My God, it's full of stars!

Part I Fiction Piece

Leon who has trained Planetary Control Tower Management III, and Planetary Gridding Array II, and also has Planetary Droid Base Skill V with Droid Base Specialization for Gravity Planets currently at lvl 1, has been assigned by his Corp GonzoGoesPlanetary to a Medium Planetary Control Tower anchored on the Heavy Gravity Planet Ismelda. The Medium PCT has installed a small Amarr Planetary Gridding Array which by default has a maximum sector gridding capability of 10 on a Heavy Gravity Planet. Leon’s Planetary Gridding and Planetary Tower Management skills increase his gridding capability to 10 + 3 +2 = 15 sectors he can operate planetary drones including drone (droid) bases.

Leon has probed enough sectors now where he wants to begin extracting planetary resources. He decides to send down a Gallente A4 Droid Base (certified to operate in Water, ICE SCC sectors) He stocks the droid base with drones suited for water/ice resource extraction and selects the planet sector he wants to deploy. 10 minutes later he is notified the drone base has reached the sector and deployed safely. Since the Gallente A4 base has a sector range of 1, he is able to deploy the bases drones within 1 sector of the home sector. He decides to deploy 2 of the drones in the home sector itself since it is SCC Green Ice Lvl 3 specified, and he deploys 1 drone 1 sector away on an SCC Deep Water Lvl 10 sector. The final drone he deploys in another sector with SCC Metropolitan Lvl 1. Leon knows that it will take two days (real life) for the drones to automatically fill up the Gallente A4 Droid base storage bins. After the two days are up, he will command the drones to return to the base and will command the droid base to return to the Planetary Control Tower with the extracted resources.

Leon meanwhile undocks with a frigate and scans the system, and discovers there is another Planetary Control Tower anchored to Ismelda owned by another corporation. Since he is in a hi-sec system, he does not worry too much about losing his own Corps PCT, but does begin to worry about the other Corp deploying combat drones down on the planet and fighting over high-end resource sectors that his drones are operating upon. He decides to redock at his Corp’s PCT and send another Drod Base down, this time with a number of defensive combat droids to defend the sectors he is currently operating in.

Part II DESCRIPTION

Planetary Control Towers (PCT)
PCT’s will operate in same fashion as Control Towers existing in game except will be anchored on planetary instead of moon celestial objects.

They will include the same modular ability as current Control Towers, i.e. the ability to install Arrays, Laboratories, Gun Batteries, Jammers, etc. Each Faction will have its own type of PCT’s with Faction specific strengths and weaknesses e.g. Caldari High in CPU low in Power and so on. However, new strengths/weaknesses will be introduce in regards to each PCT’s ability to extract/research resources from planet they are anchored to, e.g. Amarr might be better at Gridding Heavy Gravity planets, Caldari better at Gas type planets, etc.

PCT’s Will include the same defensive capabilities as current CT’s including Strontium time-out capabilities. They will have to be fueled in a similar fashion depending on PCT size, and structures/arrays installed. They will also add additional Sovereignty control points to the system they exist in, more-so than current Control Towers, and required more expensive charters if deployed in Hi-Sec regions.

PCT’s will however be bigger and more expensive than their counterparts currently existing. In general, the larger the PCT anchored , the greater the multiplier. Like current CTs, PCT’s will come in different sizes. In general, smalls will be 2x times a current small CT, the medium 2.5x (a current medium CT) and the regular 3x (regular CT). Introduced also will be a Super Planetary Control Tower (SPCT) for each faction. Costing 5x what a regular CT now costs. The SPCT will be the largest control tower in the game, possessing the largest capacity for installing arrays/structures, and will of course be the most costly to fuel & maintain.

The SPCT will also be able to install an array that no other tower (CT or PCT) can the: Super Capital Assembly Array. That will be used to build Super Capital ships that can only be built with the addition of certain planetary resources.

PCT’s will be able to use and install all currently existing CT PoS Arrays & Structures, except of course those specifically having to do with Moon mining.

