Wartime MER Finally Sees Delve Eclipsed

It is time for another EVE Online Monthly Economic Report, as CCP released the May edition last week.

Going with my desire to give these posts a theme I am happy enough to have had one served up to me, which is the war in the north.  Back in mid-May the Imperium packed up their supercaps and titans and what not and took it on the road, ending up in a staging system in Pure Blind.

With that the word went out that the protective defense umbrella was gone and that anybody who undocked in Delve to rat or mine was doing so at their own risk.  Of course, despite this having shown up in every coalition channel I frequent, people missed it or ignored it and the slaughter in Delve has reflected that.  Lots of Rorquals down.  So The first chart up will be about destruction.

April 2019 – Mining Value by Region Bar Graph

The charts either show the values clearly, but not well sorted, or sorted by values, but the values are not always clear.  But in grabbing the values from the raw data, the top five regions for destruction were:

1. The Forge – 3 Trillion ISK
2. Delve – 2 Trillion ISK
3. Detorid – 1.7 Trillion ISK
4. The Citadel – 1.6 Trillion ISK
5. Tenerifis – 1.5 Trillion ISK

The Forge is, of course, the home of Jita a suicide ganking.  It is always at the top of the list.  Then there is Delve, where those not paying attention have paid the price.  Detroid and Tenerifis are locations where war has been running in the south, while The Citadel is another prime suicide gank location.

Tribute, where we are bringing war, was down in 20th position with just 718 billion ISK in destruction for May.  Of course, I expect that to be up for the June report, since we didn’t start killing Keepstars until then.

Compare that top five with the April numbers.

• Detorid – 2.3 Trillion ISK (war)
• The Forge – 2.2 Trillion ISK (ganks)
• Delve – 1.5 Trillion ISK (business as usual I guess)
• The Citadel – 1.3 Trillion ISK (ganks)
• Black Rise – 1.2 Trillion ISK (no idea, I thought low sec was dead)

Delve was up half a trillion ISK in May, and that was only half a month without the usual defense coverage, so it could be up further in June.  Jita ganking was up quite a bit as well.  I wonder if that has to do with war related shipping.

As for economic activity, Delve remained the top region for mining in May by a long shot.

May 2019 – Mining Value by Region Bar Graph

Again, the Delve defenses were down for less than half of the month, but still Delve pulled in 4.9 trillion ISK in value, while the next most active region, Esoteria, home of TEST, had 2.7 trillion ISK.

But that was a huge drop when compared to April, where Delve mining was valued at 9.8 trillion ISK and Querious, where the Imperium goes moon mining once a month, clocked in at 2.7 trillion ISK.  Esoteria was in third place with 2.4 trillion ISK.

Since mining value is based on the price of minerals, we have to see if that changed, which gives us another chart.

May 2019 – Economic Indices

Mineral values stayed flat, so the changes between April in May appear to be largely due to the volumes mined.  Delve mining was down quite a bit, no doubt to people deploying and those who didn’t getting blown up more often or having their excavator drones stolen, the latter being a tactic I read about recently.

But the real change comes with NPC bounties.

May 2019 – NPC Bounties by Region Bar Graph

For the first time since I started looking at the MER, Delve is not the top region when it comes to bounties.  Branch was in first place for May.

1. Branch – 5.6 Trillion ISK
2. Delve – 5.1 Trillion ISK
3. Detorid – 4.1 Trillion ISK
4. Insmother – 3.4 Trillion ISK
5. Esoteria – 3.2 Trillion ISK

Branch is home to a few alliances that are part of Dead Coalition, formerly GotG.

Branch is actually down over a trillion ISK when compared to April, but Delve was down almost 3 trillion ISK in bounties over the previous month.  With that, and war coming to various regions in May, overall bounties were down significantly on the sinks and faucets chart.

May 2019 – Top Sinks and Faucets over time

That puts the bounties down to about a war time low in 2017, though not quite down to the Casino War level when the Imperium was homeless and then busy taking over Delve.

Total bounties across all regions were only down 2 trillion when compared to April, but May started with a pre-war peak before the line began trending down.

All of which sets things up for the June report, which will include a full month of war, destruction of ihubs and structures in Tribute, and all that goes with it.  I expect the ratting and mining numbers will be down even more so with that.  But not destruction.  Destruction should go up.

As usual, all of the charts and data are available in the dev blog for the May 2019 MER.