Right now, Planetary Interaction has a fundamental imbalance: it allows players to deny resources at zero risk, with no meaningful counterplay available to the people who actually live in that space. Any hostile player can drop Command Centers on planets they don’t control, don’t defend, and may never even visit. By running maxed-out extractor heads with no storage, they can permanently suppress resource hotspots and deny income to locals indefinitely. The defending side has no tools to respond: PI structures can’t be attacked, can’t be blocked, and can’t be contested. This turns what should be part of the economic ecosystem into a one-sided griefing mechanic.
The core issue is simple: in its current form, PI violates one of EVE’s most important principles: If you want to affect space, you should either control it or physically show up in it. Right now, neither is required. This proposal fixes that by introducing sovereignty requirements, proximity requirements, and risk-based interaction depending on the type of space.
In null-sec, Command Centers should be tied directly to sovereignty. To deploy a Command Center, a player must be part of the alliance that holds sovereignty in the system, or be explicitly granted access through alliance-level permissions. If sovereignty changes hands, all non-compliant Command Centers enter a degraded state and are automatically decommissioned after a 48-hour grace period. This ensures that only those who actually hold and defend space can extract its planetary resources. It also cleanly integrates PI into the broader sovereignty ecosystem, where moons, anomalies, and infrastructure already follow similar rules. For flexibility, alliances could optionally whitelist corporations or renters through POCO access settings (although I hear renting has gone out of style, THANK GOD!).
In wormhole space, where sovereignty doesn’t exist, the solution is physical presence. To deploy or launch, or edit extractors, the player must be in-system, uncloaked, and within 30 km of the Customs Office. This applies to initial deployment and major edits like extractor resets or routing changes, but not to passive production that’s already running. The goal here is not to remove hostile interaction, but to force it onto grid. If someone wants to interfere with a wormhole’s planetary economy, they need to bring a ship into the system and expose themselves to risk. That creates actual gameplay—hunts, ambushes, and defense—instead of invisible, untouchable interference.
In high-sec and low-sec, the issue is remote management. Right now, players can sit safely in trade hubs several regions away while actively managing PI in hostile or contested space. That removes all risk from economic disruption. The fix is a rebalance of the Remote Sensing skill.
At lower levels, management is limited to the current system, scaling up to constellation-level at IV and region-level at V. This keeps convenience for dedicated characters while eliminating the ability to run PI operations completely detached from the area being affected. An optional extension could apply small efficiency penalties to long-range management, further reinforcing the value of proximity without making the system overly punitive. This change would also affect null sec (constellation and region via remoting sensing IV and V). EDIT: For wormholes, consider a new skill line in PI that allows “remote changes to the planet” called “Enforcer” for wormhole systems only. Each skill level increases the number of assigned “enforcers” by 1. Enforcers cannot be removed from a command center unless the command center is destroyed. The player must still in system, decloaked, within 30km of the POCO, to add/remove buildings, but the they can change extractor head positions and routes remotely, but they cannot destroy/recreate the extraction unit itself.
To prevent unintended consequences, a few safeguards are important. The 48-hour grace period during sovereignty changes ensures legitimate players have time to react, rather than losing everything instantly. Active extraction cycles should be allowed to complete normally, with only future cycles blocked after restrictions apply. If needed, materials could be routed to the POCO with heavy taxation instead of being deleted outright, softening the transition without preserving exploitability.
The expected outcome of these changes is straightforward. First, it restores risk versus reward—if you want to interfere with someone’s income, you have to either control their space or physically enter it. Second, it strengthens territorial gameplay by making PI something worth defending rather than something that can be passively disrupted.
Third, and most significantly, it reduces alt-based griefing and “set it and forget it” denial tactics. Right now I can see multiple characters from hostile alliances running three extractors on the best planets in null sec space, without any factories or storage units. THAT IS OUTRAGEOUS. And although it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a wormhole, I imagine it’s no different. This clearly being done by WALLET WARRIORS, since no ordinary player would waste their passive income on a spamming mass extractors on hostile planets.