Each PCT will have two new PoS Structures a Planetary Gridding Array (PGA) and a Planetary Drone Hangar (PDH)

Planetary Gridding Array (PGA)
This will be the most significant enhancement/change to the game and will include a new UI panel that will open up whenever it is accessed. It of course must be installed and operational in the PCT it operates from, and can only “grid” the planet a PCT is anchored to. There will be different sized PGA arrays you will be able to install into your PCT, but you will only be able to install one for the PCT you have anchored to a planet. (You will only be able to operate one PCT per planet, however multiple PCT’s can be present at a planet if owned by different player corps)

There will different sized PGA’s you can build/purchase to install. They will (in general) all have the same attributes, but each size will have larger “gridding capacity” and more planetary drones (PDs), planetary probes (PPs), and planetary droid bases (PDBs)(which I will explain) to maintain & deploy on the grid. In addition, each Faction PGA will offer different bonuses to PGA gridding capacity, and/or PDs, PPs & PDBs for the type of planet being “gridded” e.g. an Amarr PGA would allow larger grid capability on a Gravity planet, and more capable PDs, & PPs for Gravity class planets.

“GRIDDING”
is the term I will use since I like it, seems to go well with all the current in-game Eve lingo. This is what I envision here:

Every planet in Eve will be assigned a number of sectors, depending on its actual size. Sectors i.e. much like sectors on a disk drive … these sectors will divide each planet up into grid like squares, thus each planet will have a “planetary grid” of sectors. The monster planets may have say … 200 to 400 sectors, while the smaller planets only say 40 or 50.

Each PGA deployed in an anchored Planetary Control Tower around a planet will allow the player access a certain fixed number of sectors on a planet at any one time, depending on the size and capability of the PGA. For example a low-end small PGA might be able to operate/manage 10 planetary sectors, while a high-end 50 to 100 sectors.

The sectors “gridded” will be the player’s choice i.e. won’t be forced to operate in certain sectors, or assigned random sectors.  However, for a sector to be gridded and used by the player, it must be first probed by the player using  planetary probe(s).  Once probed it will then be shown accessible via the UI Gridding panel.

For example, a player anchors a new PCT and puts it online. He then installs a small Planetary Gridding Array in his PCT.  He opens up the PGA UI, and is able to view all sectors on the planet, but all these sectors are currently shaded out, he does not know what is in each of these sectors until he starts sending drone probes planet side. He then begins sending his drone probes out, to explore the planet. As he discoveres each sector, it will then be displayed providing sector classification and other relevant information on his grid array. Then, out of all the sectors he has discovered, he will only be able to deploy (his choice) into 10 of those sectors either PDs (planetary drones) or PDBs (planetary Droid Bases).

Important: the entire interface to a planet will be via the Gridding UI panel. i.e. I am not proposing any fancy graphical visuals of actually going planetside 3d etc. Or landing your player toon planetside. The only objects that will be used on the planet will be drones, probes, or droid bases. And drones & probes will simply be displayed on the Users Gridding Panel display as either present at a planetary sector, or in-transit to/from. The UI would simply involve dragging and dropping a probe to the sector you wish to investigate. And the planet map would be a simple 2d square grid, the size equal to the number of sectors of the planet. You would then drag/drop planetary drones or droid bases in the sector you wish them to operate in. This would be represented by a small icons on your grid display, indicating type of drone/probe/droid-base present in a sector. Other objects present would also be displayed as icons on the grid, including other player’s probes/drones/droid bases …

PLANETARY SECTORS
Each planet in Eve Online will be made up of a set number of sectors. These sectors will then be displayed via a 2d grid UI panel a player can access via a Planetary Gridding Array installed in a Planetary Control Tower. Sectors may actually be different sizes on different planets but the number of sectors on a planet will remain fixed and all sectors of a given planet will be same size e.g.. all sectors are 500 mile square radius on Vylade II, while on Gramma III, sectors are 1000 mile square radius.

All sectors in Eve will be assigned an SCC a Sector Classification Code. This would be a code that would classify the Sector providing sector type and level & Miscellaneous

Since this is just a proposal (hee hee) I don’t have to go into exact detail on SCC types, but needless to say, a CCP development team here or someone who knows planetology well could have some fun creating the range of SCCs that could be found on a planet in Eve. A Gas Planet sector could be assigned for example, Carbon Level 3 sector. Or a Heavy Gravity Planet: Dense Orchid Rock Lvl 4 Sector, or a Watery Planet Deap Ocean Lvl 6 SCC. Certain planets of course would have only certain types of sectors, i.e. a Volcanic planet is not going to have sectors with Ice Lvl 1 SCC or a Metropolis Inhabited Lvl 5 SCC code (city of inhabitants).

