 trillion (High Sec)
7. Delve – 1.11 trillion (Imperium)
8. Derelik – 886 billion (High/Low Sec)
9. Pure Blind – 831 billion (Brave & BL0B)
10. Perrigen Falls – 762 billion (Pandemic Horde)

The total for the regional data was 27.49 trillion, up from 26.12 in August, a smaller boost that the overall data.   The break out chart by security band.

September 2022 – Destruction by Security Band

ISK Faucets

Overall the primary ISK faucets into New Eden brought in 107.9 trillion ISK, a little less than the 110 trillion ISK that August saw.  The primary faucets were:

September 2022 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

Those numbers, made legible are:

• Commodity – 45.3 trillion (down 2.8 trillion)
• Bounty Prizes – 19.7 trillion (same as August)
• Trig Invasion Payouts – 13.3 trillion (down 0.4 trillion)
• Incursion Payouts – 12.7 trillion (up 1 trillion)
• ESS Bounty Payouts – 8.8 trillion (up 0.2 trillion)
• Agent Mission Rewards 3.0 trillion (down 0.2 trillion)

Viewed as an overall graph of faucets:

September 2022 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

The lines on that graph show most of the faucets in decline in the back half of the month.  The overall numbers for the month were up as we went into the month, then something happened and all save mission rewards and Trig invasions began to fall off.

I usually don’t mention much about sinks, but you can see on that chart the impact of the PLEX sale I went on about in yesterday’s post, with transaction taxes spiking for a few days, then dropping off sharply as demand for PLEX tapered off.

Commodities led the ISK faucets, as has become the norm.

September 2022 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

Sleeper components, wormhole blue loot, was up, incursion drops were up, and Triglavian data from Abyssals were up, though all followed the general arc of heading down as the month ran out, while bounty encrypted bonds were down almost the whole month.

On the encrypted bonds front we have the chart for that.

September 2022 – ESS Regional Stats

Main bank thefts saw another fall, with a total of 361.5 billion ISK stolen compared to 453 billion in August.  And August was down from July, so that has been a trend.

The reserve banks, which require special keys from low sec sites, were also down some, with 7.72 trillion ISK taken compared to the 8 trillion in August.  And the reserve bank thefts were almost all “milking” jobs, where the owner of the system sovereignty was the one with the key taking the bonds.

September 2022 – Reserve Bank “Thefts”

So commodities were down overall, even though several of the sub-categories saw a slight peak around mid-month.

The big chart said NPC bounties were flat for September, which the regional stats support, showing 27.09 trillion ISK taken in, up a bit from the 26.2 trillion in August.  The top regions were:

1. Vale of the Silent – 1.98 trillion (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 1.68 trillion (Imperium)
3. Fountain – 1.42 trillion (Imperium)
4. Perrigen Falls – 1.36 trillion (PanFam)
5. Querious – 1.33 trillion (Imperium)
6. Malpais – 964 billion (PanFam)
7. The Kalevala Expanse – 896 billion (PanFam)
8. Tribute – 869 billion (Fraternity)
9. Insmother – 809 billion (FI.RE)
10. Metropolis – 809 billion (High Sec)

A high sec region slipping into the top ten is a tad unusual.

Those sinks added up to the 107.9 trillion I mentioned at the top of this section.

September 2022 ISK balance

Sinks were 63.5, which was up a tick from August, while the active ISK delta, which is ISK GMs have confiscated or ISK that CCP has decided to remove from the count do to player inactivity, was 21.1 trillion ISK, less than half of the 49.5 trillion ISK taken out of circulation in August.

Either the player count has stabilized a bit of the security team hasn’t been confiscating as much ill gotten ISK.

September 2022 – Money Supply

So the money supply grew even as faucets slipped a bit.

Mining

Finally, there is mining.  Mineral prices continued their climb back towards their previous peak.

September 2022 – Economic Indices

The climb wasn’t as sharp as recent months, and we’re less than halfway up the climb back to last year’s all time highs, but prices did increase, implying that supply is not keeping up with demand.

The big chart at the top of the post put the value of materials mined at 18.78 trillion ISK, down from 19.45 trillion ISK in August.  Less supply, higher prices I suppose.

