Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Dear Devs and fellow Eve players,
Hi. I'm going to throw some ideas on P.I. out there to be batted around. I apologize if it's not entirely coherent.

Item: P.I. in its current form is lucrative, but very painful and boring.

Discussion: The requirement to be seated at your computer, logged into on character at a time to do P.I., while suffering through a repetitive stress injury inducing click fest, is not fun. The P.I. user interface, and thus the experience, is not enjoyable. P.I. is currently done in a planetary view screen. I personally do not do much other than sit in a station, travel, or mine while interacting with the planet view mode (e.g. not missing much).
There is a whole game genre begging to be allowed into Eve, real time strategy (RTS) such as Command and Conquer. There is a large host of existing game apps that allow detailed interaction with environments, harvesting of resources, and combat operations that are playable on either PC or phone/tablet platforms. Finding uses for in-game items such as Planetary Vehicles, Scientists, Marines and others could produce a more immersive experience. Harnessing the enthusiasm for RTS by bringing it into the Eve Universe would be beneficial.

Recommendations: Take P.I. in its current form out of the game. When choosing to do P.I. from within Eve, open an external, new game window, (browser based?) that brings up a Command and Conquer style RTS game, which in turn allows you to harvest, produce, and prepare for export, P.I. on all your planets. Allow multiple characters to be tied to one P.I. game through a special API, so P.I. can be done without having to log into each character individually through the Eve client, thus not interrupting the Eve game experience. Importing materials, assets and NPCs would be done in the Eve client through the Customs Offices. The retrieval of P.I. exports would still be through the Customs Offices, but everything down on the planet would be separate. Hire, and train NPC's to automate parts of your P.I. to reduce workload and tedium. Use the RTS nature of the game to have PVE type offensive/defensive operations on the planet to control resources, possibly expanding to PVP at some point in the future. Make the P.I. RTS available to play (or manage) on phone or tablet without being logged onto the Eve client. No need to try to port this to PS4, Xbox One.

Conclusion: Eve Planetary Interaction has a lot of potential, but is in desperate need of an overhaul. A new, external mini-game, accessible through PC/Mac and Android/iPhone Apps, interacting with Eve through an API, but still independent, would be amazing.

Been suggested before and while I would love to see a app outside of eve that allowed this I doubt that ccp has the finances and time to program and build it , look what a mess dust was for instance and that had funding

Thanks for the replies. I acknowledge the shortage of CCP resources to apparently do much more than build Upwell structures and ship skins, but there are large holes in the Eve experience that are worth addressing if we want to see Eve go another 10+ years.

Rivr - Totally agree that Farmville grinding is worthless and should be avoided. I am making a suggestion that, with a little work, could bring a whole new experience to Eve through what is currently an outdated, painful module (P.I.).

perseus - yeah, Dust... was a flawed concept from the start. First person shooter on a planet with no real in-game consequences was ********. You have to have an "infantry" account. Just bad. Bad ideas executed with passion still produce bad results. If they do FPS again, it needs to be in ship to ship commandeering, ship to station combat modes. FPS mini-game, with NPC support, to attack and take enemy ships or stations. Eventually CCP will need to model and introduce station and ship interiors (beyond a concept art book). I'd have to say, avoiding consoles entirely would be a good idea for a P.I. module. Think of the applicable parts of Command & Conquer 4.

Maria - the passive income thing is great. totally agree, but the interface could be changed to use the RTS type game and the hiring and training of NPC's to run it for you passively while you're not there, days, weeks, months? Currently the passive income still requires a lot of attention to maximize the returns. I would say we could use more automation (and the RTS interface) to make it even more passive, and tons more fun. I hear a lot of excuses why it can't be done. I say, why not?

I'll agree with the idea that the UI is terrible, but leave it passive... I like my nearly risk-free passive income.

Honestly, if they could just allow you to save templates for pin layouts, and set schematics / routes on multiple pins at a time, it would be golden.

Edit:
Oh... and get rid of that ridiculous spinning holographic preview of the facility while you have it selected. Of all the useless annoying things, that is by far the worst. Every time I see it I have to ask why they thought that would be in any way a good idea.

I proposed something like this as far back as 2012....

We're still waiting.

I kind of like where this could be going.

I always thought that PI could be graded in a way that if you just want passive income, you only need to do so much, but if you want to make PI your main industrial income, you could have tools either skill based, using NPC assets like "Scientist" or extra structures to improve output on a planet.

Plus I would like to see the structures on the planet be owned by the corp that controls the POCO so the various facilities work like those on a station they could also be centralized on the planet. This would give incentive to the owners of the planets to invest in the infrastructure, plus more income from taxes :). These facilities could also be attack-able from orbit, some game play we lost when DUST ended. But adding facilities that can shoot back would be cool too :)

Also it would be helpful to have mobile harvesters that you can move across a planet, this would work well with a centralized corp run factory system. Instead of having the current fixed base mining, which means that when an area drys up you have to move everything to a new location and the click fest never ends. You could buy a harvester or 2 or more deploy on the planet and have it send the materials back to you hanger to continue being processed.

Other features I would love to see in PI:

Restart All Button
Shareable Templates
Auto Connect when you add structures (set an output and all the inputs are automatically set or a short list of options provided).
New Upwell POCO's with added docking :P
Sending materials between planets without using a hauler, a premium service (but it could save so much time).

PI should be tied to planetary districts which you then fit like a Citadel etc, which then allows players to fight over it using orbital bombardment, and then means while it becomes slightly more passive, it's also at risk of wars & attacks. So removes the risk free element of the passive.

A service module that provides the functionality of the advanced and high-tech processors would be a useful addition to the refineries. Give us a reason to build refineries in highsec and wormholes. Eliminating the need for factory planets would let those planets be used for harvest.

You transfer some of the risk from the POCO to the refinery.

Requires more thought but I don't see any significant downside.

Edit: actually wormholes already have polymer reactions to justify a refinery but I can't see anyone building them in highsec for the sole purpose of refining/compressing ore.

Better idea why not:

One, streamline the existing manufacturing trees.
Two, return planetary bombardment to the game as a form of active involvement by letting you attack/disrupt a hostile player/corp/alliance's PI assets and infrastructure, not just their customs offices.
Three, if you can scan and hack orbital relic and data sites then why not access the countless ruins that surely litter the surface of planets. Of course this can only be done with the aid of appropriate (new) specialized planetary buildings/equipment.