Difference between revisions of "Planetary Interaction"

Revision as of 05:39, 26 May 2010

Planetary Interaction 101

Planetary Interaction is the newest feature to be introduced to the EVE universe. The goal of PI is to provide an avenue for the production of goods that were previously only provided by NPC market orders. CCP is seeking to completely revamp the current market for NPC items, turning the production of these items over to the players. Some have also speculated that Planetary Interaction marks the first step in connecting EVE to the upcoming game Dust 514.

The basics of Planetary Interaction are very simple: Just as when they engage in the manufacturing of modules or ships, players gather raw materials which are then made into products. These products are in turn made into more advanced products, and so forth. Every solar system of the Eve Universe contains planets. Players purchase command centers from the market to place on these planets. Once a player installs a command center on a planet, he or she can construct raw material extractors to harvest different types of materials. These materials may either be shipped off-planet via the planetary customs office or kept on-planet to be warehoused or to be used to produce more advanced goods.

Planets and Command Centers

Planets in EVE comes in eight different types: Barren, Gas, Ice, Lava, Ocean, Plasma, Storm and Temperate. Each type has different kinds of raw materials that may be harvested. It should be noted that the security status of a system does not affect the types of planets that can be found in a given system, but it does affect the concentration of each type of raw materials on these planets. In 0.0 security systems, you must belong to the alliance holding sovereignty over the system in order to build command centers on a planet. The different types of raw materials are as follows:

As you can see from the table above, most materials (with the exceptions of Reactive Gas, Felsic Magma and Autotrophs) can be found on multiple planet types.

Each type of planet comes with its own type of command center, and each type of command center comes in six varieties, which differ in volume and in powergrid and cpu output.

Since powergrid and cpu are the only factors limiting the number of extractors, production sites, storage facilities, and launch pads that may be built on a given planet, as well as the links between those facilities, the level of command center that you choose will directly affect the maximum size of your production colony. The cost of these different types of command centers are still currently unknown.

The first thing to do to start your new adventure in planetary control is to purchase a command center that matches the type of planet you wish to colonize as well as the scale of your intended operations. Once purchased, transfer it to a ship and fly it out to the planet. Once at the planet, select the area on the planet in which you would like to build your command center and select the corresponding command center from the build menu. Drag the icon to the site you have choosen and left click. Click on submit in the build menu to complete the process.

Skills

There are two new skills directly associated with the use of command centers.

• Command Center Upgrades gives access to the more advanced command centers to be used on planets.
• Interplanetary Consolidation increases the number of planets you can build command centers on, up to a maximum of 6 planets with 1 command center

per planet.

Along with the new skills for command centers, three new skills associated with planet scanning have also been added.

• Remote Sensing allows a player to scan planets remotely, with each level of the skill increasing the distance at which it is possible to scan. Remote Sensing level 1 is required to scan a planet.
• Planetology increases the accuracy when scanning planets for resources. This will be visible in the number of gradient bands displayed when scanning for a resource.
• Advanced Planetology further increases the accuracy when scanning for resources.

Planetary Infrastructure

There are five different types of structures that you will build on the planet as you develop and grow your colony. Each type of structure can be built as many times as you wish as long as your command center has enough powergrid and cpu to run these structures and the links in-between these structures that you must create.

Extractors

Extractors are the backbone of your colony. They are what extracts the raw materials out of the planet itself. Each extractor cost 150,000.00 isk to build and costs 800 MW and 100 tf to operate.

Once the command center is placed on the planet, the next step is to scan the planet with the built-in scanner on the concentration of each of the raw material offered by the planet. (Though I would recommend doing this before as to find a more ideal and centralized location for your command center and whether or not the planet is worth colonizing at all.) Once you have located an area of concentration for a particular type of material, go ahead and choose that extractor under the build menu. Drag the extractor icon to where you would like it to be built and left click. This is important, you must click on submit in the build menu on the left side of the screen or else nothing will be built. This is true for most of the actions you take in building your planetary infrastructure.

Once the extractor is built, the next thing to do is to select your shiney new extractor and survey the area around it. To do this, left click on the extractor and select the first icon. After a quick few seconds you will be treated to what is available to be extracted from your current location. You are typically given four different choices, each one has a different concentration of material, different amount of materials extracted on each run, the amount of run to full extract that vein of material and the amount of time the whole batch will take. Use the last column of information which is time to run the entire batch as you primary indicator since it will determine how often you have to come back to the planet to set up another extraction batch.

Basic and Advanced Industry Facilities

Industry Facilities are what your new colony is all about. They take the raw materials you extract out of the planet and make them into trade goods for sale or use. Basic industry facilities takes the raw materials and makes them into simple trade goods such as oxygen or water or into more advance trade goods to be used in advanced industry facilities. Advanced industry facilites produces goods that require at least two or more material to produce. Both the basic and advanced industry facilities uses schematics to produce their products, it is unknown at this time whether the schematics will be already known or need to be acquired like blueprints used in more traditional manufacturing processes. Basic Industry cost 225,000.00 isk and cost 800 MW and 100 tf to operate while Advanced Industry cost 450,000.00 isk and 600 MW and 300 tf to operate.

Storage Facilities

Storage facilities can be used in various ways. The first is the point of collection for all your raw materials coming out of your extractors. The second would be the point of collection for products coming out of industry facilities prior to shipping off planet. A storage facility can also be used to store materials brought to the planet from else where in EVE to be used in advanced industry facilities that isn't produced locally. Each storage facility costs 600,000.00 isk to build and costs 600 MW and 300 tf to operate. Storage facilities have a maximum capacity of 5000.0 m3.

The next thing to do will be to build either a basic industry facility or a storage facility and link your extractor to the new facility so the materials can be moved between them. Again remember to click on submit or the link will not be built. Once the link is established click on the product icon and select your raw materials and route it to either industry or storage. Depending on what you decide to do, you can link your basic industry facility into an advanced industry facility and then route the products from the basic facility to the advanced facility to produce more advanced goods, or link directly to your command center or a launch pad to be shipped off planet.

Spaceports

Launch pads are exactly what their name suggests. They are used to ship goods off-planet to the orbiting planetary customs office. Launch Pads costs 1,125,000.00 isk and require 600 MW and 1,600 tf to operate. Launch pads are the most expensive structures to build, but they also offer 10,000.0 m3 capacity to store goods prior to transport off planet.

Final Thoughts

If you are starting out a small operation or setting up your first colony, the thing to watch out for it getting your infrastructure too spread out on the planet. The reason for this is that the powergrid and cpu costs to link your varies structures can suck away everything that your command center is able to provide. Each link costs about 0.1539 MW per KM and 0.1575 tf per KM to build. While this might not seem like much, remember that you are dealing with things on a planetary scale and distance can stretch very quickly.

Okay, so here are key points to remember:

• Use the correct command center for the scale of operation you intend to have.
• Scan the planet first for material riches.
• Build mulitple extractors for the same material.
• Link your structures, but minimize the number of links you use and the distance between your structures.