[PI] Create connections with other characters' launchpads

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Allow for creation of consensual links between launchpads belonging to separate characters.
Only for transferring planetary resources and commodities.
Not for pooling power and CPU.

[Or add another planetary structure type that allows for transfer of goods between colonies on the planet.]

The goods could be sent with Expedited transfer. To complete, the other party would need to accept the transfer within short time (1 day? 1 hour?). The resources being shipped would be on hold and unavailable in senders launchpad until shipment acceptation is expired or transfer is cancelled.

Something akin to contracts but without the following:
launchapd transfer → POCO hangar transfer → cargohold transfer → hauling to station → hangar transfer →
creating contract → accepting contract
→ cargohold transfer → hauling to POCO → POCO hangar transfer → launchapd transfer

EDIT: as pointed out by @Drogon_Mace

This additional interplanetary export/import function would be unavailable in alpha state just as regular export methods are now.

Additionally, export/import fees should be applied - just like they are applied upon up & down POCO transfers. This implies both parties of the interplanetary transfer would pay same fees at POCO rates just as if they exchanged the commodities via POCO transfers. The proceeds would go to POCO owning corporation.

Furthermore in case of POCO destruction all interplanetary transfers on a given planet would be unavailable until new POCO is put in orbit. Just like regular POCO transfers would be.

The whole point of this proposal is to just have
creating contract → accepting contract
part of the present PI commodity exchange path outlined above, right at the surface level.

The requirement to be in space and close enough to the POCO to initiate and complete the transfer is necessary.

And some clicking (and fees) still required :slight_smile:

Create links with other characters’ launchpads
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2

so I can spam create 100 alpha accounts and connect all their PI’s to my omega account and make dank ISK to PLEX my main, great idea.

3

Good luck with maintaing a herd of 100’s of toons but it would be waste of your time - you can’t PI on an alpha…

4

alpha clones cannot export from their colonies.

so with your proposal you could link all the alphas together so the omega can export.

for what its worth i like the idea of being able to do stuff like that, but I have no idea how to make it work, if you can make it work without an exploit like that I’m open to the concept, but such a thing would mean more passive AFK time and theres a push to try and get players to spend more time in game.

unless there was a way to turn the very problem of it into a feature some how, but then again the game is already complex enough, I think lowering the learning curve for the game would be a more appropriate use of CCP’s resources to further player retention.

not saying its a bad idea, but i am saying from the information i provided it could become easily exploitable.

I would point out that I’ve encountered a LOT of people learn EVE and a good chunk of players don’t PI because and i quote “its too complicated” this in my opinion is basically because as I’ve said in other posts everything essentially acts as a sub mechanic.

this is also an n+1 factor, basically anything that can be exploited, will be and will be abused by large groups. there is someone in winterco who micromanaged i think 30-50 accounts and could produce a titan themselves from the ground up, knowing exactly how much to mine, of what materials and had toons set up to mine it and from start to finish the whole process i think took 3 months.

so yes, people will very happily maintain herds of 100’s of toons.

someone in a previous post of mine openly said that they had i think it was either 94 or 96 accounts.

never underestimate the need to nerd.

5

PI can’t be done in alpha state - PI View is simply disabled in game client. I tried it before repurchasing omega time after some hiatus. I tried to access my colonies in alpha state to no avail.

And I haven’t proposed any automatic transfers by link routing commodities between two characters’ networks.
Besides, extractors can run unattended for maximum of 14 days with extremely diminishing yields causing manufacture delays. And the storage has its own limitations making the manufacture to stop routing output. The more chars routing everything automatically to one storage system the faster the congestion occurs ruining everything.

As I proposed, the link between two foreign launchpads would require action from both parties to fully work. One party must “click” to send the commodities (and make them instantly unavailable) via expedited transfer and the other party needs to “click” to accept the transfer. Otherwise the transfer order expires after a while and unpacks the commodities prepared for transfer.
So the sender alpha char would need to enter the PI View and initialize the transfer and your omega char would need to accept it to get free stuff. Sending another batch of commodities would require another “transfer contract”.

