T2 production changes and predictions

Well I'm back playing Eve again. I think over the last year there have been a lot of changes and a decen shift in attitude from CCP regarding listening to players. That plus a decent reactivation offer means I'm giving it a go again.

Been reading up on the forums and it seems like there has been a lot of activity, inflation on minerals and ships especially, Hulkageddon and the Goons are much of the chatter recently. I'll write more on that later, for now a simple post on how all the changes have affected the module I've used as an example previously: the Cap II Recharger.

So, still definitely profitable but not as great as it was in 2011, back to 2010 levels. More costly to build but the price has increased. Costs have gone up quite dramatically, I've analysed that below as well.

A big change in minerals and construction components. Both, it would seem, down to the Goons, or at least in part. Hulkageddon and Burn Jita seem to have provided a either a smokescreen for, or were part of, the mineral market manipulation recently which seems to have been driven by the Goons and followed by many speculators. However, there have also been some quite significant changes to loot drops so CCP's actions have also been a key driver.

OTEC (which includes the Goons and other corps) have driven up the costs of construction components drastically. However, Technetium is so scarce anyway that I wonder how much affect OTEC's market manipulation really had - the trend in price increase seems steady and goes further back than (I believe) OTEC has been attempting to manipulate the market. I could be wrong there, I'm not an insider to OTEC, but it seems to me that the scarcity is the prime reason for the increase and manipulation has only a minor effect.

So looking forwards and making some predictions:

• Will mineral costs change further? Has the market manipulation ended, if not when will it settle? I also see forthcoming changes to the game with ring mining and that will undoubtedly have an impact later in the year. I think by the end of the year, prices will have dropped somewhat but will still not have stabilised.
• PI will continue to fall; I predict that basically the floor's the limit on that since the skills required are low, leading to oversupply. If it weren't for the increased taxation on PI I think prices would be down even further.
• Construction components will continue to rise. There's decent margins in T2 still, basically the market can accommodate a price rise and this is the most scarce building material.
• Datacores I expect to drop in price with the changes to faction warfare LP stores, and looking at the prices recently that market does seem to have turned the corner and prices starting to decline already. However, this decline may be short term and down to users cashing in research points with agents before the nerf, thus flooding the market. I personally am predicting a slight decline though, ending up below Feb 2011 levels.

Strawberry out.