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Driving POCO conflict through better PI intel (NOT A TAX WHINE)
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Daedalus Arcova
The Scope
#1 - 2011-12-06 02:14:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Daedalus Arcova
TL;DR version: More intuitive and user-friendly information on the number and location of planetary colonies. This will aid corporations looking to profit from POCO taxes, aid finding the perfect planet for PI, and help drive conflict over planetary resources.

Full version:

If a corp wants to set up some POCOs around some planets in a nearby system, they want to know that it's going to be a worthwhile investment. In general, the more PI colonies on a planet, the more money a POCO will make from it.

But currently, searching for an ideal planet to put up a POCO over is ridiculously hard work. While you can scan a planet's resources from another system, you can't see if it has a POCO, an InterBus CO, or no CO at all, let alone the tax rate. If you want to see how many colonies there are on a planet, you have to search the surface of that planet, inch by inch.

If you haven't tried to find other players' planetary colonies, let me explain it to you. You right-clicking in the planet view, which gives you the option to show other players' command centres. That's all it shows you: one little faint blue dot where their command centre is, which you have to click to see the rest of the network. These markers are tiny, and are incredibly difficult to see against the planetary terrain. Usually, the only way to see them is to adjust the planet scan filter to give you a solid white background against which the command centre pin contrasts - but even then, finding those colonies is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Make that a hundred haystacks, as the number of planets within even 2 or 3 jumps of your location could number in the hundreds.

This is a terrible way to present information that should be easily comparable to help inform decisions about colonisation, investments, or even conquest.

So here are some proposals to put more information at the fingertips of PIers and would-be corporate tax collectors. I start with the simplest, and least objectionable, and work toward the more radical and controversial.

1: Make other players' colonies really obvious (like massive flashing light obvious) in planet view. )This is just correcting what is a horrible UI flaw)
2: Display the total number of colonies on that planet in the planet view, and a list of the players who have colonies on that planet. (This information is already available to players, if they are prepared to find them all)
3: Add an option to the solar system map to show how many colonies are on each planet in the system.
4: Add an option to the star map to show the total number of planetary colonies in any solar system in planet scan range.
5: DELETED
6: Show us some basic data on daily import/export volumes for any planet with a customs office. This should require the player to be in the same solar system.

Only the first change is absolutely necessary (it's just terrible UI design at present). However, all of these suggestions would put useful information in the hands of players, inform investment decisions, and help fuel conflict over the most lucrative worlds.

Feedback appreciated.
Last Idaho
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2011-12-06 10:35:06 UTC
Another thing about these POCO's:

"17% tax on interbus CO? Way too much!"

Hmm, maybe if I place my own POCO with 0% in orbit of the planet...
- Ugh : 150m isk to get my own. I know EVE is a MMO, but does CCP always have to favour the big corps?
- Cry : I cannot even place my own POCO, cause of the Interbus CO.
- Evil : Destroying the Interbus CO will take a very, very long time.

Conclusion:

The only thing I can think of these POCO's is that they are nothing but a way to rip more isk out of the lone players, or small corps / alliances. It is just another way to raise tax, to increase inflation on the market.

I ask you again : why did you do this? To have the option to have your own POCO? Or just to increase tax, inflation so people will need to buy more PLEX with real money from CCP, to continu this game on their own terms?

Please tell me if I am wrong... Or at least think it over again.
Daedalus Arcova
The Scope
#3 - 2011-12-06 12:29:48 UTC
I don't want this to descend into another ignorant whine thread about tax rates or POCOs in general.

This is about gathering intel on other players' planetary colonies, in order to make better informed decisions about where to put up POCOs, or where it's worth fighting over planetary taxes.
Ingvar Angst
Nasty Pope Holding Corp
#4 - 2011-12-06 14:11:52 UTC
Instead of having everything given to you for free, fly your ship to the system in question and see what's there.

Six months in the hole... it changes a man.
Daedalus Arcova
The Scope
#5 - 2011-12-06 15:29:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Daedalus Arcova
Have you ever tried to find other players' colonies through the PI interface? I can only assume you haven't, since if you had, you would agree that it's too damn hard to do at present.

Points 1-4 are information already available to players, even from outside a system. I'm just proposing better ways of presenting that information than the utterly terrible interface we have currently.

However, point 5 would make it too easy. I've deleted it from the OP.

Point 6 is not information already available, but it could possibly enhance gameplay. My mind isn't made up on this particular point though.
Jack Dant
The Gentlemen of Low Moral Fibre
#6 - 2011-12-06 15:55:58 UTC
Completely agreed.

Even just an option to show the complete networks instead of only the CCs would help a lot. Spotting the tiny dots that are CCs in a bit planet is too hard, even if you use the scan interface to "white out" the planet.

Also, there's no way to tell if a network is active or hasn't been used in months. Since PI networks have no upkeep costs, I bet there are lots of abandoned ones around.

What happens in lowsec, stays in lowsec, lowering the barrier to entry to lowsec PVP: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=476644&#post476644
Ingvar Angst
Nasty Pope Holding Corp
#7 - 2011-12-06 17:49:11 UTC
Daedalus Arcova wrote:
Have you ever tried to find other players' colonies through the PI interface? I can only assume you haven't, since if you had, you would agree that it's too damn hard to do at present.

Points 1-4 are information already available to players, even from outside a system. I'm just proposing better ways of presenting that information than the utterly terrible interface we have currently.

However, point 5 would make it too easy. I've deleted it from the OP.

Point 6 is not information already available, but it could possibly enhance gameplay. My mind isn't made up on this particular point though.


Actually, I do it fairly often to make sure I'm not stepping on other peoples extractions in our hole.

Pull up planet view, select see other people's stuff, click other people's command centers. Their stuff shows up. Not a big deal.

Six months in the hole... it changes a man.
Daedalus Arcova
The Scope
#8 - 2011-12-07 10:46:38 UTC
Ingvar Angst wrote:
Pull up planet view, select see other people's stuff, click other people's command centers. Their stuff shows up. Not a big deal.


You can't pretend that those little dots are easy to see.

When you're looking for other colonies in a small area (i.e. near where you're extracting), then looking for other networks is tedious, but it's just about tolerable. But when you're trying to search for colonies across an entire planet, when you don't even know if there are any there at all, it's just ridiculously hard to see them against the planet background.

I'm not saying it's impossible - it's just too hard. It's bad UI.

Remember how hard it used to be to see your probes sometimes when the old nebula still showed in the solar system map? It was only just over a week ago. Or how hard it is to see whether your modules are online or not against some backgrounds? Or how difficult it was to tell active modules apart next to targets when the icons were so dark (now fixed)? Yeah, it's like that.

Or, to take a hypothetical example, imagine if overview brackets were a very dark shade of grey, and you could only see them by zooming in on that part of space. That's what looking for command centres across an entire planet is like.

Either command centres should be easy to see, or they should be completely invisible. There is no reason at all for something to be in the UI, but designed to be difficult to see.