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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Save PI Fittings, er, Layouts
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Obsidiana
Atrament Inc.
#1 - 2011-12-04 06:19:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Obsidiana
Two similar ideas here. Both address the number of clicks involved in PI. One way to reduce clicks would be to have the ability to save some layouts in terms of unit settings and unit locations.


Save Settings

Switching easily between materials extracted would be nice. The problem is you have to manually reconfigure every unit of your colony. This can be made a lot easier if settings could be saved in terms of the type of material, routs, and processor schematics. This can create more up front work, but results in easier future transitions.

Now, I don't think these should be exportable. You would have to set them up on each colony and each new colony.


Save Arrangements

Settings up a new colony is tedious, to me at least. There is no way to orient units in relation to each other directly. I don't see that changing anytime soon, which leaves us fumbling with inaccurate placements. It would be nice if we at least could save the arrangements so you could reuse them.

Note: this would not include reactor heads. Those have to be manual. You have to react to the planet.


Pros & Cons

I don't expect many to agree with me, but this idea is similar to why we can save fittings. It saves time, prevents mistakes, takes out the grunt work, but keeps the thinking parts. Nothing is done for the owner of the colony. That said, it is less work for what is more or less a passive income. There needs to be work involved, and that a good argument for leaving things as they are.

In the past I heard people complain that the time spent fiddling with PI colonies would be better spent in other way. Making it take less time may gain some more interest. It is like the fuel cubes for POSs in a lot of ways, removing an artificial boundary. Believe me, I know that less people in PI means more ISK for me, but I would rather have a good system with more competition than a tedious one with less. That's just me.

If I had to guess, I would say a lot of people will like the first idea but not the second. It would balance the work needed with some tediousness taken away. But hey, they are just ideas.
Seleia O'Sinnor
Drop of Honey
#2 - 2011-12-04 10:33:14 UTC
I completely support this but it will never happen. CCP wants PI to be a mind numbing clickfest. Even after "fixing" PI it's still some work: The duration slider is hellish to use and setting up a colony, even without layouts, could be more streamlined, maybe multiple selection.

Some may consider this a good thing because many people in Eve don't like PI and for the others it's the lack of competition that drives the prives for PI products into (isk)heaven.

Odyssey: Repacking in POS hangars for modules +1,  but please for other stuff too, especially containers. Make containers openable in POS hangars.
Obsidiana
Atrament Inc.
#3 - 2011-12-06 18:39:43 UTC
I can't help but find it funny that people like when a part of a game is not fun.

But, ya, I don't see CCP getting to this any time soon. We didn't have saved fittings for years and years. Now maybe ten years down the line we might see it, but that's being optimistic.

As for the clicks of the duration slider, I don't know what they were thinking. Sure it offers control, but it is a terrible design.
Adrian Dixon
Arbitrary Spaceship Destruction
-affliction-
#4 - 2011-12-06 20:55:43 UTC
I agree it would be nice, I also I made a similar suggestion.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=19890
Adrian Dixon wrote:
I have a planet with 16 manufacturing plants changing the schematics and creating the correct routes is booooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiing every time im chaning my jobs. So why cant we have a way of saving the settings for all our manufacturing to the command centre.

It would only be use if you could save different profiles for all three manufacturing plants, advanced, basic and high-tech. So you could change each level while the other is still running.

So when you click the command centre you would get an extra icon for production profiles and three tabs 'advanced', 'basic' and 'high-tech' under each tab you have a saved profile, click your desired profile then press change profile at the bottom of the window. And a save current profile button at the bottom, all your saved profiles are accessible from any command centre. Easy something that currently takes hundreds of clicks down to single figure.

Any ideas and suggestions?
Thanks
Obsidiana
Atrament Inc.
#5 - 2011-12-08 08:19:08 UTC
I really hope CCP implements this. It would make colony management so much easier. Even if we just were able to save routes and schematics it would be so much easier. That said, I think there is a need for a wizard-like setup for colonies. It just is an awkward interface.
Mindnut
Rockbiter Industries
#6 - 2011-12-08 11:08:24 UTC
I like these ideas.

Two things that crossed my mind were:
1. Being able to select multiple routes at once. Lets say from the launch pad to 3 different basic processors.
2. Being able to save a formation for the extractor pins and the ability to move and rotate the formation holding shift

Today - The Power of Two Tomorrow - 2 Hulks and an Orca
Tiuk Jaafar
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#7 - 2011-12-08 15:42:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Tiuk Jaafar
Grouping factories like we group weapons will be better. So we can bulid/change the routes and switch schemes very easily.

Saved settings will become invalid as soon as you remove or replace any single facility
Obsidiana
Atrament Inc.
#8 - 2011-12-09 16:09:42 UTC
Tiuk Jaafar wrote:
Grouping factories like we group weapons will be better. So we can bulid/change the routes and switch schemes very easily.

Saved settings will become invalid as soon as you remove or replace any single facility

Not a bad idea, but I’m afraid that would not work with how I run my colonies. I often have processors running different schematics. Then I buffer materials of one type and then another, keeping ahead of the processors. Granted, this is the next best thing to saving settings (I only have to change one unit, once the ball is rolling), but grouping would not work for me.

I could argue that the extractors should not forget where to put materials. Others may place different material in different places. Sometimes, especially when starting a colony, just have one material being extracted. So even I sometimes need radically different settings. If we could save the settings, flexibility is maintained.
Tinu Moorhsum
Random Events
#9 - 2011-12-09 16:30:00 UTC
Obsidiana wrote:
Two similar ideas here. Both address the number of clicks involved in PI. One way to reduce clicks would be to have the ability to save some layouts in terms of unit settings and unit locations.



The biggest thing that would save me clicks on PI would be the ability to select several industry facilities at one time (for example with ctrl-click) and tell them all to make the same thing and route it to the same destination.... and likewise to select a spaceport and be able to route incoming material to all linked production facilities.

That would change the number of clicks for moving a whole PI installation from about 80 to about 10.

The wet dream, of course would be the ability to rubber-band-select the whole shebang and say "move it here" and just click on OK for the bill.

T-