Player Features and Ideas Discussion

We all know the PI interface needs an overhaul. It's clunky and prohibitive to involvment. Busywork CAN be fun -- it keeps the mind occupied with a focused activity that produces a clear result. But a frustrating interface interferes with that focus. And hours and hours of planet design as the opportunity cost for getting into PI is prohibitive to involvment.

In addition to a few cosmetic and basic functionality improvements to the current inverface, I suggest a wizard for doing all your setup all at once, quickly and intuitively. Here is how it would be laid out.

It would have 2 tabs -- The Setup Calculator, and the Diagram.

Setup Calculator:
~All appropriate icons are draggable to chat windows as links, and draggable to planets for facility construction.
--If not enough CPU/Power is available, icons are greyed out.
--MW/TF readout w/ numeric and bar-style fitting info, like a ship fitting window has.

LARGE FRIENDLY BUTTONS:
--Snap to Prime Meridian @ Equator
--Command Center:
--Upgrade
--Snap to facility
--Not addable (adds itself when planet started)
--Launchpads
--Add to Diagram
--Snap to facility
--Extractors
--Add to Diagram
--Add Extractor Heads (populates a counter on a single head in the diagram - when later dragged from diagram, will populate in default locations, for later arrangement)
--Snap to inactive facilities
--Processors
--Add to Diagram w/ recipe
--Snap to facility
--Storage
--Add to Diagram
--Snap to facility

Diagram:
--Drag icons from left column onto a workspace, where their quantity, MW, and TF, are displayed. A tooltip also displays recipe and routing.
~Facilities added to diagram do not arrange themselves by default. Here is the process:
--All icons added to the diagram from the Setup Calculator are listed on the left. There are +/- buttons to add or subtract more, if needed.
--Players drag icons to the diagram screen. They may drag them and link them in any configuration. They may add links between them.
--A readout shows minimum length of a link on present planet. There is a checkbox to assume all calculations are using the minimum length link, which allows you to upgrade links from this screen, quickly simply by left clicking to add a level, and right clicking to subtract a level.
--Players may set processor recipes in the diagram, setting the same recipe in multiple processors by ctrl-clicking or selection-box selecting them. When a recipe is selected, its product and ingredients will appear as small tags floating next to the processor.
--Players may route ingredients in the diagram, similarly doing so from multiple facilities of the same type at a time. They can also drag the ingredient and product icons to other facilities to route them to/from those facilities, and multi-select them with multi-drag for multiply selected facilities.
--Extractor pre-configuration will be available in the diagram, setting recipe and hours, but not placing heads. All heads may be placed after extractor is placed during Glueing.
--Anywhere on the diagram, hitting the delete button removes it from the diagram, but doesn't decrement it on the left side (use the +/- buttons for that).

Facility Glueing:
--When any facility is dragged from the diagram to the planet, all facilities linked to it will be pasted with it, but not placed. Only the facility under the mouse cursor will be dragged. Instead, they will be faded, and draggable.
--While still unplaced, facilities which run into others will snap to the nearest possible location in the direction of the mouse cursor from the center of the other facility. When the insert button is held down, any unplaced facilities will instead be pushed out of the way, and the various bubbles will push one another around, but no placed facility will be bumped. (Easter Egg: if you bump them hard enough while holding down insert, they'll scatter, shrivel up like Pacman, and pop! In this manner, we will have invented EvE Bowling.)
--After arranging unplaced structures, double click to place them.
--Hit submit, pay some ISK, and it all places, sets recipes, and routes itself all at once!
--Extractor pre-configuration will be available in the diagram, setting recipe and hours, but not placing heads. All heads may be placed after extractor is placed.
--Multiple networks can be built in and glued from the same workspace. If they aren't linked, they won't drag together. The wizard and workspace will be stretchable.

After placement is done:
--Perform expedited transfers and new routing quickly by dragging ingredient/product icons between facilities. If dragged to a processor from a storage facility, or from an extractor or processor as an ingredient, a popup will ask if you want to create a route (or tell you that route is not possible in the normal way incorrect ingredients are rejected).
--Perform launches by dragging ingredients from launchpad/command center to customs office, or hit launch button to go to launch window from here.

--Just like fittings, diagram arrangements would be able to be labeled, saved, and shared!!!
SCORE!

Cosmetic and basic functionality changes to follow in next comment.

Moving this to Features & Ideas for exposure.

It would be VERY helpful if a PI colony design could be saved like a ship fit. Then you could duplicate it on other planets, and share it with other players.

If colony design is streamlined a bit, perhaps we can get some new buildings or variants of old ones. Maybe different sizes of storage installations instead of one size fits all. And perhaps different sorts of extractor heads and extractor control units, with tradeoffs for range from ECU to head, draw rate, depletion rate, Grid/CPU, and for ECUs the number of heads allowed.

Actually, I disagree. There's some pretty convincing research being done on the value of busywork games. It's steady, accessible to people at work, and the rewards are reliable. Everything that's coming out of the think-tanks says that designers need to remove barriers to entry, and add transparency to the reliable rewards of busywork style gaming. A LOT of facebook games succeed by doing this. And you know that CCP has gotta be dreading the rising tide of shovelware.

CCP has done a few other things that seem to indicate they'd actually listen to this advice, and they'd probably have no problem nerfing whatever market fluctuations happen because more people get interested in PI game content.

Also, what with the new Fozzie Sov changes coming up, we'll all need to be doing more PI work anyway. So if their new, less tedious Sov system makes us have to do more of another tedious thing... well, they'd better fix that thing too.

This would be awesome.

The two most simple improvements that CCP can do to PI is to allow a series of preset circle packing figures for Drills and allow the figure to be moved around.

For more infos on Circles packing in a circle read here:

Circles packing in a circle

That would save a lot of clicking when you need to reposition Drills or entire extractors, and it's not very different from what they did by allowing preset probe positioning in the exploration UI.

You have my vote as someone who does 36 planets . It is such a pain to set up

I support the fitting screen version, and the circles in a circle version.

Absolutely nothing to do with the 405 iterations of PI I run. Nothing at all.