User:Palja Kurman/Old user page

Planetary Interaction

Apart from life as a Senior Personnel Officer for the Uni I spend my time in game working on Planetary Interaction installations. It's a relatively complex area and one which I've gained a lot of experience with. In this little corner of the Uniwiki that I call my own I'm going to try and capture some of that knowledge for two reasons. Firstly so that I don't forget it and secondly because others might find it useful. I also want to put together a class that I can teach to potential PI entrepreneurs.

Benefits

So why would anyone want to spend the time on PI?

Answer: ISK!

To expand on that answer a little. As with anything in EVE the more you put in, the more you get out. You could set up a few P2 factories that you spend 15 mins on per week that produce commodities you can sell for 20-30mil ISK. That might be enough to fund your PvP habit nicely. At the other end of the spectrum you could run several accounts with many alts tending to an extensive PI empire and generate 7-8 PLEX per month. Obviously there are many degrees of effort in between and the returns reflect it.

The key phrase with PI is "Semi-passive income". It's not like exploration or mining where you have to be actively engaged in those activities to make any money out of them. PI is different. You have brief, but regular periods of involvement and then the rest of the time you get back to doing something else.

Below you're going to find lots of strategies for setting up your own PI installation. Don't take this as gospel, or the only way it can be done. This is a very personal take on the subject matter but I have devoted rather a lot of (some would say too much) time on building little factories on planets and hauling around their produce.

Products

• P0 - These are the raw materials that extractors produce. They are huge and you pretty much never want to export these from a planet. If you do though, because they are not worth very much, the taxation on them is negligible.

e.g. stuff (TODO)

• P1
• P2
• P3
• P4

Extractors

Extractors are the critical component in P0 production. In fact apart from buying P0 that someone else has extracted there is no other way of getting hold of the stuff. I've come to the conclusion that the most important factor when configuring extractors is to ensure balance and understand the consequences of that decision.

Routing the raw material

First off let me give you a rule - "Always extract into a silo or a launchpad" - never forget this rule because it's important. For the sake of argument I refer to this initial building that the extractor routes into as the "hopper".

You could extract into the command center as is has a small capacity but I wouldn't advise it on the basis that the command center will not necessarily be in the location that you are extracting. I tend to put a command center down on a planet roughly near where I tend to extract first but over time as resources move I may have to move the operation. The only planetary structure that cannot cheaply be moved is the command center due to the upgrade costs. So I avoid using the command center for either storage or routing.

Whether you route to a silo or a launchpad depends on what else you are routing into that facility, and that depends on whether you intend to over or under produce.

Over-production

When you are extracting more P0 than your factories can process then your extractor is set to Over-Produce. That means over time that the hopper will fill up and eventually get full. This will give you the option at some point in the future to decide not to full your extractor and your downstream factories will continue to run by using up the excess built up in the hopper.

Under-production

The alternative is to set your extractors to produce slightly less that your factories can handle and that means your extractors Under-Produce. The effect here is that the hopper will always be empty at the end of a cycle. Remember though that extractors always produce more at the start of their cycle than at the end so the hopper will fill up a little to start with. Once your extractor finishes its cycle you factories will quickly run dry because the hopper will be empty.

Which production strategy to choose

Which of these strategies you choose is totally up to you. I closely manage my extractors so I tend to under-produce. I find that cleaner because I don't end up with raw material buffering up in the hoppers. On the other hand I do see the benefit of having spare raw material in the hopper and being able to run the facility when the extractors have expired. As mentioned earlier, I closely manage my extractors so I usually under-produce.

When running multiple extractors with different raw materials you will find that if you over-produce that the amount over-produced is never the same which I don't really like.

Use a silo or a launchpad as a hopper?

First off I'm going to assume that you will only use a launchpad when you want to put something in it that you want to export. That's not a rule but given the extra powergrid costs of a launchpad and the reduced capacity over a silo I think it makes sense.

Whether you use a silo or a launchpad as a hopper will depend on several factors but I think the critical one is whether you under or over produce. If you over-produce you want to use a silo because they are bigger and you want dedicated storage for your buffered raw material. When you under-produce though you can use a launchpad, even if that launchpad is being used to hold products you intend to export. That's because you will be using very little of the launchpads capacity for the raw material, certainly not enough to impact the storage of what you plan to export.

Why I choose to under-produce

And this leads me to why I choose to under-produce almost exclusively. When I do I can utilise existing launchpads as hoppers and avoid building dedicates silos. That saves me cpu and powergrid which is then freed up for either more extractor heads or more factories. I admit that it means that usually one of my factories is idle some of the time but that's more than made up for by the increased output of the extractor and the extra factories than can be built.

Palja's PI Rule #1 - Almost always set your extractors to under-produce and store the raw material in launchpads that you are using for refined materials.

Palja's PI Masterclass

Setting up your extractors

• Under or over production
• Routing P0 to launchpads