The biggest thing I would like to see is the ability to OFFLINE infrastructure so that I can retain that infrastructure and then online say, a p0 extraction setup. Then when I want to go back to a production planet setup, I offline my extractors n stuff and then online all the labs. And thanks for the link upgrade tip. Transfer times were making manu-planets an exercise in babysitting.

As a POCO owner.... Yes they do generate conflict. The problem is knowing what planets are worth fighting for. A temperate planet near Jita is a gold mine. A random gas planet in nul, not worth it. When RvB lost a portion of POCOs to break-a-wish, 10 POCOs made the majority of our income and losing those hurt. The remaining ones don't make a 10th as much. Some way of seeing the profitability of a hi sec POCO may help drive conflict which would be nice.

Other thoughts... Fuel is a scary idea for 2 reasons... One you are making eve more job like which burns people out. We in RvB were given some random POCOs. Having to fuel the ones in nul would suck. Granted they make no real income anyways but they would suck. The second reason, I dislike punishing random players for the laziness of others. Sure in say a nul alliance you can get mad at some guy for not fueling the jump bridge. But hi sec POCO fuel? It would punish random people just because I was lazy and didn't fuel it. This would have to be something carefully balanced to work (like my Corp makes no tax of the POCO is not fueled, but tax rates don't change and an unfueled POCO doesn't hurt the guy running pi.)

Also... Please can we get a better way to transfer POCOs? I have to transfer each one individually and that can only be done in system where the POCO is located. Plus when looking at assets in space, it tells you how many POCOs you have in a system but it never tells you what planet specifically. So if you have 2 in a system with 12 planets, you have to right click and check each planet to see which has the transfer option.

What I propose would be the ability to route materials from a launchpad into different silos, working similar to the resource extractors. Say every 15-30 minutes a set amount of m3 is moved from the LP to designated silos, allowing the player to just drop from the POCO to the planet, and let the worker bees move all the materials around without having to come back every 4 hours just to move stuff into ONE silo at a time. Option 2 would be to just do away with the expedited transfer cool-down entirely. It really doesn't seem to serve much purpose that I can understand and is frustrating and a time/money sink that doesn't really need to be there.

As a POCO owner.... Yes they do generate conflict. The problem is knowing what planets are worth fighting for. A temperate planet near Jita is a gold mine. A random gas planet in nul, not worth it. When RvB lost a portion of POCOs to break-a-wish, 10 POCOs made the majority of our income and losing those hurt. The remaining ones don't make a 10th as much. Some way of seeing the profitability of a hi sec POCO may help drive conflict which would be nice.

Other thoughts... Fuel is a scary idea for 2 reasons... One you are making eve more job like which burns people out. We in RvB were given some random POCOs. Having to fuel the ones in nul would suck. Granted they make no real income anyways but they would suck. The second reason, I dislike punishing random players for the laziness of others. Sure in say a nul alliance you can get mad at some guy for not fueling the jump bridge. But hi sec POCO fuel? It would punish random people just because I was lazy and didn't fuel it. This would have to be something carefully balanced to work (like my Corp makes no tax of the POCO is not fueled, but tax rates don't change and an unfueled POCO doesn't hurt the guy running pi.)

Also... Please can we get a better way to transfer POCOs? I have to transfer each one individually and that can only be done in system where the POCO is located. Plus when looking at assets in space, it tells you how many POCOs you have in a system but it never tells you what planet specifically. So if you have 2 in a system with 12 planets, you have to right click and check each planet to see which has the transfer option.

It would punish random people just because I was lazy and didn't fuel it.

@OP, every point you made is dead on center, and as an indy/explorer I too find some of the things you high lighted to be true and really just repetitionous in its own right. I too would just love to see PI overhauled to where those of us that do "enjoy" doing PI, to see a better quality of life in the way we work our colonies.

I do have one question tho, how many colonies can you have on one character? I thought it was six (6), but you said 36???

LOL No. 6 is current max. I suggested 36 as an extension with "Advanced Interplanetary Consolidation" with +5 colonies per level. But Looking back at it, I think that number looks a little high... LOL Maybe +2 or +3...

I guess he has at least six characters owning pi farms. It's reasonable to assume that a lot of people have several characters committed to PI just for the low-effort-rewards.

slowly i am starting to see the actual magnitutde of how much this game gears towards the lazy and inconvinienceables.

Is that a word? It should be a word!

Having multiple PI toons - or even PI accounts - is common because PI not only scales well, but scales efficiently.

With one PI toon, you'll find yourself doing a lot of freighting to get the resources you need to build anything significant.

With multiple PI toons, you can base each PI toon in one or two systems, harvest what's good locally, and then only do freighting rarely.

The time investment per character actually goes down as the number of characters goes up. This is why the serious PI producers can have 15+ PI toons (and yes, I *do* know people with that many - there are probably people with more).

Do you think these players would be interested in an expansion of PI complexity, diversity, and functionality? Or do you think the mega-producers want it to stay the way it is?

...

@OP, ok thank you very much, I was wondering what da, LOL! So technically one account is 18 installations times two which would be two accounts then, thank you!

The limiting factor on any PI setup is time, not ISK; any PI account easily pays for its own gametime via PLEX.

I can't see CCP taking any move that will reduce the number of accounts subbed.

I was suggesting an advanced skill that would allow more dedicated users to have more colonies. But I have heard of people allocating multiple toons for PI. I don't think it's a matter of laziness (in most cases), I think it's a matter of gameplay style. Not everyone is into PvP as dominant mode of play. Some people seek other methods of enjoying the game. I'm not much into PvP (seems like a waste of ISK), but I do enjoy the thrill of danger while lurking about in nullsec and kspace.

And I've never seen anyone use that word, so you are the first!

I have no idea how you managed to make that leap from lazy people to the rest you wrote.
Lazy people are lazy, it doesn't matter what activity they are lazy in.
They still demand conviniences which they shouldn't have.

Gameplay style is irrelevant to the game as a whole and being lazy by itself is not a style.

You're mixing two things that don't go together.


Anyhow, don't want to derwil. I am all for an overhaul that adds proper social dynamics and interaction and makes sure that those who deserve it have their POCOs and income. So: not everyone who thinks "i pay so i deserve it".

http://crossingzebras.com/we-need-to-talk-about-pi/

By Banden Lokemir - great article with 3 quality of life fixes

Nice to see a sensible discussion for once, however I am suprised an ISD has not moved this thread to 'Players Features and ideas discussions thread'.

How about integration with citadels? You could launch commodities from the Command Centre to a citadel nearby (say within 5000km of the planet) load by load if you wanted to avoid an onerous POCO tax. This would be especially helpful if you're a P4 producer.