Why everyone should be mining Palladium

[VR] Mad Mike

[VR] Mad Mike
I was looking at that earlier.
Demand outstripped supply for last 8 years, 25% increase in last 2 weeks 100% over last year.

Once could argue buying such an in-demand important metal and locking it in your drawers for personal gain is selfish.......

But I won't lie... I wish I had done it 12 months ago and I am tempted to put some of my savings into a few Oz. Unless catalytic converters are replaced any time soon I don't see it losing much money and right now my money in the bank is doing just that.
 

Kayvan

Kayvan
Point is, Palladium - a Rare Earth - is actually useful and essential for high tech as we know it, and not just a take it or leave it bauble. So I'd totally dig it if this was reflected in the ingame economy. They could also introduce other essential rare earths, like Iridium, Osmium etc.
 

WeComeInPeace

WeComeInPeace
Mad Mike said:
I was looking at that earlier.
Demand outstripped supply for last 8 years, 25% increase in last 2 weeks 100% over last year.

Once could argue buying such an in-demand important metal and locking it in your drawers for personal gain is selfish.......

But I won't lie... I wish I had done it 12 months ago and I am tempted to put some of my savings into a few Oz. Unless catalytic converters are replaced any time soon I don't see it losing much money and right now my money in the bank is doing just that.
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Your money in the bank is only bits, and they lose any value if (when) the financial system collapses, which is why any tremble in the stock market leads to increasing gold prices. Palladium, like lithium, cobalt, copper and phosphorus is an element that we can't produce. There is a certain amount of it on the planet, which according to economics means that if demand goes up, so does the price. Palladium, to the best of my knowledge isn't vital, but phosphorus is. We're running dangerously low on phosphorus, and demand is increasing. Phosphorus isn't very practical to store in a vault, but if you have money to spend, think about buying into the phosphorus reserve. I promise you that you'll get a solid return on your investment. Phosphorus will be the new "gold" or "oil".
 

aRJay

aRJay
Kayvan said:
Point is, Palladium - a Rare Earth - is actually useful and essential for high tech as we know it, and not just a take it or leave it bauble. So I'd totally dig it if this was reflected in the ingame economy. They could also introduce other essential rare earths, like Iridium, Osmium etc.
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Rare earths so called because they are rare on earth. But how rare are they when you can access lots of planets, moons, asteroids and ring systems in thousands of star systems?
 

Kayvan

Kayvan
aRJay said:
Rare earths so called because they are rare on earth.
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Well that's not quite correct. They are called that because they have first been found in and isolated from oxides, which are chemically also called earths. It has nothing to do with planet Earth, other than that is our only sample so far.

However, the abundance of any given element is not entirely arbitrary. All elements are bred in dying stars, of course, and elements heavier than iron only in supernovae, but this follows certain rules and patterns. For instance, for this reason all elements with an odd number of protons are scarcer than their direct even-numbered neighbours (with the exceptions of Lithium and Beryllium). Simply because the nuclear processes that breed heavier elements favour even-numbered outcomes. For that reason, over the entire solar system Platinum is actually about 10 times more abundant than gold - because Pt has an even p count and Au an odd one (78 and 79, respectively).

That said, their abundance inside the planet Earth is of course not equal to accessibility. It is expected that there will be humungous amounts of gold and other precious metals in the Earth's core -- but since they are so dense/heavy they won't rise to the top, and good luck getting them out from there. If we had access to the entire solar system, resource-wise, it would indeed look different. So yes, you are right there that some rare earths will be easier found outside Earth than planetside.

Other solar systems probably won't differ so dramatically from the distribution of ours, is all I'm saying.
 

TheSisko

TheSisko
Mad Mike said:
I was looking at that earlier.
Demand outstripped supply for last 8 years, 25% increase in last 2 weeks 100% over last year.

Once could argue buying such an in-demand important metal and locking it in your drawers for personal gain is selfish.......

But I won't lie... I wish I had done it 12 months ago and I am tempted to put some of my savings into a few Oz. Unless catalytic converters are replaced any time soon I don't see it losing much money and right now my money in the bank is doing just that.
Click to expand...

The rise of Electric Cars will put paid to Catalytic Converters, but not for a good while yet.

Go'Gen said:
This is a history article from 2020.
Now is 3306.
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It is? Excellent! Time for me to buy the Xbox Series XLS1021-ELX-MEGA-9! ;)

zimms said:
OP probably just wanted to read about a time when life was simpler. I guess he was hit hard by the recent VO crash.
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Nope, made most of my billions before core mining was a dream for this game. 🙂

Kayvan said:
Point is, Palladium - a Rare Earth - is actually useful and essential for high tech as we know it, and not just a take it or leave it bauble. So I'd totally dig it if this was reflected in the ingame economy. They could also introduce other essential rare earths, like Iridium, Osmium etc.
Click to expand...

Isn't Osmium already in the game?

