How do I manage 48 planets PI over 8 characters?

[Mephiztopheleze]

[quote=“Calamity Unleashed, post:12, topic:439001, username:Calamity_Unleashed”]
I watched a few vids on P.I, went to a couple websites as well, and I have to say I’m 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, it’s not that hard. the initial setup phase is a grade-a PITA, but once it’s ticking along it’s surprisingly little effort.

@Calamity_Unleashed

Also, I don’t want to play with more than one account, I barely have patience for the two characters I have, so I don’t imagine P.I would be lucrative in my case.

So just make basic stuff. Fuel Block components are always in demand.

@Calamity_Unleashed

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?

you want to either own the POCO or have good relations with the owners.

I’ve 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 I’ve 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 it’s 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 you’re better off doing something else with.

Just don’t try and do it all at once for a big chain. It’s taken me three weeks to get the current chain setup. The beauty is that once it’s all ticking along, it’s a steady source of income.

The area of space you setup in will have a huge impact on how profitable it is. I wouldn’t bother with it outside of null or j-space.

Obligatory Repost: Meph's Magical PI Setups for the Interminably Lazy

@Celestial_Rider

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.

It all comes down to the availability of resources in your area of space.

I have a google sheet that lists the systems I’m doing my PI in, what all the planets are and what each character is doing on their planets.
EG:

As I tweak the chain, I’ll update the lists. I’m no spreadsheet expert, but I’m sure I could import ESI data for each character and see what my extraction rates are.

@Celestial_Rider

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 doesn’t require trading between them?

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, you’ll 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 I’ve screwed up the sheet listing Magma coming off a Barren planet need to fix that).

Also: build up a decent buffer of P1 inputs. Don’t 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.