It just feels so overwhelming. I am curious if I can get help on managing 48 planets in PI without too much waste in a structured and wise way. I have 3 accounts with 3 max PI skilled characters minus one. So my main cannot do PI, but his 2 alts can, and on the 2nd and 3rd account all three in each can do max skills PI.
How should I set this up? Should all characters be supporting each other character (which makes it messy because I have to trade with contracts between them) or do I just take 6 characters and each one manages 6 planets farming resources with maybe like 2 characters factory only producing P3 and P4? Or should I just make each character make their own self sufficient eco system on PI that doesnāt require trading between them?
Spreadsheets (Excel) can help you get the overview once everything is setup. And with the add-in for MS Excel you are pull data directly from EVE server.
In the mean time youāll need to decide on what you want to make, as in P2, P3 or P4 products. What I used to do PI with 3 characters (max PI, so 18 total planets) was producing 2 types of P4 and some P2 products used in Fuel Block production.
If you donāt need the PI for your own production chains, then Iād recommend you aim for products that are consumed in very large volumes - for example Robotics which is used in many different āconsumablesā like Fuel Blocks, Drones etc.
I have 42 planets over 7 characters so feel your pain, I think i spend approx 2/2.5 hours a week tending them. (3 day cycles, collect once a week)
what your asking has many variations and, and it would be difficult to explain in text.
In simple terms though, i make 2 types of P3, i contract all the PI to one charcters (can be anyone) and they then distribute the amounts needed for the factory planets to the other charcters, yes i am trading between multiple chracters but it seems to be the best way, if all yur chracters are in the same corp yuo can trade rather than set contracts
Are all your toons in the same corp?
Is the structure you are in your corps structure (so you can right click > deliver to), rather than set contracts?
42 planets over 7 accounts (not 10 as stated previously), 6 factory planets on 5 of those accounts. Well call those toons, toon 1, toon2 etc up to 7, and I am making p3, letās say Robotics.
On Sunday, I collect all my PI from all my different toons, when docked I either trade with (if the toon I am trading with is on another account in the same station, or I right click deliver to one particular character, lets say toon1), to deliver to I believe you need offices in that station or own the structure. Once all collected and all the PI is given to the one character (toon 1) I reset the heads for 3 days.
With my factories I have 3 LP and 2 Storage, I know that the POCO will hold 4x46000 units of P1, Toon 1 will then give 4x46000 units of the P1 for Robotics to all the characters that have factories, they do this by the method above (trade or deliver to).
Once that is done I relog on all the toons that have factories, take those materials and drop them in the poco then dock. I then move the materials from the poco to the factories and storage.
On Wednesday I reset the heads for another 3 days and do not collect, I may top up the factories if they are running low. Then Saturday or Sunday I start from the top.
Hope that makes sense? Ive not timed it but I think this process take 2 hours or less per week
With two accounts I had two separate supply chains and only one character per account that did factory planets, so I could extract with the others and dump everything on the factory character of that account.
It keeps the amount of tracking goods and trading to a minimum.
You mentioned waste - donāt try to perfectly optimize your PI, you will NEVER get there. resource availability on planets constantly changes and you will only ever chase the most optimal set up. If you get sick of doing pi trying to optimize for another 10%, you lose 100% of what you could have been making had you left a sub optimal setup in place.
Donāt do what someone else tells you is āthe right wayā to do it either. They are wrong. Unless you enjoy spending hours upon hours a week messing with PI, your right way to do it is dependent upon how much you want to mess with it and how much you want to get out of it.
I donāt know if you are extracting P1, exporting it and then making higher grade stuff, but you can make several P2 on a single planet at lower yield and lower touch, it would reduce the flying around you need to do dramatically.
All my planets are set up to use up all the extract in production pipeline, even if they have to run a little dry. I would rather pick up only completed P2 then move P1 around.
Keeping most of your high grade factories on one character or a a few specific characters can help so you dont have to trade pi back and forth as much.
The exception to that are high volume P1 like reactive metals and water.
Kept it relatively simple. Each account makes a p3. I donāt bother with p4. I didnāt set it up all at once, one account per week. Otherwise I wouldāve gone batshit crazy. I do 2d cycles, collect every 4d.
And donāt be afraid to take a break if you feel burnout coming. Once the inital setup is done itās easy to start it all up again.
Donāt make PI a fulltime job. Itās a passive background income, nothing more. Treat it as such.
Holy sh- How do you retrieve your resources, do you own the POCOs, launch your stuff in space or do you pay the POCO tax?
