Planetary Interactive Possibilities

“Tyrannis will see some new industrial and planetary interaction opportunities like we’ve never seen before in New Eden. It’s a step in linking EVE Online and DUST514 as well. So I need you to write what you believe are the short and/or long term consequences of this development, in terms of the new industrial capacity in presents to players, in terms of the opportunities for pirates, for industrialist, for sovereignty, etc. Surprise us!” – CK

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Planetary Interaction has been heralded by many pilots as, exclusively, an industrial expansion. It is an industrial expansion but it will have a far reaching and significant impact on all aspects of New Eden. Here is why…

Every planet can be scanned for raw resources and then improved with facilities that harvest, process, move and refine those resources into other finished goods. The only places in New Eden that this currently happens are space stations and POSs.

With 5,000+ stars and between five to ten times that number of planets, the ability to make new products across the galaxy is about to expand exponentially.

Although we don’t know what all those finished products will be as yet, we have a lot of good clues. CCP have said they want to make the markets 100% player driven with all goods produced by pilots. CCP have also noted that the first part of planetary interaction will focus on the NPC trade and industrial goods area.

They have described planetary interaction in terms of growing a garden. Each planet, facility, and product chain will have certain needs and a particular organization that will make it most efficient. This suggests that a planetary production line will work and produce goods without the optimum inputs but can be much more efficient if all inputs and arrangements are provided to the maximum.

Example: a water world has a valuable resource (say, hydrogen, needed for hydrogen batteries). Putting facilities on this planet will be more costly than on a Terran type planet because workers need infrastructure and supplies to live and produce more on the water world. So, inputs that will improve productivity might be liquid oxygen, construction blocks, and frozen food. If some of these are provided the production output will be 50%. If all are provided the output will be 100%. Perhaps a shipment of Wine or Exotic Dancers will buff output to 110% for a short time... But, everything costs ISK. And moving products up and down a gravity well costs more ISK. If all necessary products can be found on the planet’s surface the overall cost of the operation will be greatly decreased.

So, in our example, this water world happens to have a small island archipelago that has the necessary resources to produce construction blocks and grow some frozen food products. But the factories being set up on the island chain need power (hydrogen batteries).

One pilot discovers the hydrogen resource and starts building a production operation. Another pilot sees the opportunity for trade and sets up some facilities on the archipelago. The pilot with the deep sea production line can bring food, blocks and O2 from off planet or she can set up a trade agreement with the island pilot.

So, how does all of this promote PVP?

An industrial corporation has worked long and hard to construct production lines on 8 out of 10 planets in their home system. This, along with mining for veldspar ( a commodity that has lost a lot of value since the dynamic insurance changes went into effect) constitutes a large portion of their weekly income.

A griefer corporation nearby sees these industrial carebears having fun and decides that won’t do. So they war dec the industrialists. Traditionally, the carebears can just dock up for a week and not lose much money. But now they have 8 planets that need food and water and construction material to keep going! What if none of that gets delivered and factories start going offline. What if workers begin starving or rioting. Will more workers and facilities need to be purchased later at great cost? Maybe the carebears must find a way to undock those Iterons and get the goods to the planets. Maybe a mercenary contract to defend them or chase off the aggressors is needed.

If the garden concept is really valid, you wouldn’t want to plant too many production lines across multiple planets if you can’t afford to nurture, grow and maintain them. But if you can do this, the return on investment could be very lucrative.

Planetary Interaction will add a lot of variety to the EVE industrial and market community. But there will be opportunities for the more combat focused pilots to interact with planets as well.

New Eden is full of sand; CCP is giving us the pail and shovel; it's up to the pilots to build the sandcastles....or knock down the ones built by others.