A Sector’s SCC will then determine what type of resource might be gained from said sector, and the lvl of that resource i.e. a lvl 1 Ice Resource will not provide as much as say a lvl 15 Ice Resource SCC. The levels will range from 1-30. depending on planet specifications, will determine lvls and Types of Sectors you will find. In an extremely Heavy/Dense planet, you will likely find higher level Sectors of dense mineral/rock resources. In a Metropolis type planet you might find higher level Archeology type Sectors where archeological finds T2/T3 and whatever else is decided to put in game presently, or in future.

However, I am no proposing here that every single planet in the game have its sectors manually assigned SCCs. Instead, each planet type that exists in Eve will be run through a CCP developed planetary Sector generator function, that will take into account the statistics of the planet including rotation, size, type, etc. and will seed the planet with random SCCs for the fixed number of sectors the planet owns.  Once a planet has been seeded with these Sectors, they are never changed. (At least for this first Planetary Control Expansion Release)  Part of the function developed should also include adjacency sector calculations so you will see a planetary grid that makes sense instead of a hodge podge of different Sectors (i.e. a simulation of landmasses, or groups of gases). In addition, there might be a few planets especially hand crafted by CCP for special Story-Line purposes etc. Or planets existing in primary trading Hubs might be given manually assigned SCCs.

It will be up to CCP if it will generate all Planetary Sectors for the entire Universe prior to release, or a planet’s sectors will be generated only when the planet is initially anchored to and accessed by an initial first PGA array. (I imagine each approach has its value and drawbacks programmatically, i.e. if you do them all up front, faster game time but more memory used, if you do it dynamically slower game time, but less game memory used given some planets will never be anchored by players)

PLANETARY RESOURCE EXTRACTION & EXPLORATION
This is in some sense where the fun begins for the players. Given IMO what makes Eve a great game is its sand-box environment, and the way Eve provides fundamental elements and then leaves it up to the player to combine them in a most effective way, my idea for planetary control would follow this same Eve fundamentals:. depth and freedom to experiment.

So far, I think I have not strayed to far from game mechanics already provided in Eve. Anchorable Control Towers and Arrays that can be installed into these Towers are already in game. I now also propose to make Planetary Control strictly drone based. Anything moving into or out of a sector will be a drone or a probe type object. Currently learned Drone skills and probe skills will apply where applicable and a few new ones will be added such as:

-Planetary Control Tower Management skill (Determines size of PCT you can manage)
-Planetary Gridding Array skill
-Planetary Super Capital Assembly Array Skill (Would require PCT Management Skill 5)
-Planetary Probe Control Skills
-Planetary Drone Control Skills
-Planetary Drone Specialization skills e.g.Gravity planets, Ice Planets, Gas Planets, specialization etc.
-Planetary Drone Defense skills
-Planetary Drone up-link/down-link skills
-Planetary Droid Base skills.
-Planetary Droid Base Specialization Skills for different kinds of planets

I imagine others might be added as well. But these new skill sets would work along the same lines as currently provided skill learning sets. They would enhance parameters of control for Drones, or provide greater access to a planets Grid (i. Planetary Gridding Array Skill II would increase the number of Planetary Sectors you could operate in by 10 or 20%., etc.) Again, not to far removed from current game mechanics.

PLANETARY DROID BASES (PDBs)
A new drone type will be added (the largest of drones available in Eve) will be the Planetary Droid Base or PDB. Each Faction will offer different PDBs with faction biased type specs. Planetary Droid Bases then can be deployed into a planetary Sector that has been probed by a player , and which the Player does not go beyond his “gridding” sector maximum for the Gridding Array he is using and his current gridding skill set plus other applicable bonuses.

