Difference between revisions of "Planetary Interaction Omnibus Proposal (CSM)"

Revision as of 10:22, 8 March 2011

Stats

• Raised by: Trebor Daehdoow
• Submission Date: 4 July 2010
• Issue ID: tbd

Summary

The CSM notes with great pleasure CCP's stated intention to significantly iterate the new Planetary Interaction feature over the next several expansion cycles.

In order to assist CCP in developing Planetary Interaction into a core element of EVE that reflects the desire of both the players and CCP for true Excellence, we offer the following statement of general principles as well as a list of specific proposals for CCP to consider.

General Principles

We believe that Planetary Interaction, like all other features of EVE, should permit players to both cooperate and compete in the planetary environment.

We recommend that Planetary Interaction evolve to make it easier for us to do things (eg: less clicking), but at the same time, provide subtlety and depth that provides an advantage to players who are willing to take the time to think.

We urge CCP, in the strongest possible terms, to not just iterate Planetary Interaction, but also to iterate the suggestions given below by prompt and direct communication between the Planetary Interaction team and the CSM (and possibly, player experts as well). We believe that such a process will result in a tighter feature-set that provides the players with the greatest possible functional improvements in Planetary Interaction, at the lowest possible cost in developer time for CCP.

Keeping these three statements in mind, here are our specific feature proposals:

Proposals

General planet information and overview

• Show the type of planet.

• Add a scale indicator.

Scanning

• Enable scanning to be done in high contrast grey scales (color-blind usability issue).

• Set marker pins that do nothing except serve as a visual/design aid.

Building

• Show the Isk cost of a facility in the build section before you click the pin.

• Hide all the CC types you do not have in your Cargohold.

• Enable the placements of multiple pins, links and routes of the same type by holding ctrl (or another command key).

• Allow upgrading of Command Centres instead of tearing down the whole colony.

• Permit downgrading of links.

• Allow the CC to be moved by launching a new CC on the planet.

• If a placement of a pin was canceled due to placing the pin to close to another pin, do not reset the cursor, but keep it in pin placement mode.

• Snap to grid/nearby pin to make prettier colonies.

• Permit moving of pins (at a cost). Currently if a player trains an additional level of a skill that improves his ability to scan for resources, he must remove and place new extractors in order to improve his ability to obtain resources.

Windows and panes

• Move the entire PI interface (except for the planet surface) into standard EVE windows.

• Show the ship interface and targets when not docked (for multitasking during mining and travelling).

Colony navigation

• Add a colony list in the PI interface to easily switch between colonies.

• Add a pin list to the PI interface to permit faster selection of pins and multiple pin selection, as well as executing commands on selected pins using a right-click menu.

• Allow (nick)naming of planets, colonies and pins on a player, account, corporation and alliance level.

• Next to scan and build lists, create a list showing all your placed (nicknamed) pins, their type, status and a home in function.

• In the PI screen of S&I, show if there are idle extractors or processors on a planet, and when the last extractor on the planet will become inactive.

Logistic readability and accessibility

• Blink the Science and Industry (S&I) button when extractors deactivate or processors are without resources.

• Add a toggle that shows output per 30 minutes or per hour (processor cycles).

• Replace the pin icon with a product output icon if set.

• Make the pin icon green when active, orange when inactive and red for a warning. Consult with perceptual experts to ensure that the colors chosen are friendly to color-blind players, or include alternate temporal cues.

• Show a warning (red pin icon) if a pin does not have routes for its incoming and/or outgoing products.

• For storage pins, if a product is routed to it but the quantitiy is 0, add a translucent item of that type to the Products list (with quantity 0), allow routing to be more easily set for that product.

Logistic management and setup

• Permit routing between storage pins.

• Allow multiple pins (same type) and links to be selected while pressing ctrl (an alternate to the pin-list selection method described above).

• Create dynamic and smart routing of links, so that links are automatically load-balanced when the configuration changes. See http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1333352&page=1#14 for further explanation.

• Adjust the resolution of extractor times, current cycles don't match well with real life cycles.

• Allow pins to be offlined.

Change management (Building and logistics)

• Increase the visibility of the fact there are unsubmitted changes.

• Add an “undo last unsubmitted change” button.

Custom's office

• When importing and exporting, show the transported volume and the volume available in the destination.

• In the targetting overview, allow an access Custom Office button(CO).

• Allow contracting to and from the CO, or some other method that permits players to cooperatively exploit a planet.

Production

• Show the input requirements in the schematics dropdownlist. Example: Nanites(Micro Organisms, Bacteria).

• Use the same units for input and output of extractors and processors.

Example: Input: 3000 items A: 300 m3 Output: 20 items B: 15,8 m3

• When changing a schematic, ask to remove the incoming and outgoing routes. If confirmed, remove the routes.

• Does changing a schematic return un-needed components in a processor back to storage?

• Create a toggleable filter that only shows the schematics which can be build in a processor based on the incoming routes.

• When accepting resources from multiple storages, take first from the storage filled closest to its max capacity.

• When outputting resources, send them first to the storage filled closest to its max capacity.

• Add the ability to stop and restart all extractors on the planet (or all selected extractors) in a single operation.

• Pins should buffer their output until space is available in the destination (a new cycle would not start until the output buffer is clear).

• Input materials for processors should go to the processor that is closest to being ready to cycle, first filling the processor that is closest to being full of the material in question, or, if two or more processors are equally full, going to the processor that has more of the other components needed for a cycle.

Products

• When pressing the information button on a product, show the required components and the type of industry required instead of the schematic.

Other

• Add a list of planet types in the system to the starmap.

• Storage Facilities have no advantages over Launchpads except lower CPU (which is rarely a limiting condition).

Pros

• Improved user interface for PI.

• Moves PI towards being a more 'Eve-like' feature.

Cons

• No obvious issues.

Relevant Forum Threads

Notes: the following threads (not an exhaustive list) contributed greatly to the development of this proposal. The CSM would like to thank all the contributors, and in particular Delta Bacat and Jin Nib, for their hard work in developing this proposal.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1336362

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1341414

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1333508

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1340339

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1334176

Votes

• Dierdra Vaal - yes
• Korvin - yes
• mazzilliu - yes
• Meissa Anunthiel - yes
• Mynxee - yes
• Sokratesz - yes
• TeaDaze - yes
• Trebor Daehdoow - yes
• Vuk Lau - yes