....boobs will hang out and level up. To support higher gear you need to start running in factional warfare. Null sec, maybe even wormholes .

Isn't that why they are releasing their 9th edition. They have to cause the game only lasts 1 year. People would get bored and stop playing if they didn't release another "New" game every year.

OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD

I'm broke now, but if we kill 1 sleeper, MILLIONS worth in salvage alone!

I'll address the costs from the 'eve contractor' POV, which is where we wish it was going to be eventually.

I am going to assume here, that targets are rarely going to be a 'single' map, and that we will need to take multiple districts/objectives over the course of a night, so I'm going to assume almost constant gameplay.

I'm also basing a full proto suit at about 4-500k, and estimating that normal losses are going to be about 4-5 per person on average; if you're playing against people with full proto's, I'd expect most frontliners to be losing this many at least; maybe logi's and snipers will lose less, but it's all about how it goes.

A 16 man team with the best gear, you're looking at probably 2m isk per person, per match. Each round will want a series of vehicles too, so call that another 20m in vehicles per match. You're not going to use low end gear, if you're supposed to be paid to do the job.
Now consider there's going to be a 'basic cost' for the war contract itself; you've got war barges to pay for, installations, the clones themselves, the installations, transportation etc.

You're looking at 50m in costs per 20-30 minutes per team, at minimum excluding basic costs for matches.

Now assuming we get a proper turnover of players in dust to match other FPS's, you're looking at up to 10,000 players online at a time. Assume half of those are going to be grinding in militia gear in high sec, and half of what's left is going to be in 0.0;

A little napkin math, shows that there could be up to 150 0.0 battles going on at any time, with an estimated cost of 8bn isk per half hour.

Some recent figures suggest that TEST, who currently own probably the largest amount of space in the game for a single entity, are currently spending more than they earn, and will be bankrupt inside of 3 moths.

Even if my numbers are wrong by half, that's 4bn isk per half hour.

0.0 cannot sustain that sort of spending without breaking the entire eve economy.

So, when I say I think costs are too high, I don't just mean for now, I mean that they are too high overall.

The fact that a single suit for a mercenary is costing almost as much as a spaceship sums it all up to me. This should NEVER be the case; no matter how hard you try, no soldier's gear should cost as much as a spaceship.