“For example, Leon who has trained Planetary Control Tower Management III, and Planetary Gridding Array II, and also has Planetary Droid Base Skill V with Droid Base Specialization for Gravity Planets currently at lvl 1, has been assigned by his Corp SteelBirdRangers to a Medium Planetary Control Tower anchored on the Heavy Gravity Planet Ismelda. The Medium PCT has installed a small Amarr Gridding Array which by default has a maximum sector gridding capability of 10. Leon’s Planetary Gridding and tower Management skills increase his gridding capability to 10 + 3 +2 = 15 sectors that he can operate drones including drone (droid) bases.

The maximum number of droid bases that can be deployed will be determined by a player’s skill set and specialization skills, and the size of the the gridding array in use and its bandwidth capabilities. Only a single droid base can be assigned per sector. Although multiple droid bases could appear in a single sector from different corporations.

The SCC of the Sector a Droid Base is deployed to will determine it’s effectiveness, range & any possible attrition values that might be applied to while in operation. Deploying a droid base would be simply a drag & drop procedure while using the UI planetary grid panel via the Planetary Array.  A Droid Base will be available in a Drone Bay Hangar structure or Drone Assembly Array if present in the PCT (but drones or probes will not be stored in the Gridding Array itself) There will of course be transit & deployment time depending again on a number of factors such as Droid Base type, Planetary  Drone up-link/down-link skill of player, and the actual type of planet the drone has to deal with. Exact details I leave to the CCP developers (ah relief again this is but a proposal!)

Once a Droid Base travels and deploys itself to a sector on a planet (this could take 5 to 15 minutes or even a half hour under harsh planetary conditions) the droid base icon will show itself on the planetary grid UI panel as deployed in the planetary Sector the player selected.

The only purpose a Planetary Droid Base will have is to allow operation of Planetary Drones out of them, and to store and haul back planetary resources extracted or discovered to the anchored Planetary Control Tower.

Each base will be able to operate certain types of Planetary Drones and will have a given Sector range radius depending on the quality (and expensiveness) of the Droid Base. For example, a basic Droid Base would only be able to operate PDs in the Sector it is deployed in, and would only be allowed to operate Defensive Combat Drones, Resource Extraction Drones, or Archeological Exploration Drones Lvl 1. Fancier and more expensive Droid bases would allow Attack  Combat Drones, Higher level resource drones and/or Exploration drones for sectors with SCC level ratings greater than 1. They would also have a range of 1 to 3  sectors to operate drones outside the Sector they are deployed in.

PLANETARY DRONES (PDs)
The meat and potatoes of Planetary Control will be Planetary Drones. Analogous to how drones are stored and launch from ships and are automated, so too Planetary Drones will be stored in Planetary Droid Base Drone bays, are launched from these bases, and will operate autonomously once given direction. They will operate automatically for days if not months on end if nothing interferes with their drone like behavior (they are drones). Accessing and commanding your drones will be simply right-clicking on a deployed Droid Base Icon and selecting drone control. A pop-up list of Drones present will be presented. You will then drag & drop these drones to the Sector you want them to operate in (and must be within the bases range), or you can group drones and command them as a group. Each base will be able to handle as many drones as its drone bandwidth and drone player skill allows, and the base’s inherent drone managing attributes.

For the initial Planetary Control Release there will only be three types of Planetary Drones:

-Planetary Resource Extraction Drones
-Planetary Exploration Discovery Drones
-Planetary Combat Drones

(In future expansions you might have terraform drones, repair drones, and maybe builder drones, etc.)

The PRED drones will be the workhorse for players wanting to extract resources from a planet. Again, like all other new objects, drones, arrays I have proposed, there will be a range of Resource Extraction Drones a player will be able to use, with each Faction providing different types of PREDs with different specs. Someone who enjoys speccing drones in CCP might have fun with this. But the idea would be to have a range of drones available that could be used for different planet types and different extraction goals. And of course the more expensive T2 planetary drones would be more capable in their abilities, etc. Drones will have different operating  roam speeds, different extraction speeds, and ability to extract certain types of planetary resources.

Planetary resources to be extracted will depend on a Sector’s SCC (Sector Classification Code) and Level. The higher the level the greater or more rare the resource that might be extracted. Amount of resources extracted will be strictly a ratio of amount/time extraction rate. There will be no limit to the amount of resources one could extract from a sector, only a limit on how fast it can be extracted, once again depended on types of drones used, number, level of the SCC and player skill level. Some randomness however will be in effect… there will be a set range of resources extracted and the potential of rarer resources extracted will also be within a random range depending on SCC level type.

