LP's or SP's?

There is a lot of noise made about how many LP's you can make in FW. Tsobai Hashimoto nerdgasmed about the actual reality of LP versus ISK equivalence on the EVE-O forums. His analysis (though of course likely time-dependant and situation dependant, and not 100% exhaustive as to every item) is pretty much spot on, especially when I compare to the anecdotal evidence I've collected from my corp members and alliance members.

Minmatar is awash with Loyalty Points, but they are not readily fungible; you must make a decision in the LP store as to how to redeem them, and this choice affects the ISK rate per LP you get from the LP's. In many cases, they are Stupidity Points and can end up costing you ISK.

Looking at the price of datacores alone led Tsobai Hashimoto to the above conclusion; but even without looking at that, the price of the biggest bulk items in the FW store, which are most readily consumed (ie; ammo) shows a vast difference in behaviour. The price of RF ammo in the past 12 months has dropped, in some cases from 1200/per to 550.

This has some interesting implications, especially for the Caldari right now, and for people (like myself) with bulk Khanid Navy LPs. I am not across the differential in price at the moment between Caldari datacores and Minmatar, but in a little while the price of all Caldari T2 and T3 technology will begin to be affected by the current dominance of the warzone by the Gallente militia and the low tier of the Caldari warzone control (and hence, the LP rate for pplexes); likewise as the few good things in the Khanid LP store are Caldari faction ammo, this impacts upon the LP/ISK conversion ratio for running, eg, level 4's out of Palas.

There is also likely to be a squeeze on LP's from the Gallente standpoint, as there are so few places to go to earn LP's. However, the high tier of the Gallente warzone control will be the controlling factor here, as they can release a few systems then spawn buttloads of missions to create ridiculous LP payouts.

The conclusion? The healthier FW warzone is doubtless the Amarr-Militia warzone at the moment, where we are within a tier of one another, and actively swapping territory every few days. The price differential, as above, is caused primarily by the number of people active in each militia, not the warzone control. Yes, LPs per complex are higher for the Minmatar, but we have a larger sink of LP's in maintaining level 5 systems, and less places to go solo cap offensive mediums.