CCP Offers Up Broken Monthly Economic Report for December

We got the EVE Online Monthly Economic Report for December last week and I waited a while to write about it because what they put out was simply and obviously wrong in places.  At least more so than usual, so I thought they might go back and fix the most egregious bit.  I am ever the optimist.

EVE Online nerds harder

But, since no update appears to be forthcoming, lets look at what they gave us and hope for better next time.

Destruction

The flaw in the December MER is the destruction numbers.  If you pull out the regional data for destruction, the top ten regions are:

1. Delve – 3.23 trillion
2. The Forge – 2.1 trillion
3. The Citadel – 1.77 trillion
4. Lonetrek – 1.68 trillion
5. Catch – 1.47 trillion
6. Metropolis – 1.38 trillion
7. Sinq Laison – 1.26 trillion
8. Domain – 1.04 trillion
9. Genesis – 832 billion
10. Black Rise – 753 billion

The total destruction according to the regional data was 35 trillion ISK.  That put Delve down by more than a trillion from November, with overall destruction down by trillion.

The problem is that the number for Delve… and thus the total number for all regions… was very far from the actual mark.

With the war on and the huge battle at M2-XFE that started on December 30th and ran until downtime at 11:00 UTC on December 31st, many of us were expecting to see a huge jump in the destruction numbers for the Delve regional data.  The battle report showed more than 20 trillion ISK destroyed in that first fight.

Battle Report Header

That seems like a big miss.

I sometimes get a bit pissy about CCP and the MER because the numbers from one chart and data set do not line up with numbers from another chart and data set.  It seems like a summer intern project to write a little unit test to validate the data being pulled.  And this month is no different, but at least this time around another data set shows that the regional data is bad, at least for Delve.  So I will bring up the Produced, Destroyed, Mined chart.

Dec 2020 – Produced vs Destroyed vs Mined

This tracks the daily data game wide, with the thick line being the 30 day moving average and the light lines being the actual daily totals.  You can see there, at the end of December, the daily number jumps up off the chart, which has a top range of 6 trillion ISK.  Likewise, the 30 day average for destruction is pulled up, exceeding production.

CCP provides the raw data for that chart in a .csv file, so anybody can see what the actual amounts are.  The total destruction in the data for December is 74.83 trillion ISK, and the value for just December 31st, which covers the primary portion of the battle before downtime, is 23.26 trillion ISK.  (The second battle is in the data already, as it leaks out into the current date when they pull the report, and that totals up to 15, 4 trillion ISK destroyed on January 3rd.)

Of course, the data for that chart isn’t wholly accurate as well as there are three days missing, December 3, 4, and 26.  Still, they reflect the reality of the situation more than the alternative.

So the regional stats are off by a good 40 trillion ISK total, and at least the amount of that battle report for just Delve.  So a more likely ranking is:

1. Delve – 26 trillion (estimated)
2. The Forge – 2.1 trillion
3. The Citadel – 1.77 trillion
4. Lonetrek – 1.68 trillion
5. Catch – 1.47 trillion
6. Metropolis – 1.38 trillion
7. Sinq Laison – 1.26 trillion
8. Domain – 1.04 trillion
9. Genesis – 832 billion
10. Black Rise – 753 billion

Anyway, here is to hoping they’ll set things right next month.

NPC Bounties

Moving on to NPC bounties, which were the big story last month, we see they are still way down.

Dec – and Faucets Over Time

The numbers began to crash when the ESS and the Dynamic Bounty System were introduced to the game in November.

Total bounties collect in November were 39.3 trillion, which was down from 55.9 trillion in October, the last full month without the new systems.  December, the first full month with the ESS and DBS changes saw that number tumble to 22.8 trillion ISK.

Even with the ESS payments, which amounted to 6.5 trillion ISK, that leaves the total at a little more than half of the value paid out in October.  This is a big hit to income.  The top regions for December were:

1. Oasa – 1.62 trillion (PandaFam)
2. Vale of the Silent – 1.19 trillion (mixed small groups)
3. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.02 trillion (PandaFam)
4. Perrigen Falls – 996 billion (PandaFam)
5. Insmother – 918 billion (Legacy)
6. Cobalt Edge – 753 billion (PandaFam)
7. Tenal – 739 billion (PandaFam)
8. Metropolis – 737 billion (High Sec)
9. Branch – 711 billion (PandaFam)
10. Fountain – 699 billion (Imperium)

Of note is that a high sec region has entered the top ten, meaning that NPC bounties collected by mission runners are now likely a significant portion of the remaining bounty total.  There are no Forsaken Hubs in Metropolis.