And finally, it creates actual PvP content around POCOs and planetary infrastructure, turning what is currently a background mechanic into something that generates interaction.
This isn’t about removing gameplay—it’s about converting passive, zero-risk harassment into active, contestable conflict. Right now, PI griefing CAN NOT BE COUNTERED. These changes turn it into something players can see, respond to, and fight over.
If you want to extract from a planet, you should either own the space or be willing to risk a ship in it (null sec and high sec). For low sec, I think the remote sensing change is sufficent, going to low sec pocos is already dangerous (more dangerous than wormholes imo). As for high sec, at the very least people need to physically move between regions.
This would make high-sec regions farther from Jita more lucrative for players, and could lead to more meaningful wardecs and structure-based conflict in high-sec space. As an extension of the high-sec/low-sec balance, CCP could consider introducing a new Upwell structure—one that cannot be anchored in null-sec or wormholes—which increases Planetary Interaction yield by 25%.
This structure could be called a “Planetary Embassy.” Anchoring or benefiting from it would require sufficiently high standings with the relevant NPC empire, even for players who did not deploy it themselves. To prevent spam and reinforce its strategic importance, only one Planetary Embassy would be allowed per planet, and it would be a valid war target.
The result would be a system where PI in empire space becomes more competitive, more localized, and more tied to both standings and conflict, rather than passive, background income. Players with max standing with that NPC empire get full 25% yield bonus (scale from 0% to 25% from no standing/negative, to max) so long as they are in the corporation/alliance that anchored it. The Embassy does not harm anyone’s yield who is not in the corp/alliance in highsec, but does -25% yield against those not the in corp/alliance in low sec. Lowsec embassies can also remove a command center whose owner is not in alliance/corp by deploying “troops.” Should cost roughly 10 mil ISK. The owner cannot plant another CC on that planet for 30 days. Overall, the embassy is planet specific, not system specific.
EDIT: To correct a misunderstanding of a few people who have read this: You don’t have be in industrial ship in the wormhole to make changes, you can be in a fully fitted PvP boat. The only requirement is that you are decloaked within 30km of the poco to add/remove PI pins. This could be anything from a nullified interceptor/shuttle to HAW dread.
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Final EDIT: For those that forgot about DUST:
”DUST 514 was originally intended to be tightly integrated with Planetary Interaction (PI) in EVE Online, acting as a core “symbiosis” between the two games. The original plan for PI involved players building infrastructure on planets, which would then be fought over by DUST mercenaries to enhance or disrupt resource production.
Here are the key details regarding the planned and realized integration:
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The Original Vision: CCP described Planetary Interaction as the main intersection—the “DUST 514 link”—designed to bridge the two games into a single universe.
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Persistent Warfare: DUST 514 matches were not intended to be random, session-based maps. They were supposed to take place in real-time on planets that EVE pilots flew over, with the results directly affecting the ownership and control of planet-side infrastructure.
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The Link in Action: EVE players would manage PI, and DUST mercenaries would be hired to attack or defend these structures.
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Actual Integration: While the full vision of building and managing PI structures from the ground was never fully realized, the games were merged onto the same server (Tranquility) on January 10, 2013. The integration allowed for:
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Orbital Bombardment: EVE ships could provide live artillery support to DUST players on the ground.
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Factional Warfare: DUST battles influenced who held systems in Factional Warfare, connecting ground combat to the larger EVE political landscape.
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Shared Market/Corp: The two games shared the same currency (ISK) and allowed players to join the same corporations.EVE Online +5
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*The ambitious level of direct, real-time control over PI was largely scaled back, though the linkage between Ground Operations and EVE space remained central to DUST 514’s design.”
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Because DUST did not succeed, with have an antiquated PI system that was designed around something that did not succeed, hence the inability to remove mass alt griefers in 2026.
I thought the access rights based on standing also applied to general building access—but that’s a pretty clunky way to do it, then.