The devs released a blog detailing more information about the upcoming Refinery structures and the changes to moon mining:
We can look at the provided information and make some predictions.
1) The current profit centre of buying raw moon material and refining it in a POS to resell on the market for a profit will cease to exist for all intents and purposes due to the ease and security of setting up a Refinery. No more dealing with POS mechanics like setting them up, fueling them, and silo micro management. When ease of production comes into play, profit margins decrease.
2) The redistribution of moon ores will cause some upheaval in null and low sec space, not only because the location of valuable moons will have changed, but moon mining operations requires actually miners to extract the wealth for refining, thus alliances will need to be close enough to guard the structures and pilots using them.
3) Small groups (alliances/corps) making money from moons will be more difficult as the number of trusted people needed to run a moon mining operation increases. i.e. operational security is easy when its two people running it, but loose lips/spies will make it harder to extract the wealth without more cost.
4) It will be easy for smaller groups to get into low end moon mining as mid range value moons will actually be profitable. Right now a moon is either valuable or not, but the new model where many ores of different types and amounts will make more moons feasible for mining.
I plan to exploit this moon land rush by building as many of the refineries as I possibly can this winter.
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We are proud to bring you the stories, opinions and musings of a long time pilot who has dabbled in everything New Eden has to offer, he writes and podcasts about his opinions and adventures at Ninveah.com