The regional stats concurred, showing 12.07 trillion in ISK value harvested, down from 14.28 trillion in August.  The top ten regions for mining value were:

1. Vale of the Silent – 648 billion (Fraternity)
2. The Forge – 525 billion (High Sec)
3. Delve – 505 billion (Imperium)
4. Metropolis – 439 billion (High Sec)
5. Lonetrek – 432 billion (High Sec)
6. Domain – 419 billion (High Sec)
7. Insmother – 390 billion (FI.RE)
8. Fountain – 378 billion (Imperium)
9. Sinq Laison – 372 billion (High Sec)
10. The Kalevala Expanse – 341 billion (PanFam)

Also from the regional stats, moon mining showed a decline, with a total mined of 2.89 billion ISK, down from 3.2 billion ISK in value in August.  The top regions for moon mining:

1. Vale of the Silent – 212 million (Fraternity)
2. Delve – 207 million (Imperium)
3. Domain – 150 million (High Sec)
4. The Citadel – 127 million (High Sec)
5. Insmother – 113 million (FI.RE)
6. Perrigen Falls – 103 million (PanFam)
7. The Kalevala Expanse – 95 million (PanFam)
8. Genesis – 93 million (High Sec)
9. Essence – 89 million (High Sec)
10. Metropolis – 87 million (High Sec)

Again, moon mining barely seems worth the effort, at least in the way it is being measured.  But we need the moon materials to keep those T2 hulls being produced.

As for where mining is happening, the break-out chart by security band shows:

September 2022 – Mining by Security Band

Wormhole space, where gas mining is big, continues to grow.

So it goes.  Until next month.

Related:

• CCP – Monthly Economic Report for September 2022
• CCP – Forum Thread about September MER
• Reddit – Thread about September MER
• TAGN – Last Month’s MER Post
• TAGN – Yesterday’s Post about Trade and PLEX

The September 2022 EVE Online Monthly Economic Report and the Impact of PLEX Sales on Trade

The September Monthly Economic Report for EVE Online arrive last week and, I will admit, it is one I have been waiting for anxiously.

EVE Online nerds harder

While we have been tracking what one my call “the summer of malaise,” where user counts have been down noticeably, September provides us with a peek into PLEX and the related economy thanks to a PLEX sale CCP implemented towards the end of the month.

I had written a post about how the price of PLEX had risen considerably since the subscription price increase was announced back in April, but the end of month/quarter PLEX sale that saw players able to buy 30 days of Omega time for 300 PLEX, a 40% discount from the usual 500 PLEX price point.

The New Eden Store Only

So I am going to depart from the usual format and do a post JUST about trade, followed up with a post about the other items I usually cover tomorrow.  So let’s have at it.

Trade

Trade is usually the topic I write about least.  I bring it up every month as the overall numbers are a bellwether for the overall economy; more economic activity generally means a more active game.

Otherwise it tends to be a quiet section of my posts because there isn’t much else to say most months.  The numbers tend to tell the story.

But with the PLEX sale causing a spike in economic activity, I would expect to be able to see the effect in the economic data.

And, looking at the regional data, there was indeed an increase in trade in September.

560 trillion in ISK value was traded in September.  That is up from the July and August (521 and 534 trillion ISK respectively), but still down from the 572 trillion ISK mark of June.  So September wasn’t an exceptional month when it came to trade.  A year ago, even with World War Bee winding down, the economy saw 607 trillion ISK in value traded.

As usual, this months numbers have some issues.  There was no Trade data in the regional stats for Impass, Oasa, and Paragon Soul.  So the 560 trillion ISK number is likely short of the mark, but not so much as to make a huge difference.  The key locations do not show a big uptick.

1. The Forge – 428.35 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 33.76 trillion (Amarr)
3. Lonetrek – 15.44 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
4. Delve – 12 trillion (Imperium)
5. Sinq Laison – 11.69 trillion (Dodixie)
6. Metropolis – 7.19 trillion (Hek)
7. Perrigen Falls – 6.51 trillion (Pandemic Horde)
8. Heimatar – 5.89 trillion (Rens)
9. The Citadel – 4.35 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
10. Vale of the Silent – 4.16 trillion (Fraternity)

The Forge, home of Jita, where three quarters of market transactions in New Eden occur, saw just a 7% increase in ISK volume in trades.

