In EVE Online, planets are mostly for show, and then offer PI, which is used in most things. PI is a good way to make isk, and has a good system, but I feel that planets could have so much more to offer. Players dont invade and fight over planets and their systems, just the systems and the moons. Planets in real life hold lots of resources, much more than moons, and could be taken advantage of in multiple ways. So I am proposing a overhaul to the current planets, which would make planets be capable of PI, Taxation on cities, production of non ship items, and destruction!!!
Cities:
Now, in nullsec, if a system has been claimed for more than a month, and has a high enough ADM, Cities can made on 3 planet types. Temperate, Barren, and Oceanic. Any player that is in that alliance can build cities on it. It would look alot like the PI system, just more expensive. Players would take up chunks of the planet, and would be able to either build a city on it or a factory. The planet can only have a certain amount of space, and so that limits the size of the city. If you have enough money and resources, your city could be the whole planet. You can buy multiple “lots” to build more cities and factories. PI will still work the same. Cities would need resources from the outside, but most resources come from the planet.
Factories would be like engineering complexes, basically you get a bonus to build planet side, and you cant build large things, cause it would need to be moved off planet. The downside is that it can be destroyed, it takes time to build, and you need to pay to get it off planet like PI. These would cost ~ the same as structures depending on size.
Cities would be a isk farm. Basically, the larger your city, and the more you upgrade it to increase inhabitants, the more “Tax” money you get from your city. Cities can also be destroyed. You would need to manage them, so the isk would not be 100% passive. Cities would cost billions to make. Cities would bring in very good money to make them worth the build cost, but would also need fees for power, and other services.
The more structures and cities you have could also play into SOV, so a invading force would need to attack the cities to do it. You would need to evac your population, or you lose isk, and might get penalized by concord for genocide against your people. The pentaly would vary depending on population, and I dont know the the punishment would be yet.
Orbit Structures:
Now you would have structures that are smaller than citadels that you would be able to dock in and control your city. Each city would have 1 orbiting structure, and each factory would have 1 orbit structure for goods. This would be lore wise where people could leave the planet and visit others and stuff like that. It would be like a transit center. This is also how you would evac your people in case of invasion. These would need to be built.
Destruction:
Cities and factories can be destroyed in different ways, but the whole planet cannot be destroyed. The two ways would be orbital strike and beam. Orbital strike would work like a structure bash, the planet would be able to fight back, it takes a while to destroy the target, and enemies can come and attack the fleet. The second way would be a beam. A large deployable laser, like the ones used when cracking moons during moon mining, would be placed in orbit of the planet. The laser would fire 7 days after deployed, giving the defender a chance to deploy the laser. Lasers can be anchored and un anchored,and take large amounts of very expensive fuel to fire. The larger the city, the more fuel it takes. The most destructive shot possible can only destroy 75% of the planets surface, so 1 planet cannot be one shotted. The largest shot would cost a good 25 billion give or take to fire (random big number, just it needs to be very expensive). The gun once anchored can only be un-anchored when either it fires, or the attack is cancelled. The structure would be vulnerable when the owner chooses, but there are no timers, once vulnerable it can be destroyed completely. Once the city is destroyed, the orbiting structures are vulnerable and can be killed easily. The enemy cannot place their own structures on the planet till all of the past structures are gone, and the system meets the requirements above.
The explosion needs to look very cool ccp, and debris should shoot up towards space like its the death star. These structures would cost ~10billion isk, the fuel is the main cost.
To find out info about the planet, new probes would be built, like the moon probes, to find out about cities and factories on the planet.
In conclusion, this overhaul would not only make planets and sovereignty much more valuable, but add much more content. CCP setup EVE for larger weapons when they showed that the giant space laser is possible with moon structures, so it would be cool to see this implemented with warfare. The PI would stay the same, just whoever owns the planet, not the office, has control over taxes.
This is a very rough idea, so please post your info below, dont be afraid to tell me if the idea is â– â– â– â– . I am looking to improve the idea overall.