Outside of NPC bounties, the sinks and faucets for December looked like this:

Dec 2020 – Sinks and Faucets

Commodities, which are drops from NPCs in wormhole space, Abyssal Deadspace, and the December holiday event (and maybe the bonds from robbing an ESS in null sec) and sold back to NPCs, continue be the largest ISK faucet into the game, ringing in at 40.59 trillion ISK.

After that there is NPC bounties, which are now in close competition with incursion payouts.  And then there is insurance, which if you look at the first sinks and faucets chart, saw a spike at the end of December, no doubt related to the battle at M2-XFE.

Production

Turning to production, the regional data shows the following regions as the top of the list:

1. The Forge – 21 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 7 trillion (Imperium)
3. Lonetrek – 6.94 trillion (High Sec)
4. Sinq Laison – 6.25 trillion (High Sec)
5. The Citadel – 5.73 trillion (High Sec)
6. Domain – 4.51 trillion (High Sec)
7. Tribute – 4.22 trillion (mixed small groups)
8. Esoteria – 3.73 trillion (Legacy)
9. Vale of the Silent – 3.64 trillion (mixed small groups)
10. Heimatar – 3.07 trillion (High Sec)

The Forge, and the high sec regions around it, which support the Jita market, remain strong.  Delve, home of the Imperium, led the production outside of high sec.  The war has kept production going.  Legacy production remained ongoing in Esoteria despite claims that they were set to abandon the region.  Oddly, two regions of small holders, Tribute and Vale of the Silent, made the top ten, but PandaFam in Oasa fell to 11th and off the list.

The total for production in the regional data was 107.84 trillion ISK, though since I’m double checking things this month, the production/destruction data only shows it at 74.83 trillion ISK.  However, that is missing three days.  I am not sure those three days would make up the gap, so it shows once again that the data can be questioned.

Trade

Then there is trade value, where the top regions were:

1. The Forge – 429 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 51 trillion (Amarr)
3. Sinq Laison – 20.6 trillion (Dodixie)
4. Lonetrek – 16.25 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
5. Delve – 16.21 trillion (War Zone)
6. Metropolis – 10.9 trillion (Hek)
7. Heimatar – 10.1 trillion (Rens)
8. Essence – 5.55 trillion (Gallente High Sec))
9. The Citadel – 5.34 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
10. Tash-Murkon – 3.65 trillion (Amarr High Sec)

Everything was about in the same zone as November, save for Delve, which was down about 6 trillion ISK.  That is odd because with both sides now based in Delve there ought to be more buying rather than less.

Mining

Finally, there is mining.  After seeming to plateau in November, mineral prices continued their climb skyward as CCP’s keeps the starvation economy plan in place.

Dec 2020 – Economic Indices

The October peak was an all time high point for mineral prices and now the spike continues.

Mining remained largely a high sec occupation, though Oasa in PandaFam territory climbed to the top of the list in December.

1. Oasa – 1.27 trillion
2. The Forge – 1.17 trillion
3. Metropolis – 1.04 trillion
4. Domain – 990 billion
5. Sinq Laison – 824 billion
6. Lonetrek – 751 billion
7. The Citadel – 617 billion
8. Tash-Murkon – 575 billion
9. Perrigen Falls – 568 billion
10. Everyshore – 559 billion

Aside from Oasa, which is up slightly, numbers are down in every region on that list.  Since the value of ore mined depends on the price, that appears to mean that a lot less mining went on in December, even in Oasa.  The total mined from the region data was 19.9 trillion in value, down from 23.7 trillion in November.

Since we’re skeptical of the regional data this month, I double checked it against the Produced/Destroyed/Mined data which, despite missing the three days indicated above, shows 19.8 trillion ISK value mined, down from 24.9 in November.  That is within the usual margin of error between the different data collection methods.

So it goes.

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