I watched a few vids on P.I, went to a couple websites as well, and I have to say Iām intimidated by the level of complexity. Just the variety of extractable resources and the products that can be made from them is mind-boggling.
Also, I donāt want to play with more than one account, I barely have patience for the two characters I have, so I donāt imagine P.I would be lucrative in my case.
Sounds like you got a good system going on If you have the patience for it I can only congratulate you.
[quote=āCalamity Unleashed, post:12, topic:439001, username:Calamity_Unleashedā]
I watched a few vids on P.I, went to a couple websites as well, and I have to say Iām intimidated by the level of complexity. Just the variety of extractable resources and the products that can be made from them is mind-boggling[/quote]
once you wrap your head around it, itās not that hard. the initial setup phase is a grade-a PITA, but once itās ticking along itās surprisingly little effort.
So just make basic stuff. Fuel Block components are always in demand.
you want to either own the POCO or have good relations with the owners.
Iāve just setup my PI chain again after a several year hiatus and am currently running 75 planets in wormhole space with another 15 still training up.
The way Iāve built mine, i reset the extractors every ~4-5 days on a seven day cycle and I only need to actually visit the extraction planet POCOs every two or three weeks. Factory planets need refilling every four days. You can store extra goods in the POCO and just dump it down into the factory while sitting on the undock of a citadel, so itās basically three trips every two weeks out to the actual POCO.
Setting up the chain takes time, and will almost definitely need some tweaking after the first month or so as you figure out which planets are over-producing and which ones youāre better off doing something else with.
Just donāt try and do it all at once for a big chain. Itās taken me three weeks to get the current chain setup. The beauty is that once itās all ticking along, itās a steady source of income.
The area of space you setup in will have a huge impact on how profitable it is. I wouldnāt bother with it outside of null or j-space.
As I tweak the chain, Iāll update the lists. Iām no spreadsheet expert, but Iām sure I could import ESI data for each character and see what my extraction rates are.
Pick what you wish to produce at the end, governed by what resources you have access to and in what quantities, then setup your extraction chains to feed the factories.
If you look at my sheet, youāll see that Felsic Magma and Autrophes are in somewhat short supply, so I need a lot of characters extracting that resource on the planets I have available to me (and Iāve screwed up the sheet listing Magma coming off a Barren planet need to fix that).
Also: build up a decent buffer of P1 inputs. Donāt panic and start swapping extraction plans just because you have a surplus in one or the other materials, just let it build up a bit before swapping to a different resource.
Itās exactly the wrapping my head around it that cause me cold feet. Plus this on top of everything:
Thereās no way I can own a POCO until I belong to a corporation I can lean on to defend it and as far as relations with the owners, I donāt see why they would give me the time of day.
And
Sounds like great risks for the privilege of being outsold by bots at the market. Would need to be in a Null or J-Space corp just to keep afloat. I wouldnāt want to try something like that solo and until I match with a corporation that interests me all I can do is low-level low-risk stuff. I donāt mind losing a Venture and some ore I mined but I donāt think Iād be very happy to lose a freighter with several hundred millions worth of cargo.
youād be surprised.
Better to have you using their POCO at a lower tax rate than not using it at all.
unless you reach out to ask, youāll never know. sure, they may tell you to take a hike. they may also give you a better rate than that listed on the POCO.
again, that depends where youāre operating.
Plenty of small C1-3 Wormhole corps with only a couple of members, or solo, that plonk down their own POCO, or contact the POCO owners and buy them.
There are, or there used to be, a few freeport wormholes with very low POCO tax rates. Not sure if theyāre still operating.
But yuh, itās a substantial investment in orbital infrastructure and one that can take a while to pay off.
In any event, looking at your killboard, Iād suggest putting āfind a good corpā towards the top of your priority list right now. Iād suggest having a look at EVE Uni in the interim, they do a lot to help new players navigate the escher like maze of EVE.
Low sec is also quite profitable with plenty of low tax POCOs and decent amounts of resources on the planets. Also generally more accessible for solo players. I do all my PI in low sec and make a decent amount every 1-2 weeks.
Only High sec is really not recommended, too high tax plus empire tax and low resources.
I havenāt got the hang of flying in Lowsec yet so thereāll be quite a time before Iām ready for Wormholes.
Itās been top priority since I started. I expect to find one eventually, probably the day my character is perceived to be useful, because sheās pretty useless now.
itās 100% worth a shot.
many, many moons ago I was in RvB and we owned a massive hisec poco empire. Getting reduced taxes from us simply involved asking.
I do 108 planets. 6 accounts.
need to fix that).