Ive noticed in game there are some tossed around “Trade goods” seeds, food, lux items.
As a Alpha and being new I don’t know of a use for a lot of that stuff. BUT as a huge fan Of Master of Orion and Civ games. I feel there could be a suply and demand system built into colony management. Focus on some item production like food but not diversify enough to meet the need of the tech farms and general population. Thus requiring your colony to request some item or items from NPC stations at high prices or from other player colonies.
This I feel would provide a huge use for Alpha Industrial haulers. And open a non PVP Colony building avenue.
Accept contracts form all kinds of people, gen colonists, scientists, entertainers, slaves, and colony security. Then depending on population and infrastructure development have your colony send out buy orders and sell orders at a Planetary trade hub in system. You can hire a colonial governor to run the colony you founded and provide for basic needs but not produce as much as if you micromanaged it your self. BUT at anytime you can deliver material to aid your colony or make personal buy orders that players can sell to.
This would create a way to sink ISK inflation. The items bought and built for the colonists would take $ out of the system. As well as providing a new avenue for item and or ship building. or many other things. It could also provide a home for the player that they can spend real world $ to spruce up.
Id personally love a short cut seen where I land on my planet and go to my player home.
Wile there you can offer bonus things like aces to faction market for longer range trade modification.
Please you all feel free to tell me i’m out of my mind or to constructively expand on this. For a game to evolve and attract new kinds of players they need to be willing to toy with branching out. Its like making a sandwich bread peanut butter and honey is ok. But with bananas and chocolate and marshmallows!
Unfortunately, for the bulk of what you’re suggesting, it’s all (in the grand scheme of things in eve) on a micro scale. As capsuleers, we couldnt care less about the micro scale- we focus on the macro (and that’s what the game is built upon). I cant remember the exact comparison, but it was said that 100 ISK is, while a pittance for a capsuleer, equivalent to a month’s living wage for a family living planet-side. We are the collective Lords and Kings of the galaxy while those living on planets and stations are no better off than meager peasants.
some gamers do like to play god on the micro scale. I come personally form a serious background of RTS games. PI could then become a niche for people like that. Colonial Governor General(for life). A whole horde to willing citizens to make you awesome at less cost. and more for independent gamers that for some reason are liking the game but anti social.
While I like the basic idea and agree that PI needs an overhaul, if anything will happen, it will to allow PVP involvement in PI.
The two can work together though, like you need war declaration to attack colonies in hi-sec for example, so people in NPC corps with colonies are generally safe.
(Noticed this link doesn’t work unless you open in new tab)
I got the impression that pi was originally meant to be a lot more than it is now. But it was done during the time when ccp introduced features but moved onto new projects before the feature was fully fleshed out.
PI is working, much the same way mining is working. The game has adequate supply of planetary commodities and, unlike mining, the ISK/hour invested is pretty good. As far as I know, the UI hasn’t changed since it was originally introduced to the game in 2010 and it definitely needs a refresh.
Personally, I would like to see some involvement for refineries in PI - perhaps convert high-tech processors to service modules.
CCP has experimented with NPC teams providing a bonus to industrial activity. It didn’t work as intended so they removed it but I think a variation on that theme with player recruited and trained teams/crews is the best way to to get NPCs involved in the industrial side of the game. The game already has code to deal with nested bonuses from multiple sources.
Colony management at the micro level would require a significant development effort and I think most players want the developers focused on the spaceship game most of us signed up to play. There is still lots of room for improvement in core gameplay!
Mining is an industrial activity too. It generates resources just like PI. The difference is that ships aren’t involved in PI, except when you harvest, but this would change if orbital strike could be used on colonies.
I’d like PI colonies to be modeled as ‘planetside’ citadels, with modules for factories/storage/extractors. then they can have orbital defence batteries and fire back on those nasty bombardment types in the vulnerability windows
