Industrial Sidebar - What's up with Mineral Prices?

Other than running through (mostly quiet) lowsec with Faux.Pas I've also been spending time with my industrial alt.  I used a PLEX to get her able to invent T2 ships as well as train up a blueprint copying alt.  Unfortunately I see that the T2 ship market is pretty volitile right now, perhaps as a consequence of the HAC changes, so there's still a while to go before I can see that being profitable.  On the plus side, once I've waited out the NPC station queues I should have a stream of BPCs from the copy alt.

But what is up with mineral prices?  There has been plenty said about the ice interdiction and it's effect or lack thereof.  I'm surprised at mineral prices though - they're showing a strong downward trend across the board.  This means my opportunistic buys when someone has offered up a chunk of scordite below market price now is above current market average.  Why?

Factors I'm wondering about:
* The War in Delve didn't create enough demand for ships, perhaps everything killed was out of substantial aggregate supply?
* The college-aged crowd returning to school hasn't taken AFK miners out of the supply stream?
* New Order might be quieter in the news, but according to dotlan I guess they haven't collapsed.  Perhaps miners have just learned ways around such gankers so that supply is unimpeded?
* Additional crackdowns on botters such as reported by Nosy Gamer haven't kept bot-driven mining from contributing?

It's a bit of a puzzle for me, and if I want T2 manufacturing to be able to fund more extensive PVP I suppose I need to at least get a better clue on such trends.

HACs are here - so is the Deimos worth it?

Has it really been since July that I last blogged.  Summer distractions are certain part of that, as well as moving to Faux.Pas (link vult's blog).  I've moved a small pile of assets over to Domain and environs and have been enjoying the space around there.  Sometimes when nobody's around from corp or other friends I'll run missions in Sinq - I'm still working towards getting standings for clones with Fed Navy.

Anyway, with the new HACs lets look at a choice between flying a shiny, new Deimos and the old, reliable Thorax from the perspective of a solo/micro-gang PVPer.

Here's a Thorax fit based on a fit from Failheap by Prometheus

[Thorax, MoAR Rax]

Medium Armor Repairer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 150

Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Nanobot Accelerator I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I


Hammerhead II x5

Here's the comparable Deimos:

[Deimos, MoAR Deimos]

Medium Armor Repairer II
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II
Energized Explosive Membrane II

Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Medium Capacitor Booster II

Heavy Ion Blaster II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Nanobot Accelerator I


Hammerhead II x5


Assuming all Vs skills to keep things balanced the stats look like this:
Thorax: 18.1k ehp w/128ehp tank, 501 dps, 1944 mps
Deimos: 33.5k ehp w/321ehp tank, 617 dps, 1847 mps

Wow, right.  Who wouldn't want twice the base ehp, more than twice the tank, and another 100dps?  Well, let's look at the price.
Thorax: 40M ISK   (10M hull, 30M fittings)
Deimos: 212M ISK  (187M hull, 25M fittings)

Ouch.  So I can lose five Thorax for the same price as the Deimos?  In case you're wondering on the fittings, that's because of the lack of the third rig on the Deimos.  In reality I think this is going to be even more exaggerated: if you're going to spend 187M on a hull you're probably going to be tempted to squeeze in some faction/deadspace modules on there to make it even better.

My first impulse is to say that running into that one bad gate camp or a sudden blob is going to kill the Deimos just as dead.  With a bit of reflection I don't think that's quite true.  That tank is going to let you crash back through a gate where the Thorax would die.  The align time and speeds are close enough that the Deimos isn't going to outrace an attacker where the Thorax won't make it though.

For my budget though, I don't think I can rationalize the Deimos.  Maybe once I'm more proficient in solo PVP I'd be willing to try to play more towards a particular plan and fit.  Right now I could take that money and either roam a lot more in a Thorax or actually put it towards something expensive but money-making like trying out Incursions or just being more proficient at L4s.