CCP release more details on Tyrannis, promise to continue development after release
Scheduled for release on May 18th, the Tyrannis expansion has a lot of EVE Online players excited. The expansion's long-awaited planetary interaction feature will open up the planets of New Eden for colonisation and industrialisation. CCP revealed the first details of planetary interaction in a devblog back in February and at GDC 2010, senior EVE producer Torfi Frans Olafsson elaborated on what we can expect from the expansion. A prototype of the planetary interaction feature has even been available on the EVE test server, from which player feedback has been gathered to help develop the expansion. In a recent devblog, CCP released some encouraging new information about Tyrannis. Included in the announcement was a list of the tools and structures we'll use to colonise planets.
The planet-scanning interface has finally seen the light and it looks interesting. Different resources will be available on different planet types, meaning you'll be able to produce different products on a temperate planet than an ice world or molten rock. The rare blue plasma planets we've seen may soon become hotbeds of production. After scanning the planet and locating an area with plenty of your chosen resource, you can set up a command module in the area. This serves as your central control structure and provides a rocket to transfer materials in and out of the planet. To build the sprawling industrial networks we saw on the test server, extractors and processors are then used to capitalise on planet-bound resources. In a slight change, a new spaceport module allows two-way transfer of materials between your planet and space without using rockets.
Perhaps the most encouraging part of the announcement is the news that CCP has dedicated an entire development team to continue work on planetary interaction post-release. Team Pi will continue to refine the feature and tweak resource distribution after Tyrannis is launched. This is big news for players that were disappointed with the lack of post-launch development on previous big features like faction warfare, which didn't receive any kind of update for over a year after release. As issues with new game mechanics often don't become known until weeks or months after release, the promise of continued development of features post-release has exciting implications for the future of EVE.
