Here is a full range of PI Window/Feature Requests
PI QOL Improvements with simple code changes/additions.
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Allowing multiple SAME structures to be selected AND ability to open their program windows and assign all Values and setting to all selected structures (Apply to Manufacturing Structures)
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Have the multiple selection Persist while opening base’s storage structures (Landing Pad, Silo, Command Center) to allow routing of material to all of them them at once - from that storage.
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Left-clicking any single structure, the planet, etc will remove the selection. A right click would call up the popup menu which if used would be applied to all selected structures. This would not remove the selection…
The above implementation would account for a vast majority of the clicking required to set up or edit a PI operation. And would greatly help when players.
- Building: All structures can be placed individually and their routing can be assigned at same time.
- Editing: Structure build schematics: All can be done at same time.
- Routing material from One storage to multiple Production Structures at same time.And reverse routing from all to one storage.
ALSO
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Create an Icon in the Extractor programing window to – de-spawn ALL mining heads at the same time.
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Allow a mining head formation to be saved so next placement is in same pattern.This does not necessarily have to be a player selected formation (though that would be great) but the default seems to be the same for everyone [IE. a three by three grid of mining heads with the 10th placed on one side of the formation (Or alternatively a diamond type formation). You can still place them individually if desired, but a quick placement-button would be nice that allows u to activate it and then place the center Head, and the client fills in the rest OR u place one head and when u press the button on the program window it fills in the heads up to the max allowed. then they can be individually adjusted as needed.this could be a big time saver.
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Allow client to copy selected structures and paste them onto another planet.
Minor Changes/upgrades
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In the [Structure Type][Structure ID] Window (popup when you select a Industry Facility) – When hovering mouse over the Material Icons you get the Material Name and how many input units it takes. However there is no quantity output when u hover over the Output Material Icon. Adding this will allow people to be reminded of the needed ratio of materials between Tier Products.
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In the [Structure Type][Structure ID] Window (popup when you select a Storage Or Launchpad Facility) – When hovering a mouse over an item in the Inventory pane or an item in the [Stored Item area} above it you get the same exact popup. I.e., [Item Name],[Quantity], [Est. Value], and {This item is a sub-component of Info}. in the ‘Stored Item Popup’ Is it possible to add Variable info for How Many Units come into that container per hour and How many are removed per hour for that container? This would be very helpful for routing and layout planning…
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New Feature: When a Storage facility is click - all structures that are ‘Active’ with the items stored within become highlighted. (This could replace the involved structures current coloration since THAT coloration is irrelevant when doing the action I am doing here). And they can revert to their original states when I click away). This coloration can be colored by whether its an Input or an Output structure in relation to the selected structure.
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Similar to #3, except in this case you select an Item In the Storage/launchpad’s inventory pane. Selecting a specific item in storage will cause ONLY other structures associated with that Material to highlight indicating input or output.
Note: it would be natural to highlight the connecting routes between structure as a matter of good visual appeal, HOWEVER in practice the connecting line between structure are so short as to be virtually invisible to the user.
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New Placement Feature: When you place a structure on a planet – by using an arrow key press while that structure is selected. Will cause an Identical structure (settings and all) to be placed at the minimum distance and if the shift key is also pressed will add a route to the selected structure. The new structure will now be the selected Structure. This will allow Users to place a structure, set its options and then quickly lay down identical structures. Huge time and click saver.
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New Feature: ‘Route to last structure’. Example. Place a launch Pad. then place a extractor. In the Extractors [Structure Type][Structure ID] window add an icon labeled “Route to Last”. this will auto-create a route between the extractor and the last Structure selected. Note: For extractors this is almost always the planet’s Launchpad structure (but could be used for any structure combination)
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In the Window used for setting what product is produced in a manufacturing Structure ([Structure Type][Structure ID] when u select a Manufacturing Facility Type) pressing a letter will select an item in that list which first letter matches the key press. It then advanced to the next match on each press. This current feature is somewhat buggy and many times will not advance OR discover a matching entry that is previous to the one currently selected. This is very frustrating in Advanced Manufacturing Facilities since they have two lists (P2 and P3) in the same list but are not sorted alphabetically but are separate based on Tier. Can we add a subroutine that is called BEFORE the current one that will lookup all the materials the user has programmed into the structures on that planet (for that editing Session) and if it finds a match use that entity for determining which item to select in the current structure when the User presses a Letter Key. If that fails then to select an item already programed into ALL structures (without limiting to current session only) and if that fails to use the current default routine to determine the selection. This will add a very useful QOL improvement while programming Manufacturing structures already placed while changing the product processed on a planet.
#5 and #7 work together to allow quick placement of Manufacturing Structures as well as reprogramming of existing structures. These two process account for the vast majority of clicks when doing PI. and would be very very welcome in saving our mouses from early retirement.Not to mention our Carpel Tunnel. And while requiring NEW programming on the DEV side it is just subroutine work without need for any major code changes. AND virtually NO UI Changes.
#8) Allow a copy grab of the Extractor Output data in the graph in the extractor control programming window for pasting into a spreadsheet when using Ctrl-A/Ctrl-C and a ctrl-C for individual lines
These could be filed under Fixes.
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The PI’s UI Window does not always update with changes on the planets. For a while now the PI window has failed to update on planet changes UNTIL the user opens the planet in Planet View.This include error codes, Material Item quantities and the Icons indicating activity (IE if it shows a P0 quantity waiting for process to P1 and it all gets processed, it will still show it needs to be processed.). Can This be fixed so PI windows get the regular updates they used to?
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PI Window - Static Storage ICON. Only shows the current Estimated Price for items in storage. Can we also get added a ‘total m3 stored’ entry?
