We got the Monthly Economic Report for July somewhat late last month, but this month CCP has the MER for August out already, so it is time to take a look. And the big chart for the month is the sinks and faucets. That will be my main focus this time around.
August 2019 – Sinks and Faucets
There are a few items of significance on that chart.
Up front, for the first time in a long time, sinks out paced faucets in the game, with just shy of 64 trillion ISK coming into the game from faucets but almost 70 trillion ISK leaving the game via sinks. That, plus the Active ISK delta, which includes ISK removed via GM actions, saw 49 trillion ISK leave the New Eden economy in August.
The big change continues to be falling totals from NPC bounties, which dropped to a recent low of 21.1 trillion ISK for August. There has been a pretty consistent drop so far in 2019, with NPC bounties at about a quarter of where they stood in January.
- August – 21.1 trillion
- July – 29.1 trillion
- June – 48.2 trillion
- May – 55.5 trillion
- April – 57.2 trillion
- March – 71.4 trillion
- February – 69.8 trillion
- January – 83.8 trillion
And where were those bounties being harvested? 20% of it was in Delve, which is back at the top of the list for NPC bounties since the Imperium pulled back home back when the Drifters started hitting.
August 2019 – NPC Bounties by Region – Bar Graph
Most every region was down, with some more than others. The top ten regions for August were:
- Delve – 4.39 trillion
- Insmother – 1.30 trillion
- Detorid – 1.23 trillion
- Esoteria – 1.05 trillion
- Querious – 753 billion
- Cobalt Edge – 705 billion
- Metropolis – 543 billion
- Omist – 526 billion
- Fountain – 515 billion
- Malpais – 514 billion
Compare that with the list from July:
- Delve – 4.71 trillion
- Esoteria – 1.77 trillion
- Branch – 1.61 trillion
- Detorid – 1.23 trillion
- Deklein – 1.22 trillion
- Insmother – 1.10 trillion
- Tenal – 1.1 trillion
- Fountain – 1.06 trillion
- Omist – 850 billion
- Feythabolis – 810 billion
Delve remained on top, and five others remained on the list, four new regions made it into the top ten, including a high sec region, Metropolis. Metropolis didn’t make the top ten due to a huge surge in bounties. It rang in at 529 billion ISK in July, so was only up a bit. It made the cut because just about every other region fell. Of last month’s top ten, only Detroid stayed about the same.
That meant the percentage of bounties claimed in high sec went up as the bounty totals went down.
August 2019 – NPC Bounty Percentage by Sec Status
Zero, high, and low sect were 81.7%, 15.9%, and 2.4% respectively. The balance in July was 88.7%, 9.9%, and 1.5%, while in June it was 93.6%, 5.6%, and 0.8%. Given that the August NPC bounty total was less than half of June’s, this appears to be much more a matter of null sec totals being reduced rather than any large increase in the other areas of space.
Continuing on with NPC bounties, they also used to be the biggest number on that sinks and faucets chart, often obnoxiously so. With the coming of the August MER, two other numbers have passed bounties.
The first item is NPC Commodities, items that drop from sleepers or combat sites or Abyssal Deadspace that can be cashed in via NPC buy orders in select stations. I honestly don’t know a lot about this, save for the Triglavian Survey Database that drop from Abyssal Deadspace. And, honestly, CCP isn’t much help on this front. Look at this chart.
August 2019 – Commodities Breakdown
According to that 14% of the commodity income is from Overseer’s Personal Effects, 25.7% is from “Other,” none is from Sleeper Components, so I guess wormhole space makes no money anymore, and 60.3%, or roughly 14 trillion ISK of the total, isn’t accounted for at all. I suspect this is a matter of CCP Quant having created these reports and, when he left, people assumed they would just need to run his script and everything would be find and nothing would ever change and it isn’t anybody’s job to fix this so the reports will just get comically out of whack over time.
Such is the way of things. If nobody owns it, nobody is going to fix it.
