Sponk has a post on Failheap in a thread discussing the logistics of transport and trade in Eve (amongst other things) that highlights the main issues surrounding the mythical ‘industrial expansion’ that always seems to be on the horizon but never gets done.
What CCP has consistently failed to do is to articulate a plan for the economic structure of nullsec.
Currently, nullsec is the Africa of Eve.
Imports: Basically everything due to no local infrastructure, but mostly weapons
Manufactures for local use: lol
Exports: valuable unprocessed materials (rare earthshigh-end minerals,oilmoon goo,diamondsdeadspace modules), corpsesA lot of people who complain about this situation would prefer nullsec to be the Stargate:Atlantis of Eve instead.
Imports: Basically everything, but in punishingly small volumes
Manufactures for local use: as much as it can
Exports: high-tech relics in punishingly small volumesTo change to this model, jump freighters have to go (or have their cargohold cut by 95%) plus jump spoolups plus nerfing mineral compression for low-ends plus make mining low-ends in null easy-mode plus a whole raft of other changes, or else you’ll find that a single nullsec fight depletes the entire region of manufacturing capability for days, just to replace the ammo, let alone the ships.
This is a major issue for a nullsec industry shakeup that hasn’t been addressed so far by CCP.
What should nullsec import, and what should nullsec export? More on this once I’ve had a think about it.
Serpentine's Eve 
I would think that needing jumpfrieghters would make it even more difficult to move things in and out of nullsec.
As it stands now, without jumpfreighters you would have any ships to pvp with in null. And I find that their cargohold already is too small to even move ore or minerals around.
Let alone using a jumpfreighter to move such items it totally cost prohibitive.
I think it would be harsh on the people who do this to totally remove Jump Freighters. While I appreciate there aren’t many of them and some of those are alts, there are people who’ve trained for months to get the skills, saved billions to buy the ship and worked hard to set up the organisation.
A more elegant alternative might be to make using them riskier. The problem is they virtually never get caught, only really if a pilot makes an error. Yet they operate in nullsec and lowsec which is supposed to be dangerous space. A zero risk ship in high risk space is an anomaly.
So maybe they should have to park at a cyno for 2 minutes either end of the jump or some such, just make it harder. Same too for other cyno-ing ships or else people would simply use Carriers instead of JFs to move stuff. I don’t know enough about the mechanics of cynoing to make a really good suggestion but some kind of change to cynoing to stop it being zero-risk would have the desired effect on the high sec to null pipeline.
Then you’d need to make null industry viable. I think it more or less is. I see people say there’s not enough manufacturing slots in null but that’s just misdirection because you can have manufacturing at POS and there’s an almost unlimited amount of POS space available to space-holding alliances. Each large Caldari tower can hold 50 Ammo Assembly Arrays although in practice you’d want a few less so you could fit some defences.
There is limited manufacturing in Null, because the mantra of the null-sec folks is that industry is for PVP failures.
In Africa, the issue is training and capital, not will. The issue in null is purely will. No one wants to do it. Sorta like driving an ugly, but fuel efficient car.
I’d say that manufacturing in Null is like manufacturing on the East coast of the US. No one wants to do it here, because its easier (cheaper) to do it elsewhere and there is a opinion that those that do that labour are somehow lesser than we are.
If the materials and the facilities exists in null, someone will setup industry. However, materials are not available and with the upcoming changes, will be even less available. Until the null-sec players themselves decide that its worth having an industrial arm, they’ll be more content to pay a premium to have their ships and modules delivered to them via jump freighter.
Removal (or disruption) to jump freighter services would force their hand, but would result in many players becoming even more risk-averse until a home-grown supply of replacement goods are readily available.
With transportation costs so low, there is no advantage in local manufacturing. Take away transportation as an option or seriously increase its cost, is the only way to bring market forces to bear and increase local production.
I think your missing the point, the nurf to jf’s is to stop them moving stuff to null/high end mins out and increase production of ships/mods in null sec.
I think tbh highsec should get a big ol’ slap with the nurf bat, make it so highsec needs +20% mins low sec +10% and null base minerals, you would then maybe stop the 70% of eve staying in highsec or whatever the figure was.
Ideas blatantly stole from another blog I read 🙂
A JF nerf might change how T1 ships and mods get made, but it would seriously break the t2 market.
In order to produce any t2 items you need moon goo, but not all moons can be found in every region, so you’re FORCED to import, and if you’re importing the goo, then why not just import the ship?
Until moon mineral distribution is changed so that all nullsec regions contain all types of moon goo, empire, and especially Jita, will be the primary source of t2 ships and mods.
As an example, the constellation I currently live in has 0 scandium moons, making it physically impossible for us to build any t2 minmatar ships, or projectile weapons, or propulsion modules, without importing.
Without this change a JF nerf would simply mean we’d have to move to titan bridging freighters full of gear over multiple regions whenever we needed vital supplies.
On the other side of the t2 market is the fact that hisec imports the materials for all its’ t2 ships and mods from low and null sec.
A JF nerf designed to reduce the ability of nullsec to import from hisec would also reduce the ability of nullsec to export to hisec.
If moon minerals were distributed evenly amongst all regions nullsec would be able to be independent and self sufficient, but until the moons in hisec can be mined hisec will be dependent on nullsec for all t2 ships and mods.