For example, Leon has probed enough sectors now where he wants to begin extracting planetary resources. He decides to send down a Gallente A4 Droid Base (certified to operate in Water, ICE SCC sectors) He stocks the droid base with drones suited for water/ice resource extraction and selects the planet sector he wants to deploy. 10 minutes later he is notified the drone base has reached the sector and deployed safely. Since the Gallente A4 base has a sector range of 1, he is able to deploy the bases drones within 1 sector of the home sector. He decides to deploy 2 of the drones in the home sector itself since it is SCC Green Ice Lvl 3 specified, and he deploys 1 drone 1 sector away on an SCC Deep Water Lvl 10 sector. The final drone he deploys in another sector with SCC Metropolitan Lvl 1.  Leon knows that it will take two days (real life) for the drones to automatically fill up the Gallente A4 Droid base storage hangar. After the two days are up, he will command the drones to return to the base and will command the droid base to return to the Planetary Control Tower with the extracted resources.

The PED drones will operate in exactly the same fashion as their cousin PREDS but instead would be assigned sectors with SCCs that potentially may (or may not) yield exploration/discovery of ancient technology and/or T2 type invention items or Blue Prints or even T3 depending on the Sector Level.  There will be however, no guarantee of success and what is unearthed will be more random in nature with rarer objects dropping not very often.

The PCD drones are the combat drones. And yes, combat can happen on a planet, Either by random native attacks to the drone base, or another player sending combat drones to attack your drone base. To attack another player’s base will require a war dec of course. Combat drones will come in two varieties,  defensive and offensive. They strictly can be assigned to attack any enemy objects in a sector or patrol a sector until told to do otherwise.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

A few key points:

- If a player can only grid 10 sectors that means he can only have a maximum of 10 deployed droid bases on a planet. Each base could stock so many drones and only activate so many drones based on the bases bandwidth (but like ships, could stock more drones than it could activate at one time)

- The type of resources extracted from a planet would be determined by the SCC sector types available. The idea then would be to probe the planet fully or be given knowledge of key valuable sectors that you could probe and then deploy a proper droid base with the appropriate drones to extract from. The bigger size Gridding Array you have and the more skills, the more sectors and the faster rate you will be able to extract resources (and greater chance of extracting rarer resources)

- Planetary Resources will be used to build Super Capital Ships, and/or enhancing the quality of all T2 or T3 technology blueprints production quality via the resources extracted. That is ALL T2 or T3 blueprints will have an added section called Planetary production resource augmentations optional section.  If the manufacturer builds a T2 or T3 tech item using the additional planetary resources that are listed in the augmentations section, the T2 or T3 produced item will have increased bonuses to a number of its attributes … such as greater speed/handling, greater turret range etc. The augmentation will be substantial i.e. adding 10% to 25% in some cases to the ability of a ship or weapon type etc. Or even provide special abilties to a T2 or T3 blueprint that it didn’t have before. Once again I leave the details to oh those hard working CCP developers to work out. However, there should be enough bonus incentive for players to make extracting planetary resources worth it.

- In addition to resources extracted will be Exploration Resources similar to what can be discovered and retrieved from w-hole space, used to invent T2 or T3 blueprints or unique planetary ancient blue prints that create new in-game unique items.

Planetary Super Capital Assembly Array
This is the other big incentive for players to want to go out and deploy a Planetary Control Tower. This array, which can only be deployed in a Super Planetary Control Tower will allow the player corp to build a Super Capital Class Ship. There will be two Super Capital ships introduced:

-Heavy Dreadnought Class
-BattleStar Carrier Class

Both of these new ship types will be similar to their cousins but bigger and more powerful by about a factor of 2x. The Heavy Dreadnought class should be able to put out the DPS of two current class dreadnoughts, and the Carrier maintain fighters and DPS equal to two carriers.

Both Super Capital types will require certain planetary resources to be built.

