Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It's no secret to anyone that knows me that I do a lot of planetary interaction wherever I happen to wash up. Highsec, lowsec, nullsec - it doesn't matter. The nearly passive income helps subsidize my terrible PvP skills (and the occasional "I wasn't paying attention" ratting carrier loss ).

That said, whilst I was waiting for my new laptop to arrive so I could once again PvP in a group larger than 2, I spent a lot of time doing nothing but PI, and came up with an idea to help expand the capabilities of those planets in the forum of new skills. With the focus on industry recently, this seemed like a good time to present this sort of idea, since PI hasn't really been touched in any meaningful way for more than a year.

Advanced Interplantary Consolidation
Rank: 8
Bonus: +1 Planet per level
Pre-requisites: Interplanetary Consolidation V

As it says on the tin. Because MOAR PLANETS!


Advanced Routing
Rank: 6
Bonus: -2% per level for CPU and Power requirements for links.
Pre-Requisites: Command Center Upgrades V

Again, allows more efficient use of planetary resources to sqeeze additional production from the planet, or allows for longer routes to resources and production facilities.


Efficient Dispatching
Rank: 4
Bonus: -2%/level in time of next expedited transfer from a facility,
Pre-requisites: Command Center Upgrades 3.

Skill at efficiently dispatching expedited deliveries over the local planetary network.


Efficient Production
Rank: 6
Bonus: -2%/level in production facility cycle time
Pre-requisites: Command Center Upgrades V

Skill at effectively managing the production queues of the factories, and keeping everything flowing in the most efficient manner possible.


Efficient Storage
Rank: 6
Bonus: +2%/level to storage m3 of launchpads, command centers, and storage facilities.
Pre-requisites: Command Center Upgrades V.

Provides a bonus that lets you pack more into storage rooms, allowing you to squeeze even more production out of the limited CPU and power grid available. Example, at level 5, a storage facility would grant 15,000 m3, a spaceport would give you 12,500 m3, and a command center maxes out at 625 m3.

Update: Added Maths, and reduced bonuses from 5% per level to 2% per level.

2% may be more "fair" for lack of a better term. Balanced I suppose. I plucked 5% out of a hat as a starting point, but 2% is more inline with what other "advanced" skills (Tech 2 weapons for example) give, and I'd be content with that. What what we want to avoid is a bonus that is too low to give any kind of value at level 1 (this is especially concerning of the Advanced routing skill).

I'm going to do a work up on paper of a maxed out planet and see how much more production you actually get out of it based on a fully skilled character (with my suggestions) compared to a current maxed out character, I'll add in a 2% version of the skills to that comparison.

In retrospect you may be right about the production facility time descrease, but I am waiting to actually do the math so I I have some firm numbers if I decide I still want to push for that one. Ideally what I would like to look at is the raw profitability per for the time investment. If for instance, adding the bonus only makes the character 5% more profitable per unit time for the cost of 45 days of training, is that an unreasonable figure? I don't know - until I do the math and see, we're kind of shooting in the dark.

That said, your two are also good ideas, and ones I had not thought of. When I update the main post with MATHS! I'll include them with attribution to you (if you do not mind).

Maths will most likely come tomorrow after I have a chance to play around with them tonight some at home.

More feedback and any additional ideas, please!

The install/upgrading costs for PI are already quite low. This would benefit newbies, but falls prey to Malcanis' Law - Toons with already high skills would benefit disproportionately. Also, from a lore perspective, only one of the 4 empires would be able to train this

Not sure what you mean by 'efficiency.' Can you clarify what this skill would affect?

Also not sure where you're going with this. We already have a skill to reduce NPC tax, and this would basically negate the player benefit to owning a POCO. Can you clarify?

Concerns as above.

Please don't think that I'm just dismissing your ideas, but I do think that they need to be fleshed out.

If there are more PI goods produced & sold, then supply & demand indicate that everything that's built with PI stuff would become *less* expensive, as prices would actually drop.

(You're completely right about most people just doing *more* PI and not dropping alts... unless most PI producers are as sick of the clickfest & logfest that the current state requires as I am. Less toons doing PI == less tedium == more of my sanity intact.)

