“Finally, an outlet for the idea that’s been bouncing around my brain like an old Coke can in the back of a pickup truck.” That was Brother Grimoire’s reaction to our recent bounty asking the community for third-party tool ideas that would improve their EVE experience.

Here are the ten winning ideas, ready and waiting for an innovative dev to make them a reality. Some of the suggestions below are but seedlings that will need nourishing before they’re ready to grow. Others are fully formed redwoods ready to be chopped down, broken up, and turned into timber for the fires of innovation.

Did we take that tree metaphor too far? Probably. Anyway, may the digital deforestation commence.

Resource and industry management tools

JAKEL33T’s PI simulator

JAKEL33T wants a web-based, interactive Planetary Industry (PI) simulator. Think of it as EVE’s version of Tropico, but with the intention of testing setups, yield, and net income based on density and taxes.

“It would be helpful to have this when planning a multiple-character setup to really dial in efficiency.” Original post

Orik Kado’s industrialist dream

orik Kado wants to resurrect a tool that they once found very useful: EVE-cost.

“The tool was an industrialist’s dream. I loved the level of management it offered, allowing me to keep a total inventory of my assets. Moreover, when told to manufacture a certain item, it automatically deducted the materials from the inventory, added the new item, and automated the purchase costs. That enabled users to maintain a larger stock while keeping track of the real cost of each item. I know, I know; it’s an inventory system. But for EVE, that’s great, right?” Original post

Combat intelligence tools

Melicien Tetro’s fit check

Melicien Tetro wants to see an API-driven fit check that allows people to voluntarily reveal their live fit, including implants, clone state, buffs, and boosters. They envisage two purposes for the tool. Firstly, for fastidious fleet commanders (FCs) who want to personally ensure that “all their little ducklings are safe.” And secondly, so that esports tournament organisers can ensure all participants are adhering to the rules “without podding them”. Original post

Brother Grimoire’s drop rate calculator

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the smartest. Something Brother Grimoire recognises:

“Drop rates for all the goodies we get out there in the stars have always been shrouded in mystery. The idea is simple: a third-party application that tracks the loot you get from sites. It would then take all that data and put it in the blender to produce drop tables along with the current projected drop rate for items on the table and their estimated value. This could be applied to pretty much anything that drops loot!” Original post

He takes inspiration from one of the few active MMORPGs to rival EVE Online in age: RuneScape, where the fan wikis for monsters, events, and activities all have their droppables listed alongside their drop probabilities. That’s largely thanks to volunteer efforts.

“Here’s to hoping that a developer takes pity upon me and makes my dream a reality!” Original post

MacGybo gives a ‘+1’ to the idea:

“This is good. I can picture something similar for WoW. A page for each item with the drop probability displayed as a percentage. I like it!” Original post

MacGybo’s first mate

And how about MacGybo’s own idea? A variation on an intel tool which once existed, Pirate’s Little Helper (PLH):

“Picture this: a lone pilot, traversing low- security space looking for a fight. They want a quick overview of each pilot in their local system. They go to local chat, select them all, and copy them into the clipboard. Then the app would read the clipboard and tell them who was who. 


“PLH would display each pilot’s corp, alliance, security status, known ship types, and sometimes a description (e.g. cyno or ganker). It used to ping zkill and tell you how many kills and losses they’d had. It was a great tool until development stopped, and it died.” Original post

MacGybo’s ideal third-party tool would pick up where PLH left off, but expand its capabilities even further. A Pirate’s Big Helper, if you will:

“Imagine if it could read the fits on zkill and not only tell you what that pilot was likely to be flying, but also how it was likely to be fit? For example, a Federation Navy Comet with blasters.”

All the required information is publicly available. The right tool could collate it and make it instantly accessible.

Educational tools and training tools

EVEIL Online’s PvP revision aid

We’ve written about the notorious trials and tribulations of becoming competent in EVE Online’s PvP combat. Let’s face it, there’s a lot to learn. EVEIL’s idea is for a PvP training resource to expedite one’s education.

“Think flashcards including the critical information for each ship: resistance profile, sensor type, slot layout. You could flick through them until you felt confident, then there could be a quiz mode. For each ship, you’d need to learn to be able to identify useful information, like its weakest resistance or the best ECM jammer to use against it.” Original post

Their vision is for an enjoyable yet educational minigame, one that would complement the lessons in EVE Academy.

“The goal would be to increase your familiarity with the multitude of ship types that you might come up against and help with your combat decision-making. As someone who has never put the effort into learning resistance profiles, I could see myself using this. It would turn it into a game in itself.”

Think of it, as MacGybo suggests, like an “EVE Online Top Trumps”.

Greybill’s skill optimiser

Information is power, and time is money. Here’s greybill’s idea for a tool that ensures you’re always training optimally:

“I’d like a tool into which I could copy and paste a running skill training queue or a skill plan. The tool would calculate the best way to remap attributes to make the training more efficient. Bonus points if it gives an estimate of the time saved.” Original post

Market tools

Swagger Olacar’s EVE superstore

EVE Online is known to attract bigwigs and fatcats, but as far as we’re aware, Jeff Bezos isn’t a player. That hasn’t stopped @swagger0licar from dreaming up “Amazon, but for EVE”.

“Unlike a conventional market browser - of which there are several - this would look for an item in the market, buy it, and deliver it. There could be a separate section for special orders and sell orders like Alliance Tournament ships or abyssal modules - the sorts of things you don’t usually put to market.”  Original post

MacGybo thought that Swagger’s idea was “the pinnacle of laziness while halfway to genius”. Well, if Plato was right that necessity is the mother of invention, then laziness may well be the father.

Corporation-centric tools

Salartarium’s medals of honour

Hard-won medals deserve to be showcased. Salartarium would like to be able to pull the medal images from the game, but has had no luck retrieving them from the official image server. They suspect that’s because the medals don’t have their own TypeID.

“There is an ESI for medals, ‘/characters/{character_id}/medals/’, but it only returns a ‘medal_id’ and code.” For any devs interested in solving this conundrum, Salartarium gives an example of the code in their original post. They go on to provide three examples of a fix’s utility. 


“Pulling that code from the resource cache should make it possible to build a tool that can display a character’s medals. This could be useful for detailing a character’s exploits on social media, as a way for third-party sites to display medals, or as a plugin for corp tools like Alliance Auth to help manage and track corp-awarded medals.”

Orik Kado’s loyalty program

EVE-cost isn’t the only idea that orik Kado wants to resurrect. They also want to breathe new life into an idea from the EVE-HR website. Among its features, it had a loyalty point system which assigned players points based on factors such as ISK tax revenue donations and PvP participation.

“Players could exchange these points for items that the corporation placed on the market, creating additional incentives for pilots. The more ways there are to reward and motivate corp members, the better their performance will be.”

Fun Inc’s Alliance Tournament matchmaker

FUN INC wants a third-party application built specifically for the Alliance Tournament. Would-be competitors could register their skills, competencies, ship preferences, and interests in the app, which would then allocate pilots to ships.

“Currently, we use Google Forms and Google Sheets which is really clunky. It would be great if we could have something similar to the old Fleet Up website which registered not only skills but interests and competencies. It would also be really useful for shopping lists on TQ. (Tranquillity)” Original post

If you’re a dev and you’ve made it this far, we’d love to know if you decide to make one of these ideas a reality. And, of course, feel free to discuss the ideas further below!

Some text has been edited for grammar and brevity. You can find the submissions in full at the original bounty post.

Image Credit: Razorien on Flickr