WeComeInPeace said:
Your money in the bank is only bits, and they lose any value if (when) the financial system collapses, which is why any tremble in the stock market leads to increasing gold prices. Palladium, like lithium, cobalt, copper and phosphorus is an element that we can't produce. There is a certain amount of it on the planet, which according to economics means that if demand goes up, so does the price. Palladium, to the best of my knowledge isn't vital, but phosphorus is. We're running dangerously low on phosphorus, and demand is increasing. Phosphorus isn't very practical to store in a vault, but if you have money to spend, think about buying into the phosphorus reserve. I promise you that you'll get a solid return on your investment. Phosphorus will be the new "gold" or "oil".
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See, this is one of the reasons why I love this game (flaws and all) and community - I've learnt something today.......of course I reserve the right to sue WeComeInPeace if his investment advice sees me on the streets, offering to code for food. :eek::D
 

WeComeInPeace

WeComeInPeace
TheSisko said:
See, this is one of the reasons why I love this game (flaws and all) and community - I've learnt something today.......of course I reserve the right to sue WeComeInPeace if his investment advice sees me on the streets, offering to code for food. :eek::D
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Honestly I hope that I'm wrong, since the consequences of running out of phosphorus are pretty nasty. So let's say you invest the money, and it turns out I'm wrong, then together we would have saved humanity :) I'm pretty sure though. Don't expect a return on the investment the first 10 or so years, but the last time there was a phosphorus shortage (2008), the price increased by a factor 10x. I think that's what the economists mean with "low price elasticity", combined with phosphorus being vital (~1 gram per day per human).
 

Sysmon

Sysmon
Both gold and palladium have important uses in complex electronics such as medical equipment. Gold, however, has been mined for thousands of years and is very hard to destroy or tarnish - half the gold ever mined is still in circulation and you can pick up a 5000-year old gold object and put a shine on it with nothing but a soft cloth. Weirdly fascinating stuff.

The historical weirdness of gold as a mined commodity sets it apart from the other metals that are coming into fashion in the "green" economy. Over the last decade or so, exploration has dropped significantly across the board (except for gold). This means that reserves held by the mining companies are dropping fast as not much more metal is being added to the reserves while demand is climbing. Prices then go up fast. Gold, meanwhile, mostly go up and down with changes in the global political climate.

You are welcome to wave your "no mining" and "no exploration" placards and flaunt your green stances on social media if it makes you feel good. It won't make your electric car any cheaper, though. Maybe one day we can make those entirely out of flax and soy, of course. Then we can measure the social impact of our vehicles in number of children starving as food crop land gets diverted to other purposes.

:D S
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Kayvan said:
Point is, Palladium - a Rare Earth - is actually useful and essential for high tech as we know it, and not just a take it or leave it bauble. So I'd totally dig it if this was reflected in the ingame economy. They could also introduce other essential rare earths, like Iridium, Osmium etc.
Click to expand...
Osmium is in-game already and is mining-only. Decent prices by the standards of "things which are not Painite/core gems", too - you can easily get 35k/tonne for it and it has no real risk of running out of demand.

Palladium has quite interesting in-game economic behaviour, too: it can be mined, of course, but it's also produced in very small quantities by Extraction economies. Price on the open market is pretty stable at about 13-14k depending on demand, but it sometimes gets used for high-payout "source and return" missions. A couple of years ago, this led to brief bubble-wide Palladium shortages as people tried to buy it up for these missions (and lots of "why can't I find Palladium anywhere this is terrible and Frontier is terrible" threads from players who don't like their trade goods having any sort of dynamic economy behind them). Even now with those missions appearing less frequently, Palladium supplies haven't really recovered. Watch the sharp drop on the supply line in July 3304 as the missions come in (only Colonia markets shown, but the effect in the bubble was similar, if a bit slower due to the bubble economy being much bigger):
(the earlier sharp drop around March 3304 was due to Frontier making Palladium supplies regenerate more slowly as part of the 3.0 update, among many other market tweaks)
 

TheSisko

TheSisko
Ian Doncaster said:
Osmium is in-game already and is mining-only. Decent prices by the standards of "things which are not Painite/core gems", too - you can easily get 35k/tonne for it and it has no real risk of running out of demand.

Palladium has quite interesting in-game economic behaviour, too: it can be mined, of course, but it's also produced in very small quantities by Extraction economies. Price on the open market is pretty stable at about 13-14k depending on demand, but it sometimes gets used for high-payout "source and return" missions. A couple of years ago, this led to brief bubble-wide Palladium shortages as people tried to buy it up for these missions (and lots of "why can't I find Palladium anywhere this is terrible and Frontier is terrible" threads from players who don't like their trade goods having any sort of dynamic economy behind them). Even now with those missions appearing less frequently, Palladium supplies haven't really recovered. Watch the sharp drop on the supply line in July 3304 as the missions come in (only Colonia markets shown, but the effect in the bubble was similar, if a bit slower due to the bubble economy being much bigger):
(the earlier sharp drop around March 3304 was due to Frontier making Palladium supplies regenerate more slowly as part of the 3.0 update, among many other market tweaks)
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That Palladium shortage was great - it actually felt like a real-life economy. I wouldn't mind that sort of event happening again, forced of course by an in-game reason.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Kayvan said:
But if there's a shortage, shouldn't that result in a price hike?
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The Palladium source missions paid out 30-50 million credits at the time, for a couple of hundred tonnes, so there was quite a price hike.

TheSisko said:
That Palladium shortage was great - it actually felt like a real-life economy. I wouldn't mind that sort of event happening again, forced of course by an in-game reason.
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Yes - especially good since they didn't have to specifically code a Palladium shortage. It just happened naturally based on the economic parameters of Palladium, the mission generator, and the behaviour of lots of players.

Most goods the economic parameters are way too relaxed for that to happen, without hundreds of times more players trading.
 
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