These commodities, whatever they were, brought in 23.8 trillion ISK to the New Eden economy, putting them ahead of the 21.1 trillion ISK brought in by NPC bounties.
But this wasn’t any rush away from null sec or NPC bounties. Commodities have been stable, or even down a little bit (the number was almost 26 trillion back in January), for most of the year. NPC bounties have just fallen below where commodities have lingered.
The other item on the sinks and faucets chart that now exceeds NPC bounties is actually a sink.
In late July CCP announced an increase in transaction taxes and brokerage fees, which came into effect at the start of August. This saw transaction taxes collected jump from 11.6 trillion ISK in July to 22.1 trillion ISK in August, putting the number ahead of NPC bounties.
So basically two things changed on that initial chart, transaction taxes went up and NPC bounties continued to go down. This is visualized on the sinks and faucets over time graph.
August 2019 – Top Sinks and Faucets over time
NPC bounties, after a steep drop, seem to have leveled off, while transaction taxes saw a sharp spike… downward, because faucets go up and sinks go down on this chart.
Alright. Off the sinks and faucets chart, I thought I would take a side trip into another old favorite, which is mining value per region. Again, Delve is at the top of the chart still.
August 2019 – Mining Value by Region – Bar Graph
The top ten regions on that chart, and the value mined, are:
- Delve – 3.62 trillion
- Domain – 1.59 trillion
- Esoteria – 1.46 trillion
- The Forge – 1.40 trillion
- Querious – 1.10 trillion
- Sinq Laison – 1.02 trillion
- Lonetrek – 972 billion
- Metropolis – 895 billion
- Everyshore – 777 billion
- Tash-Murkon – 773 billion
For null sec, that is basically the Imperium in Delve and Querious and TEST in Esotaria. The other seven are high sec. I had to go look up Everyshore region, because I could not recall it ever being mentioned anywhere. But DOTLAN says it is a thing, a part of Gallente empire space.
That put null sec way down compare to the number from July:
- Delve – 5.77 trillion
- Querious – 3.18 trillion
- Esoteria – 2.61 trillion
- Syndicate – 1.99 trillion
- Fountain – 1.92 trillion
- Etherium Reach – 1.77 trillion
- Domain – 1.69 trillion
- Malpais – 1.64 trillion
- The Kalevala Expanse – 1.61 trillion
- The Forge – 1.47 trillion
The rumor was that mining botters simply moved en masse to high sec to with the coming of the blackout. I can’t say that this proves it, but it certainly seems to support the suggestion. I guess those roving Triglavian scouts need to start working harder.
And that drop in output, it wasn’t related to a price drop in minerals. According to the economic indices, mineral prices remained flat, so those numbers are a reasonable month over month comparison.
August 2019 – Economic Indices
I might have skipped past mining this month, what with the NPC bounty thing, but I figure those numbers might be relevant next month. As you may know, earlier this week the September update introduced the big cyno change, the latest in the Chaos Era campaign.
I suspect that next month, when we get the September MER, we will see NPC bounties dropping even more as the big coalitions that have depended on super capital umbrellas to stay safe have asked their super and titan ratters to stay docked while new defense strategies are worked out.
Likewise, Rorquals are probably staying safe for now, though I know in the Imperium they are free to get back to work, but only if they stay in certain systems, get in the standing fleet, have a specific fit, and have an alt in a force recon with a cyno cloaked up and ready to bring in the cavalry should somebody drop on you. The upside is that if you follow the new rules, you get SRP if your Rorqual dies. Or Goons get SRP. In TNT we just get yelled at. But I don’t own a super or a Rorqual, so I only know what gets pinged out over Jabber.
So look in next month for another drop.
Meanwhile, you can go grab the full August MER, which is chock full of additional charts and data and what not, if you want to peruse that at your leisure.
Others looking at the MER:
- Noisy Gamer – Hurricane Hilmar
- Evehermit – Bounties
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