I posted last week about the effects of the PLEX sale and how somebody had calculated that, during the sale, 44 trillion ISK in PLEX sales occurred, most of it in The Forge.

The results of PLEXageddon weekend

So why do we see less than a 30 trillion ISK increase in overall trade when compared to August?

Well, leaving out the missing regions, the 44 trillion is the total of the PLEX, but does not mention what the normal trading rate might have been.  We can only expect to see an increase in the form of trades in excess of the norm, which might very well be less than 30 trillion ISK in value.

So where in the MER can we see the impact of this PLEX sale?  The velocity of ISK chart.

I tend to be a bit dismissive of that chart because it depends on how much ISK is counted as “in the game,” a value that CCP controls.  It isn’t that I think CCP is hiding anything with their control… in fact, there is an argument to be made that login rewards actually suppress the velocity of ISK measure due to incentivizing people to log in even when they are not playing… it just doesn’t “feel” solid.  But this time around it does reflect the event we’re looking at.

September 2022 – Velocity of ISK

Thanks to the expansion of this chart to include lines without contracts and PLEX and without contracts, we can see where the impact was.

The bottom line, which excludes PLEX and contract actually has a minor downward slope, indicating that trading on the market actually decreased during September.

On the other hand, the middle, or blue line, which includes PLEX but not contracts, not only has an upward slope, if jumps up noticeably.  In fact, I want to zoom in on just the section of those top two lines from about February to September.

Velocity of ISK Zoom

We can agree that September 23rd, the beginning of the PLEX for Omega time sale, is that first big spike on the right end of the lines.  It shoots up, then dips a bit as PLEX prices jump up past the 6 million ISK mark, before starting to rise again as more PLEX shows up on the market as those who had been holding it begin to cash out during the all time high price period.

The interesting part is that the line stays up in its spike even after the sale.  That is not because people took their new found ISK and spent it elsewhere on the market, because the line without PLEX goes up a little bit, but not much.

Zoom of market only velocity

The contracts line goes up a bit more than the PLEX without contracts line, so maybe some people bought a few more fancy fit doctrine ships off of alliance contracts.  But it feels like the PLEX for Omega sale stimulated the market for PLEX related items, but had little impact on the overall market sales without PLEX, which actually declined.

The main dark lines on the charts are just averages over time, and you can see the light colored lines on the chart, which indicate the range of daily fluctuations that make up the data from which the average is drawn.

If I make my own chart from the daily average data, which is provided in a .csv file as part of the MER, the lines look like this.

Sep 2022 – Daily ISK Velocity Charted

The blue line is with PLEX, the orange line with “without accessories,” which I  assume means PLEX and contracts.

In using the numbers from that files, the velocity of ISK on the peak day of the PLEX deal, September 23rd, about 924 trillion ISK in value was traded in New Eden, of which 627 trillion was PLEX or contract related, leaving only 297 trillion in ISK value traded on the open market.

For the month of September, the average amount of trade done daily in New Eden was about 524 trillion ISK in value, of which only 239 trillion ISK worth was on the open market.

I will stipulate that September was an unusual month, with that PLEX sale making it so.  The last big spike in PLEX sales, back on April 22, 2022, when CCP announced the subscription and PLEX price increases, saw 785 trillion ISK in trade, with 500 trillion of it being PLEX related.

That day pushed the velocity of ISK to 0.545, which is shy of the 0.611 velocity that September 23rd saw.

Just to stretch this to its limit, the highest day recorded for ISK velocity (records go back to January 1, 2017) was October 24, 2017 when 1.276 quadrillion ISK was traded, 117.69% of the ISK in game (velocity of 1.1769), of which only 455 trillion ISK was PLEX or contract related.

All of which sums up to a few points I have otherwise beaten into the ground with this:

• PLEX is a big part of the New Eden economy, one that is neither sink nor faucet save in transaction fees.
• PLEX is growing in proportion to the rest of the economy.
• CCP can have an impact on the economy when they mess around with the value of PLEX in the eyes of the players.

Related:

• CCP – Monthly Economic Report for September 2022
• CCP – Forum Thread about September MER
• Reddit – Thread about September MER
• TAGN – Last Month’s MER Post
• TAGN – The Rising Price of PLEX
• TAGN – PLEX Prices after the Omega Sale
• TNG – Changes to the Price of a PLEX Subscription