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SAME Can we get a Mining ‘Unit Output per hour’ entry in the ‘Extractor’s Static Icon’ mouse over popup? Can we also get a text indicating how long until the extractor program timer runs out? (if two or more extractors present just indicate the FIRST one to run out)
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SAME Can we get a 'Percent being used (Active) for production faculties. I.E., if we have 18 manufacturing Structures but only 6 are running we would get a value of 30%.
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Similar to the above #2-#4, but by selecting a material/structure Icon under those Icons - this would popup when an item is selected in any of those three parts of the PI Window and concerns the same info I have requested for those popup. IE., in an item’s popup under Storage would show only that Item’s portion of the total m3, for the Extractor Icon would show that extractor’s output per hour, and for Items selected under the Production Icon would show that production Type’s Active output percentage.
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Similar to #2 and #5 is it possible to add a ‘Time to fill’? IE based on current production movements when will a storage facility fill up to capacity. This would calculate only for the storage that will fill up first. This would be helpful in those common cases where a storage is used for inputs of raw, output to production and storage of final output routes. The calculations a user has to do to determine this are complex and usually are done just enough to determine if the total volume either rises of falls as a whole. a time would be most helpful in planing how often a planet needs attention.
All of the above request are hopefully minor adjustments to code, but would be very helpful to users and would make setting up and maintaining planets much less of a grind. I suspect it would also make most of the complaints CCP gets over PI go away.IN addition ALL OF THIS CODE can be done with code on the Client side.AS far as I can determine all the data needed for the calculation in that code is already being provided by the Server to the client on a regular basis already. So there is no Server impact. and since they are just simple numerical calculations the client should be able to handle it without issue.
Requested Major Updates to PI.
ONE) Heat maps for resource placement. Either supply a visual for Displaying heat-maps for historical material placements on a planet (only for those times the users has had a colony in place). Ones that can be used to try to track how certain materials hot-spots move around the planet. OR allow the user to take a snapshot of the material distribution. Not just a screen shot but a snapshot of the complete image used for the full ‘wrap’ around the planet. I suspect these are stored as grayscale images which can easily be exported to the user with either an in game image viewer or directly to the user to use in exterior programs. These would have to be static images with identical coordinates for overlapping and not determined by which part of the planet user is viewing at the time of the snapshot. In addition they should store Planet data and timestamp.
This is similar to the game play we see with people who ‘Survey’ moons and would add the same type mechanic to Planets.
TWO) Selections and Copy Paste. Ability to use regular selection to select any structure(s) and save it to the user’s computer. And then import it again to be pasted in place on any other planet. This can be done two ways
- Copy a selection and then immediately paste it anywhere else. With or without ability to also save to computer.
- Copy to a List (stored on computer *in a friendly folder) that will populate a popup in game. This popup allows viewing of all saved ‘formations’ and allows selecting which ones to paste/delete etc.
Added value for allowing ‘Attaching’ paste selection to a structure pre-selected on the PI window. This would add a route between the placed structure and the structures being placed.
Again ALL the above suggestion can be done in the client without impacting the server. And in addition it opens up a new mechanic to player with the ability to import and manipulate structure placement on their own computer. I envision some intrepid user creating a PI builder as a 3rd party ap. Since the only data the user can manipulate is building placement, the structures manufacturing selections and product routing I see no possibility of any security issues or ability to create an unwanted exploit… In any case if CCP runs each import thru a range filter that determines all user values are valid (IE no Zeros, or out of spec ITEM IDS) would assure no hanky panky.
THREE) Ability to ‘move’ structures. Instead of destroying a structure in order to place it at another location? allow a click and drag to a new spot. The cost of this is based on distance traveled and the type unit it is. As example full cost would be at a range of say 1000km moved or the distance to the opposite side of the planet being equal to the Create cost.
An additional thought is making this move happen over time as well. Say anywhere from a few hours to a couple days. With Say the extractor not able to produce while moving but the production structures can still produce at a reduced rate. This would add a penalty to the move and would aid one of the methods people use with PI. I call it the ‘Drill and Process’ method. where u extract a backlog of product and them process it in bulk while the mining is depleted or extracting a second resource. This Feature would have some impact to the server since it would be calculating new locations on a regular basis (say Hourly) and then changing production values as well as mining start/stop messages. so this would need to be considered.
This can also be helpful to those people who have spent a lot of time on the planet generating a heat-map progression for materials and they can move their structures to keep up with the moving resource. That is IF such heat-maps can be used that way. In any case the ability to move entire formations of structures could be a very helpful option.
FOUR) This one is a companion to Feature #2 above. Once you paste the formation of structures, but before you confirm them. You have the ability to move the structures (with routes staying attached). Once u confirm it then they are locked. This would be helpful when placing Manufacturing with extractors to allow u to place the extractor over a resource and/or to modify the placement of other structures in order to fit a change u will make when they are finally locked in place (IE add new structures after pasting)
None of the above Feature suggestions would make PI any easier as far as the users time requirements to maintain it. All program timers would still operate in the same way.These are all just Quality Of Life enhancements with the primary goal to reduce the number of clicks required. It can take up to 600 mouse clicks to currently set up a full 24 unit Factory complex on a temperate planet. That is just ONE planet.
now multiply that by 10.
An alternative method would be to add a right-click command to certain lists and adjustable values with an entry to ‘Apply to ALL’ option. for example. when selecting the schematic for one plant, if u right-click that schematic u can apply it to ALL plants. BY ALL you could mean A) Plants routed with this one (ie, does the whole formation but not effect other ‘formations’ on planet Unless there is a path to this plant. OR B) ALL in the ‘Selection’, if a selection has been made.).