CelFea Dar
Tri-Fleet Logistics
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Posted - 2010.12.08 06:06:00 -
[1]
First and foremost, I love PI.
I've only been playing Eve for about 1-1/2yrs, and even though my main character is in a 0.0 sov-holding alliance, I haven't been able to develop the skillset to get into serious POS-management, reasearch and development, or industrial manufacturing. So my isk-making endeavors were mostly limited to ratting and mining.
For me, PI was an oportunity to get in on the ground-floor in a new isk-making industry. Essentially being able to stand with equal footing with anyone else in the game (as far as skills were concerned at least)
After doing PI in nullsec, in Empire, and in wormhole space, and managing upwards of 20 planets with up to 20-30 planetary modules per planet, and after reading the DevBlog and the community feedback -- I have the following suggestions:
#1 -- Incorporate Eve "passengers" into the planetary management system. For example, give each command center a number of "offices" (like ships have high slots, mid slots and low slots) and allow planetary engineers the ability to bring in specific colonists and install them in an office. For example, to make our extractors become more efficient we might install a scientist in a command center "Prodcution Manager" slot.
#2 -- In order to facilitate some form of automated launch from spaceports or at least some sort of remote launch capability, tie that to a specific type of command center official. ie: Install someone in the "Flight Controller" slot and you can remotely transfer goods to the customs office.
#3 -- Allow courier contracts to be created for items located in Planetary Customs Offices. This would facilitate players being able to get assets moved to and from planets or to stations by using other player services for hauling and freight. Also allow trade contracts to be established planetside so that players working on the same planet can contract items between themselves without having to use the customs office. Tie this in with suggestion #1 by having a "Trade Relations" office/slot on the command center.
#4 -- Develop new modules such as training facilities, research centers, and universities -- which would "produce" the various classes of "passengers" that would be traded among planet engineers for the purposes of enhancing their planetary operations. This creates a whole new economic demand and could form the basis of planetary populations. ie: a freighter-load of colonists from one planet could be used to boost the population of another planet and thereby increase or maintain that planet's industrial output.
#5 -- In conjunction with #4, implement a system where colonists must be supplied to a planetary colony on a regular basis and are used as "fuel" for the colony. When a colony runs out of "fuel" then it shuts down and after being abandoned it is removed from the planet. Currently there is no process by which an abandoned planetary colony is ever removed from the game other than by the player destroying the command center. I would think the servers would appreciate the effort and the added requirement of some sort of fuel or resource limitation would enhance the in-game economy, player interaction and overall gameplay.
I admit that not knowing what the future holds for the Dust-514 implementation that some of these ideas may already be on the drawing boards in some form...but assuming that the impact of Dust-514 on planetary resources would naturally lend itself to affected the number of colonists, operation of planetary modules, and availability of planet-side resources in some way, shape, form or fashion...surely these ideas are not too far off the mark. And I believe the Pi community would greatly like to see some form of these types of game mechanics released in the coming months.
The problem isn't a mindless "click-fest" so much as the fact that all those clicks have very little purpose other than to restart the extractor cycles.
Which isn't very much fun at all.
:::Tri-Fleet Logistics, Intellegence Division |