I have, over the past three days, had the mixed pleasure of setting up 29 planets of P1 → P4 production. I’ve done this before, and every time I’m reminded of how terrible the user interface is.
This time around, I used a small mouseclick counter app. From undocking in a Nereus with command centers to everything up and running, I counted no less than 12947 mouseclicks.
This is unacceptable. The industry changes from last year heavily encourages players to get into PI, but setting up somewhat large-scale operations has literally left me with my wrist in physical pain. It’s no exaggeration to say that I know intelligent children who could design a better UI than what the professional game devs at CCP has allowed to remain largely unchanged for about a decade.
However, let it not be said that I only complain while offering no solutions, so here we go:
Allow us to save constellations of extractor heads and structures, including schematics/links/routes
Hotkeys. Right now, everything without exception in the PI interface is done with mouseclicks.
Let us copy routes, i.e a route from a storage facility, shift-clicking factories now creates identical routes.
The way upgrading command centers works fairly well, but link upgrades are terrible - I’ve upgraded links about 700 levels during this setup, and their hitboxes are tiny so that’s easily 2500 additional clicks.
This is one of the areas of the game with most room for improvement, and it’s years overdue. Thank you for your attention, I will now go and put ice on my right wrist.
You under stand that the intent isn’t for a single player to produce from p1 to p4 right?
Hell the industry changes you referenced were implemented to further segregate production throughout industry promoting specialization rather than jack of all.
On top of that it really is only a minor hassle the first time you set it up. After that it’s the lowest effort isk maker in eve.
The other problem being the age of pi.
That code is so far legacy that I guarantee it will require a rework from the ground up for even trivial changes.
At a maximum of 6 planets per character this means you’re setting up PI on at least five characters in one go.
Of course that’s going to result in a lot of mouse clicks. If you want fewer mouse clicks while setting up PI, don’t set up 5 characters at once.
Yes, I have 36 planets myself. And yes, I know it’s my own choice to spend that much time clicking when I set it all up again. Until now I’ve set it all up three times in 4 years. If you count clicks/day for a decent ISK income that’s not bad at all.
It really is though when you compare it against how much isk you can ultimately gain per click.
No it’s not.
If players were intended to set up that many planets then you should expect the developers to make sure qol is taken care of. However if you are operating outside of what is intended any diminished qol you experience is on you.
Seven characters, but yes. And it doesn’t change the fact that the interface is still terrible, which is the point of this thead - I’m not complaining about the isk/hour once the whole thing is set up.
Just going to point out this is the wrong section of the forums for this.
As far as clicks, 2010 is when pi came out and for one single planet was over 300 clicks,
2020: where are we at with the clicks to setup the single planet with Command Center, Launchpad, Extractor with 10 heads, 12 processors and links and routes for all the processors. Another rough count has us down to roughly 185 clicks.
So for doing that for 6 planets, over 1100 clicks.
I feel like it’s noticeable that so far, nobody has stated that they disagree with the assertion that the interface is bad.
The only solution I’ve seen so far is “Just don’t do it that much”, which really makes no sense to me since I know of few money-making activities that scale as well with more characters/accounts as planetary interaction.
Yes it is. Nobody cares what was intended by the devs, when doing something else makes more sense - there was a reason people used Rokh’s to mine way back when, and it wasn’t because CCP wanted the Rokh to be a mining ship. It’s a question of min/maxing your productivity.
This might very well be true, wasn’t sure where I should put it. That’s on me.
As I mentioned, I’m doing production of higher tier materials. Here’s an example of one planet (not saying it’s highly optimized, but it’s what I use). With structures, links, link upgrades, schematics, expedited transfers, occasional misclicks etc, I got around 500 clicks per planet.
well get over it … you dont setup that stuff every day … other activities in EVE need a lot of clicking to … sorry … its the way today … there is no voice control or other fancy ways … you click or dont click …
i dont understand why you make a big deal out of it … if it is easy everyone would do it … its to easy anyways … PI price is to low …
really … if you dont like it … stop it … do something else … i dont know how much multiboxer miner click but you can try it …
It would be nice if you could actually make PI instead of going around looking at everyones gantrys which get magically transferred without consequence each time a war happens. Way to lock people out of the game content, yikers. #FIXPI
Frankly, I find it amazing that players do PI at all.
It speaks for the OP that they suggest to improve the interface, only after they took that hurdle. Most industrialists would only consider the potential competition at that point and shut up.
Of course I have a small bias too: the more people do PI, the better it gets for the players that don’t.
That leaves us only with one guide: in gaming, a UI can never ever be too convenient. One hard rule of good game design is that you never want the player to fight the UI.
Since it’s PI, the priority may be very low though. I suspect the users consider it some kind of job instead of a game.
Thank you, as I mentioned before I wasn’t sure where to put it.
I absolutely agree with this.
My gripe isn’t with how hard PI is, it’s so simple you could train a chimpanzee to do it, and the only gate of entry is “How much punishment are you willing to exert on your right-hand index finger?”. This is not good game design, as Jumpdrive said.
well … PI has to be setup once and then you use the setup for some time … years if everything goes well …
any other activity have to be done constantly … so many clicks while mining, ratting or … well everything but in PI you think its a problem …
ok yes it would come handy if you can copy a setup from one planet to a other and just asign the jobs but the buildings an routings can be coppied but … you cant … PI setup is easy and you do it once … so come on … its not a big problem at all …