CCP developers might get a little more inventive here and add more to the Super Capital list. Or allow for other Planetary Assembly Arrays to be deployed on smaller PCTs… such as specially built Scout ships that can jump into and out of any Wormhole, or unique Recon Cruisers that have gate destabilization capabilities. i.e. in general more specialized toys we might play with that could only be built with Planetary resources and a Planetary Control Tower assembly array. The idea would be not to over do initial code development but on the other hand, add enough incentive in the game for players to want to build these things

FINAL THOUGHTS
I know after reading this proposal some people might say, this is too much. Planetary Control needs to be simpler. Or you have too many ideas and to many layers of what needs to be done, simplify it.

But you know – I would argue it is exactly because Eve Online has all these interesting facets and creates depth to different aspects of game playing that make it what it is to so many of us Eve game players. It is exactly because ship load-outs are so variable, and manufacturing requires a whole slew of skills and things you have to think about that make it such a fascinating endeavor. Sure, it would be easy to propose that all you do is land on a planet, first one there with the mostest would control the planet, and then send a planetary barge there every hour to extract a set amount of trit/noc/meg etc. every hour.  It would be easier to propose and even easier to implement.

I feel my proposal above follows the spirit of the Eve Online game mechanics. It like anything could use a few more drafts and suggestions and refinement.  But fundamentally my proposal opens up a new area of play for Eve players, that includes new ship types to be built and deployed, new skills to be learned and used, new questions to be asked and answered, new areas to be explored and used to one’s benefit, and new reasons for Corporations and Alliances to declare war on each other.

There is also some built in subtleties to my proposal. Note that multiple corporations can operate on a single planet, the bigger the planet the more likelihood it can happen. It also means no single planet especially in hi-sec will be likely be controlled by a single corporation. Sure important planets will be fought over, but also key discoveries might take place that no one knows about for a long time as long as a given corporation keeps the discoveries under wraps … that is until all planets in Eve have been entirely mapped out … and that will take a long long time.

I also have the advantage of having been a software developer and have kept coding issues in mind as I wrote this proposal. So even though I
introduced a number of new features and complexities to the game, much of what I propose will reuse code already written. For example reuse of Control Tower code … easily used to create new Planetary Control Towers. Anchoring to a planet instead of a moon, should be straightforward. Reuse of training skills codes, simply introducing new skills that would augment attributes much like all other skill sets do. I have introduced new drones to be specc’d out and two new ship types. The new drones & probes will not even require any 3d graphic implementation, since they will exist only as icons on a 2d map.

I propose no new 3d planet invasion code and/or planetary ships landing. Instead each planet will require an addition pre-set vector (array) of Sector values, the Sector values each having a simple SCC code to define each array index value representing each Sector. These arrays can be generated for all planets before release, or dynamically as each planet is explored. But no additional data is added to each planet.

Perhaps the most coding will involve created the new 2D grid that can be accessed by the player via the new Planetary Gridding Array and the two new Super Capital Ships I propose be created. The 2D grid will require new icons to represent the Droid bases, drones or probes deployed. New grid visuals to represent different sector types. And new UI controls to allow a player to deploy drones, bases, & probes on the 2d map appropriately. If done right, it can really be made quite fun to use, especially if some time are spent on the visuals.

Other additions I suggest, for example a new *optional* Bill of Materials section to T2 or T3 blueprints for planetary resources to be used, should be a straightforward addition to these blueprints … and require a new or augmented textual field added somewhere whereever blue print specs are stored (hopefully not hard coded). Then the manufacturing checking code would need another materials check for planetary resources, and the ships built would have increased attributes based on percentage bonuses provided. All code already present or needing little change.

In additon new Planetary Control Tower visuals will have to be built but otherwise operate identically to Control Towers now in existence other than anchoring at planets instead of Moons. Visuals for new planetary drone types will have to be added to the blueprints and the drone icons you would use when dragging them from drone bay to drone bay.

Maybe the most difficult code will be planetside operational code of planetary drones. That is drones will have commands that stay in place and fixed rates of resource retrieval or discovery will need to be coded when drones are deployed on the 2d grid map. But frankly, that ain’t that hard.

Whew, man did this become way too long. Glad I’m done with it. Putting it in a bottle now and tossing it out to see. Who knows who will look at it.