Can you please add the ability to save a setup for a whole planet? Like we have fleet setups if there was a planet one with all nodes roughly placed where you just had minor corrections to location that would save a lot of clicks. Especially if someone for example only harvests XXX item across dozens of planets.
2 Likes
Quite disappointing changes though.
A lot of you ask for chenges in PI mechanics like bigger storage bay or CPU/PG balance. CCP Claymore clearly wrote that this update is just for UI/UX guys. I’m really happy to read about those changes but as someone already mentioned, most of them are cosmetic like renaming “Planet Mode”. The reduction of clicks from 300 to 185 is not really impressive, I mean it’s always better then nothing offcorse but it can be reduced futher. Two ideas what could really help are:
- saving installation layout
- multiselecting processors to implement job schematic in all of them at once and direct routes
I personally do more reprocessing then extracting so establishing over 20 processors is a real pain. Ideas mentioned above would significantly reduce the amount of clicks.
Red circles when our settings are wrong is great idea. I also like the new colonies window, it’s awesome. Planetary production information improvement look also nice but, out of topic, could you finally do the same for reactions? They have no production info at all. Thank you for your time and work 
Edit:
THIS! The POCO is owned by a corporation not a single player so it deffinately should have a corp hargar/storage.
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All of these changes sound great, but I’d trade them all for the ability to save layouts.
6 Likes
This would be great but I don’t think the game engine could account for stuff like distance between buildings given the discrepancy in planet radius. How would the data on your planetary setup be stored on the server? This is a very complicated problem to solve and I don’t think the guys doing this QOL pass are looking to spend that amount of effort. There’s much simpler things they can do to make our lives 70% less crappy that don’t require programming a new feature from the ground up.
Why do we have to have multiple nodes of the same type e.g. Basic and Advanced Processors why not just upgrade a single node in the same way as the command centre.
Because without the differences between the CPU/PG requirements of these buildings you lose a lot of the diversity between different colony types. I’ll admit there isn’t a whole lot of “game” in figuring out how to set up a colony properly but there’s not much sense in making the profession even more bland
Massive CPU and Power grid upgrades to Gas Command Centers, given the distances involved on the planet, Command Centers have never scaled well when used on Gas planets. This has been a problem forever!!
Ignoring giant gas planets is what separates the men from the boys. Yeah it’s pretty dumb but it certainly contributes to the flavor of PI. I’d be more on board with this idea if there was a shortage of commodities made on gas planets but there isn’t.
Also wouldn’t eliminating planet radius’ effect on link PG/CPU requirements be a better solution to this problem? Inflating the capacity of every colony is only going to deflate the value of the end product and we’re already being squeezed by the contaminated lorentz fluid bottleneck.
Remove the pointless 10% NPC tax and the Skill that reduces it to 5%. Never got why that was added.
This exists for the same reason the NPC corp tax exists. It’s not healthy for the game if all P2 > P4 upgrading is done in highsec and folks putting up POCOs in lowsec, null and WHspace have to compete with 0% pocos in highsec, discouraging the utilization of a crucial alliance income mechanic. Everything in highsec is at a financial disadvantage for a very good reason.
5 Likes
When building structures, pin placement for a nice tidy setup is time consuming, can we have a snap to grid option?
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With the understanding that this is just UI people working on this, please add two things, both on the extractor dialog:
- Restart all extractors button (or do you need gameplay support for this?)
- Making the time slider longer so it’s easier to pick the extraction time that you want.
Also, I’d like to point out that while these great changes came about from a small amount of developer time, please look at the reaction it got at Fanfest. This deserves some gameplay engineering support as well!
8 Likes
Restarting all extractors on one planet at the same time is not always optimal. Different materials have different production rates & resource competition could skew expected amounts, requiring some tweaks. I’m happy the 2010 first release, where each extractor head was its own pin to restart, is now so long-ago and forgotten.
+1 for pin snap-to option. I understand a lot of the ideas here were kicked around at Fanfest, its just a matter of convincing management to dedicate more developer time to any one feature, when so many other features beg for attention.
1 Like
Good changes, but please don’t insult us by pretending that the “300 clicks!” is something that you just discovered on your own, and not something that we’ve been screaming at you since 2010, only to see it ignored like a child covering his ears.
I have to agree that the lack of any way to speed up refreshing cycles limits the overall QOL value. Also dissapointing not to see a way to save custom setups and possibly have a way to duplicate them rather than go through the click cycle all over again.
The bug with the customs office windows closing on thier own probably contributes to many (tens of?) thousands of needless clicks weekly. Surprised that hasn’t been addressed.
2 Likes
Cant wait to test.
Shift-Click to move all extractors as a formation?
Any chance being able to update the surface to space launcher for a larger payload? Sometimes the POCO is killed and not replaced for months. I have done 500m³ with egg timers during a mining op. Dental extraction, hungry tigers and PI. It’s in good company.
1 Like
But it would be a lot better with planets getting ice caps and auroras, and some improved textures to not be such pixelated from close up.
Also, I always wanted some crewed colonies and crazy random accidents to happen sometimes, to break the monotony… Think about logging one day to find out that whole crew vanished and there was still hot food on their plates, and all spacesuits and vehicles still on their places… where all of them could have gone… 
Take for example dwarf fortress, one of the things why its so interesting, is because some things are unraveling one after another, when you dont care about colony. In effect it is a disaster sooner or later, preferably later. Or if you like, sooner.
5 Likes
How about getting rid of the holograms completely? They get in the way of everything, not just routes. Try clicking on a pad and accidentally clicking a processor. They add no value, at least give us a way to turn them off.
1 Like
I can’t like this post more than once, so +1 here!
OK @CCP_Falcon here is a few idea’s to help save clicks.
-
Make planet’s structures savable like a fitting for a ship…make it save everything about the setup including all routing information. This would allow for me to click a fit on a planet, pay the cost and then instantly be able to utilize it. I could have many different saved configs for production of many types of things or just resource extraction.
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Make all factories (and storage) mass editable…allow me to select them all at once, tell them to all produce water (for example) and to let me pick the output location. I then should be able to click on the storage facility/spaceport, it should have a create mass route option and when clicked allows you to highlight all the factories you wish it to output to and then click ok.
These 2 changes would drop that click rate down to the floor.
5 Likes
@CCP_Falcon I have a question:
The last patch, the Winter Expansion according to the Updates schedule, came out on March 20, the literal last day of winter. The Summer Expansion is coming out on May 29th, literally 70 days later, and a full month before the beginning of summer on June 21. My question is thus:
Does CCP know how seasons work?
If CCP does a “PI Overhaul” without fixing the “Extraction Area Size” Slider so help me God…
For real though, it is the worst UI in the game. It is the kind of UI component you come up with when your too tired at uni and your trying to think of terrible ways to deal with user inputs.
Click slider for time with changing increments and no marks for good times like 1d? Get outta town.
2 Likes
How about an AutoBuilder mode which massively simplifies everything? ie
- Whole installation templates, modifiable, matching the 5 power levels for the skill (forgot name)
- Option to build clusters of items eg 5 small industry and the game places them for you.
- From the extractors, industry facilities, storage and launch pads, the game should be able to work out the schematics links and routes needed. That would eliminate nearly all clicks.
And the big question nobody seems to have touched:
How do we make PI an interesting, less disconnected part of the game?
1 Like
I’d like to remind everyone here that this is not the Player Features & Ideas thread, so if we can keep the discussion around the changes mentioned in the Dev Blog.
Please use the appropriate threads:
- Player Features & Ideas for more extensive ideas.
- Little Things / Small QoL for minor suggestions and Quality of Life stuff.
2 Likes