That is like saying that the market had plenty of T2 materials before they redid structures so there was no need to replace control towers.
Trade is an active activity I keep an alt open when doing mining or missions just to update prices so that I can stay competitive in Jita and other hubs.
Because you poke it a couple times a week to maintain full yield when you log in. When originally discussing PI it was stated that they wanted something that players could tend to on a daily or weekly basis without worrying about it too much.
I like the idea of fitting command centers, districts and shooting stuff but I believe the original intent with PI was to give people something that is pretty much safe from other players aside from them shooting you as you go to pick it up or drop it off and would function as an aside from mining. So having people being capable of shooting them seems against the original intent of the content. Yes I’m aware that there were talks about having people attack them as part of the fps that was released but that didn’t go anywhere and while hinted at was never promised or at least I don’t remember it being explicitly stated.
My concept was built around how the current mechanics work but modified in such a way to simplify it so that it’s less redundant in its setup and maintance. I tried to use ideas that are already implemented in some way in game because I’ve read that ccp likes to use stuff they already have in place so that it would require less development time.
Hence we have a heat map for resources in game already so that’s already done. We have command centers so renaming them and giving them different properties i’d imagine wouldn’t be too daunting a task. The part about the resolution of the heat map going astray as the process runs isn’t something that would be required but would give people a reason to poke it at some point during the week while it does its thing. Finally the industry window is already a thing and should only require a tab added to it to run the production process to refine and convert the commodities as we already do with everything else in production. I am aware that me saying things should be easy and then actually making it happen are two different things so no I have no idea what the technical limitations or issues would be.
While I wouldn’t mind some kind of fitting system for command centers or something where people can attack each other’s centers. My suggestion was intended to rip out the guts but reassemble them in such a way that they don’t require redoing the entire process like they’ve had to do with control towers. Although if that is what’s required i’d be up for it but again my suggestions are predicated on CCP trying to save on development time while still providing updated and meaningful content.
To possibly clarify what may be tedious
Steps :
1 - Drop command center on planet
2 - Use extractor version to extract resources using heat map and single extractor node
3 - Move extracted resources to another planet for Processing & Refinement / No need for nodes
4 - Move to another planet for Specialized & Advanced commodities / No need for nodes
5 - Move to market to sell or use in production of structures
^^^ This is what is already done but in a much more tedious fashion then I outlined as you currently have to place every individual pin which can be as many as 25+ processing centers if a planet is only used for processing and not extraction. Then you have to link all of them, setup what their making and route resources to all of them.
Then to extract resources you have to put down 6 or so processing centers link them and setup each with what their making and route all resources. Then plop down your extractor and place up to what is it 8 or 10 pins to decide where you’ll be extracting then you have to setup routes for the resources to each processing pin and then route them to your command center or space port.
After all of that if you want to change what your processing you have to go back to every single pin to change it up and then reroute the new resources as well. That sir is tedious.