I like it! I like every bit of it!

I've been doing PI since the hour that Tyrranis was released back in Summer 2010. And yeah, I have 6 colonies and would love to have a few more. These skills you suggest are great!

I would reconfigure PI completely.

Instead of separate facilities, I would do upgrades to them also (same as the command center.

Silo's should be upgradable (increased storage). I would also chop the Powergrid by 1/3 rd to differentiate themselves from Launchpads.

Factories should be upgradable (factory level 1, process as much material as one factory currently does. Factory level 2, process what 2 factories would, factory level 3, processes as much as 3 factories would). This would go up to level 6 also. So if you have a pure factory planet, you could technically use 2 factories that are upgraded and process as much as a current 12 factory planets do now.

I would change Remote Sensing to Range Expansion. Increases range of Extractors by 10% per level (increasing the circle/range of the Extractors, so they reach farther).

Essentially, change to a upgrade system. Your setup would be alot less, much easier to route, less clicks.

You snipped the important part concerning prices. Of course prices would drop if there's simply more PI goods on the market. But then you end up with nearly the same ISK as before for more goods as before. Compensation by increasing material needs in manufacturing to keep prices nearly at the same level would be needed, and that would mean that everything that's produced with PI goods will be more expensive as you simply need more units per product. So prices for PI goods will remain at nearly the same level, but everything that contains PI goods will become more expensive. As long as there's no new use for PI goods like completely new product BPs that need PI goods or PI goods used as "fuel" for something. Or NPC corps buying them at fixed prices.




That "How much more" is very hard to tell as you can't predict what players would do with those new skills. How many would really use them, to what level will they train them? The first skill you want to introduce (+1 planet) gives everybody the chance to increase potential PI output by over 80%. If everybody trains that skill to level 5 you have a potential increase of over 80% in available PI goods. Not at once, but over the time that it takes people to train that skill. So prices would very slowly drop. And then you come to that point where you compare effort to income again because managing 11 planets for so little ISK is annoying.

Don't get that wrong, I'm not against changes to PI in general, but in my opinion this is the wrong way.

I'd made a suggestion similar to this in the past and was told that this would increase the entry level skill bar too high for people.

DISCLAIMER: MATHS!

Notations:
h = 24 hours per day
f = 20 facilities per planet
hf = 480 facility hours per planet day.

Let's look at two players: A, a basic player with one planet, and B an advanced player with 6.
We will assume that they both use all of their planets to churn out robotics.
We will further assume they both use buy orders to acquire raw materials, and that accounting for taxes and the purchase price of the raw materials, both make 2,000 ISK per unit of robotics produced (we're ignoring the vagaries oif the market itself for this purpose).

Player A will produce (3*hf) = 1440 units of robotics per day, yielding 2.8 million ISK in profit per day.
Player B will produce (3 * 6 * hf) = 8,640 robotics per day, for a total profit of 17 million ISK.

Player B doesn't make more money because of skills that make his product more profitable - they make more money because they produce more of a product that is inherently profitable already. And that is the same logic I am trying to follow. My suggestions are designed to increase the normally fixed factor hf (facility hours) per planet that are available to the advanced player, and to improve their ability to store the increased throughput so that they don't have to decrease the amount of time they spend between planet management cycles.

Now we need to look at one more factor: facility cycles per hour (c)
In the above example, the facility cycles per hour is fixed at 1 (for Robotics), so it doesn't matter to the calculation. Under my proposed changes, at level 5, with a 2% modifier, the facility time would drop to 54 minutes.
This changes c from 1.0 to 1.11, which increases the total number of facility hours (hf) on our hypothetical planets from 480 to 533. This changes the total yield for Player B from 8,640 to 9,594 per day, yielding a total daily profit of 19,188,000. So 60 million additional ISK per month reward for a skill that will take about 3 weeks to max out. That doesn't seem unreasonable. Even doubling the number of planets only makes that 120 million more a month, and the additional effort in managing them, not to mention the 31 days to train the skill to level 5, should help compensate for that.

Also, @Ray Hyonhe - I agree that the PI interface needs some love. A lot of love. Like a whole village full of love. But that's a different topic.