And since an alpha can’t enter PI View there would be no (legitimate) possibility to exploit the links on 100 alpha chars to make “free ISK → free PLEX → free Omega time” so to speak. Not mentioning the prices going south after market beeing flooded with free stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

Herding 100’s of alphas is not feasible manually imho and would require some botting …which begs for permaban, doesn’t it? Doing it manually is but pitiful. Not nerdy in any sense :confused:

This proposal is “just for shortening” the present awkward PI colony exchange path mentioned in OP:

launchapd transfer → POCO hangar transfer → cargohold transfer → hauling to station → hangar transfer →
creating contract → accepting contract
→ cargohold transfer → hauling to POCO → POCO hangar transfer → launchapd transfer

and just leaving creating contract → accepting contract part in it. And some clicking still required :slight_smile:

EDIT: I am on alpha now and I’ve rechecked the game client again. The PI View is not disabled and I can manage my colonies. But all export functions are disabled. And that would need to apply to proposed launchpad to launchpad export too. No exceptions :slight_smile:

PI skills are marked as omega only so all those 100 fresh alphas would need to become omega before being used for ISK farming. Quite an investment.

6

your proposed system i admit is interesting but again a lot of players already find PI difficult, this would just create more in depth and actually add a sub mechanic to a sub mechanic, if this wasn’t restricted to omega only, there would be no reason why people couldn’t or wouldn’t create hundreds of spam accounts and just use the contract system you suggest to move their goods between alpha colonies to their omega colonies, meaning you have 10 accounts all farming 1 planet with an 11th used to launch the goods into space which would be your main.

I see what you’re going for, even if it was a requirement that you would have to create a link between facilities I feel this just adds more complexity to PI,

regardless of playerbase size
lets assume 50% are alpha, as a result they can only set up 1 PI to a very limited amount
the remaining 50% are omega
of that 50% omega only say 25% are doing PI, the 25% either simply don’t want to or find it too complicated.

in my mind, having PI access should be a more pronounced feature to Omega accounts.

“oh hey man, get omega, you can interact with the planets”
“what’s so good about that?”
“you get such and such”
“oh man that’s awesome, I want that for my main!”

currently PI is established to be a huge factor in industry, which makes perfectly reasonable sense, but to me, I think there should be a way of broadening the horizon of what PI does this way even if you didn’t want to be part of the industry side of things it would then be a benefit to you in some capacity.

how though is beyond me currently. if that idea entertained it would need to be factored in, in such a way which would not damage the global in game economy but would definitely be a boon on some level to omegas, something very easy and simple.

I personally like the idea going back to what I’ve said before on this forum about player triggered events.

perhaps colonies which over time will produce some item which when placed on a ship can be used in a module to trigger a location to spawn in system, like a planet side observation post or something scanning the local communications network for hidden dead space pockets.

7

Thanks for your input. First of all PI is not complicated :slight_smile: You just plop some structures on the ground ,connect them together with links for automatic commodities routing and set what structure produces what commodity. Within short time you can get quite a grip on it plus greater control and fluency at maximazing output efficiency. And since you can’t do anything lasting in New Eden without the Broadcast Node PI is here to stay :slight_smile:

I complained to support stuff about being unable to transfer warclone blanks down to my colony for protection against Triglavian rouge Warclones (hehe) because some shmucks at POCO had a bad day (you can read about the incident here)

And I was told by CCP support GM, that my Hi-Tech factory should be able to produce them :slight_smile: The schematics are obviously not there (yet) but do you get the hint here?
Warclone blanks were introduced for DUST514 Corporate Wars mechanics. Dust is gone but the warclone blanks stayed (@1mln ISK price tag). I bet they will be a necessary commodity for an incoming mysterious FPS shooter CCP London Studio is working on :slight_smile: And it’s in beta since last summer. And I bet that FPS shooter will allow to take over PI colonies.
So yeah PI is a big deal :slight_smile:

8

thanks for the reply, i know how PI works, i do it myself. however other players have said that it is to complicated, i once had to take a guy through the process and you could tell he was struggling with it, but then again we all struggle with stuff we’re new to in this game.
the fundamental mechanic is point and click and awesome stuff happens.

but every menu and window is in essence a sub mechanic and this can unfortunately be simply too much for people especially considering the rest of the game itself, consider yourself a new bro and to do one thing you have to navigate entirely seperate windows.

it works in the sense of giving players the ability to do pretty much whatever they want, however its not user friendly, this is why most people will not bother with the game.

