Planetary Industry ( Math Glitch ) Distance Between Structures Based on Planet Size vs Icon Size

Issues, Workarounds & Localization General Issues
1

Maybe some of you know about this already and never bothered to write up anything official?

I was seeing a small power loss on some of my new PI planet operations on large temperate planet. I dug through a lot of pages to nothing about this loss. Through a lot of testing I found the issue relates to links on larger planets being farther apart even though the objects linked are placed next to each other. This is not about links being upgraded but the size of the planet.

Example

To place a brand new link between a launchpad and extractor on a planet of average size will be somewhere in the range of 20 to 40 km and an energy cost of 15 to 25 MW per link. But on a massive planet the icons cannot be placed as close. I know it makes no logical sense but has to do with the game interface. On my big planet I couldn’t get them within more than a few 100 km of each other and have a cost of 60 or more in MW per link.

I assume these factories and such are all built to scale, so why would they need to be further apart on larger planets? The answer is the developers of the user interface are lazy and didn’t bother to scale the icons to the planet. Same scale icons on all the planets mean vast distance on links and more energy cost.

I wrote this up, hope the next guy trying to track his energy loss will find it here and understand, it is not you, it is the game. Check your planet size before you farm. Maybe a little burb about this on the Wiki would have helped?

Here are some visuals to show you what is happening here.

4000km radius
4000km radius776×439 81.8 KB

Planet info reports a 4,000 km radius

30 Mm radius
30 Mm radius925×577 124 KB

Planet info reports a 30,000 km radius

I would be very surprised, if I were the first to notice this on such a game with all of you making spreadsheets and whatnot. Also makes me wonder about the radius of the nodes. Does this effect the cycles?

2

The only effect a planet’s size has is the PG and CPU usage of links between facilities, the bigger a planet is the the longer the links will be (due to graphical limitations) and results in higher PG/CPU usage. If I’m correct in my assumption, the visual object (in-game) of planets are of identical sizes, but the data that represent them are different for each one. So, when you factor that into the visual representation facilities on bigger planets have a bigger footprint on the planet.

It’s a limitation of EVE’s Game Engine - Planet visual has a fixed size, with varying radius.

Hence, if you’re planning out a Production Planet a Barren type is your best option as they’re usually the smallest.

3

Nope. There is another issue caused by the interface. This issue is in your favor of using the bigger planet. The extractor node placement on my smaller 4 K planet has a max range of 1200 km, while the node placement on the 30,000 K planet has a range of 8000 km.

They messed this up and no one seems to notice or care? I thought ( or rather told ) that PI was the rat’s ass to production in this game, more loved by all than mining. I am enjoying the fact that I don’t need to be online sitting in my ship for hours huffing gas. I am making ISK doing this, but when you look at it from a logical view, the interface is really off the mark.

I know it is only a game, no lives are at risk for the faulty instrumentation.

4

No matter the radius of the planet, the visual size is the same. Naturally, when you change the scale, radius in this case, distances/range varies accordingly.

5

Here is an estimated table I worked out with Excel. Remember when placing objects the radius of any object is half the diameter. You will need a link over twice the distance when placing your factories, storage, launchpads, and extractors on the surface.

Planet Radius km ECU Range Icon Radius Planet Radius km ECU Range Icon Radius
4000 1160 24 20000 5800 120
4500 1305 27 20500 5945 123
5000 1450 30 21000 6090 126
5500 1595 33 21500 6235 129
6000 1740 36 22000 6380 132
6500 1885 39 22500 6525 135
7000 2030 42 23000 6670 138
7500 2175 45 23500 6815 141
8000 2320 48 24000 6960 144
8500 2465 51 24500 7105 147
9000 2610 54 25000 7250 150
9500 2755 57 25500 7395 153
10000 2900 60 26000 7540 156
10500 3045 63 26500 7685 159
11000 3190 66 27000 7830 162
11500 3335 69 27500 7975 165
12000 3480 72 28000 8120 168
12500 3625 75 28500 8265 171
13000 3770 78 29000 8410 174
13500 3915 81 29500 8555 177
14000 4060 84 30000 8700 180
14500 4205 87 30500 8845 183
15000 4350 90 31000 8990 186
15500 4495 93 31500 9135 189
16000 4640 96 32000 9280 192
16500 4785 99 32500 9425 195
17000 4930 102 33000 9570 198
17500 5075 105 33500 9715 201
18000 5220 108 34000 9860 204
18500 5365 111 34500 10005 207
19000 5510 114 35000 10150 210
19500 5655 117 35500 10295 213

Cut copy paste, ok good that worked.

Note: Earth is 6378 km radius, which means it would have factories and launchpads roughly 78 km (48 miles) across the surface. Mercury is 2440 km radius and the same factories would be 30 km (18 miles) across.

BTW someone took note of my PI threads and got upset with me… told me to HTFU? I wonder if they know of some exploit I am not seeing here? If you want to address me on this, do it in the public forums. I really don’t care, I simply did this to track down a logic error causing a tiny but noticeable power leak.

Thanks problem solved.