Planetary Industry is one of the deepest and most spreadsheet‑driven systems in EVE Online. For industrialists, logistics planners, and 3rd‑party developers, PI is a data problem as much as it is a gameplay loop.
Over the years, ESI has given us access to colony layouts, pin structures, routes, and extractor cycle metadata. But one critical piece of information remains completely inaccessible:
The total output of an extractor program — the same “Total” value shown in the in‑game extractor UI.
This single missing value prevents full automation of PI planning tools, and forces players to manually transcribe data that the client already calculates.
This post explains the gap, why it matters, and what the community needs from CCP.
What ESI Gives Us Today
ESI currently exposes the following extractor‑related fields:
-
cycle_time -
quantity_per_cycle -
head_positions -
install_time -
expiry_time -
pin_id,type_id,planet_id -
colony layout and routing
This is useful — but incomplete.
The problem: quantity_per_cycle is not the total program yield.
It is only the current cycle’s output, and it is often null until the player opens the planet and hits Submit.
This makes it unsuitable for:
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forecasting
-
depletion modeling
-
factory balancing
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shortfall/excess calculations
-
economic planning
-
automated PI dashboards
What the Client Knows (But ESI Doesn’t)
The in‑game extractor UI shows:
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Total program output (e.g., 775,361 units)
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Average per hour
-
Depletion curve graph
-
Per‑cycle yield decay
-
True total yield for the entire program
This is the exact data PI industrialists need — and the client already has it.
But none of it is exposed through ESI.
Why This Matters
For players running multi‑planet, multi‑character PI networks, this missing value creates a bottleneck:
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PI tools cannot calculate accurate extraction totals
-
Depletion cannot be modeled reliably
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Shortfall/excess cannot be automated
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Factory chains cannot be balanced automatically
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Import/export tax calculations become manual
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Profit forecasting becomes guesswork
-
Players must manually transcribe totals from the UI
For many industrialists, this is hours of manual work per week.
This is not a niche request — it affects anyone who uses PI at scale.
What the Community Needs
We don’t need the entire depletion curve (though that would be ideal).
We don’t need head‑by‑head yield data.
We don’t need simulation internals.
We only need one value:
total_program_output— the total units the extractor program will produce over its full duration.
This value already exists in the client.
It is already calculated.
It is already displayed.
It is already known to the server.
Exposing it in ESI would unlock:
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fully automated PI dashboards
-
accurate factory balancing
-
automated shortfall detection
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automated buy‑order generation
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accurate 30‑day profit forecasting
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elimination of manual data entry
This single field would modernize PI tooling overnight.
A Minimal Proposal
Add a new field to the extractor pin object:
json
"program_total_output": 775361
Or, if CCP prefers:
json
"estimated_total_output": <integer>
No need for graphs, curves, or head‑level data.
Just the number the client already shows.
Closing Thoughts
The EVE 3rd‑party development community has built extraordinary tools with the data available — but PI remains the one area where automation hits a hard wall.
Adding total program output to ESI would:
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remove the last major manual step in PI planning
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empower industrialists
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reduce player frustration
-
modernize PI tooling
-
require minimal engineering effort
This is a small change with a massive impact.
If CCP is open to it, the community is ready to help define the schema, test the endpoint, and integrate it into existing tools.