9

this is not a true statement. you cannot scan , or export .
you do not reply to the posts showing this is easily worked around using a single omega account for those functions .

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10

Simple solution: alphas can’t do expedited transfers outside of their network.

Idea seems like it has merit, although I think transfers out of your personal network should incur an ISK fee since that can be used to dodge import/export taxes.

11

Absolutely, I’ve added this in the OP already (in the Edit#3 on Apr 17)

(…) Additionally, export/import fees should be applied (…)

12

I’ve already admitted I was wrong in an Edit#3 to the post before you replied to it :slight_smile:

(…) I am on alpha now and I’ve rechecked the game client again. The PI View is not disabled and I can manage my colonies. But all export functions are disabled.(…)

The rest of your reply is a valuable advice, I thank you for :slight_smile:

But please, let’s stick to the topic of this thread :slight_smile:

13

I like this idea. I always felt this is where it should evolve to and, like everything else, it needs to evolve to keep it interesting. I’ve done a LOT of PI over the years. Big supply chain, multiple players and alts running factories. It makes sense that if it is produced on the same planet it should be able to be moved around on the planet.

Two different approaches:
Move from Facility to facility

  • No “POCO” tax. The POCO owner does not “own” the planet, so they are only paid when product is transferred on/off planet
  • Normal corp tax charged to the seller
  • Requires the “Seller” to physically connect to the “Buyers” storage facility with a very low power/cpu link
  • POCO owner gets paid when product moved off planet

Move through POCO

  • Allow transfers between players in the POCO
  • POCO owner gets paid for moving product to and from planet AND transaction fee for the transfer

NOTE: I like PI being “Complicated or Difficult”, keeps out the weak. Seriously though, there is very low risk to the return. The complexity of the logistics and attempts at optimization is where I get the enjoyment.

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14

you would allow alpha (free) account , to link planet structures with an omega (subscribed) account , the omega can import / export to the poco , bypassing the import / export restrictions for free accounts ?

15

No way! Only paid accounts for the facility to facility links.

I think of Alpha PI as squatters…

17

Guys, please be serious, I’ve already said that :slight_smile:

18

No, I clearly stated that in my OP

(…)This additional interplanetary export/import function would be unavailable in alpha state just as regular export methods are now.(…)

And are you asking if i would agree to relaxing the proposed constraints and allow it or if I am proposing that possibility in my OP? I am confused :confused:

19

you could just answer my question …

I’ll make it simpler ;

would alpha accounts be able to link any type of planetary structure , in any way , to any type of planetary structure controlled by an omega account ?

dance around that , if you will … :smiley:

20

I can’t dance. You should ask CCP staff about what alpha state could do in PI :thinking:
I am fine with what it is now.

All I propose is shorter click-path for exchanging PI commodities between omega characters.
Not cheaper.
I am fine with taxes et al.

After all I can put my own POCO above if I want to can’t I?
…after I take down the one that’s up there at the moment of course :supervillain:

The Question

What is a point of doing PI in alpha state if you can’t monetise produced commodities? And you can’t train PI skills in alpha state. You must buy minimum of month of omega time (€20) + PLEX (or loan to your alt from your main) for PI Skill books and train your fresh account for 12-14 days for bare minium PI skills(EVE University WIKI link) To train all your 3 “omega then alpha” alts at once you need additional 2 MCT at €28,5. When omega time expires all you can do is blindly position harvesters, and without CC upgrades V you can barely build anything profitable. And now what? Buy cheapest “Weekend Fleet Pack” at €3,75 pack for your alphas for 3 days and quickly dump the commodities to you main omega colony? It stops being fun and starts reassembling work that doesn’t pay your bills :confused:

You know you can do it now so why are you asking me “the question”?

1 Like
21

I don’t like suggestions that make it easier to scale PI.

If doing 10 accounts of PI takes 10 times the effort for 10 times the payout, that seems good to me.

If doing 10 accounts of PI can be simplified to the effort of 2 times the effort of a single account, that means people doing small scale PI are better off not doing PI at all as all the mass-account players create so much PI for the market that setting up PI for anyone else isn’t worth it anymore.

A bit like solo mining; not worth it.

Let’s not go there for PI too.

I don’t think we should be able to link PI between characters for that reason. Makes it too easy to scale PI.

1 Like