How much time would PI for 48 planets realistically take to manage monthly?

Industry Gameplay Center Science & Industry
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I am debating a move on my 3 accounts to make 8 out of 9 characters engage in PI. If I fiddled with the planets weekly how much Eve Online time would I be looking to spend on maintaining it. This is in null, also how much time per week would this take if I managed the planets according to a good balance.

Also, if I set the command centers across 48 planets, would I have to restart every 2 weeks to a month to find new planets or would the command centers remain on each planet indefinitely, with only rearranging the other buildings?

Approximately how much would this generate if I did a good job? I have 3 accounts and 8 characters set aside for PI and want to justify spending the Plex for 12 Large Skill Injectors if this is a good Isk maker.

I am planning on making 6 of the alts solid PI characters that have no training queue, so they just generate income and are not training.

Thanks

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Depends on how efficient you want to do it. Shorter extraction cycles mean more harvested resources, meaning more factories that can run - in exchange for more time invested.

Depends on what you consider a “good balance”. For some people restarting daily is a “good balance”, for others only restarting once a week is a good balance.

Usually only the extractor or even only the extraction heads are moved if the hotspot you are draining has gone too low. All the other buildings usually stay. U usually only switch planets if you change your production chain and need other resources or the planets you harvest get taxed very heavy or so many people doing PI there that you can’t really find hotspots any more.

Depends on what you produce, how and where you sell it or if you are using it to keep manufacturing more advanced goods. Nobody can tell you what you consider “doing a good job”. Nobody can tell you how much ISK you will have in the end. You won’t even make the same amount of ISK every month.

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Is it even conceivable to manage 48 planets at about 2 hours a week? You cannot even give me a rough estimate on time if I restart every 4 days or every week?

48 planets seems like a lot. I want to know if it is realistic to do this many and a rough estimate of the time it would take if I am average at it. The time estimate of 4 day restarts for 48 planets and 1 week restarts for 48 planets. I basically want to know if this is something I can do, or if I am missing something and it is an unrealistic goal.

Spending 70 billion on Large Skill Injectors is a large investment. Please give me a rough estimate so I can make a decision on how many Large Skill Injectors to buy.

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Why in the name of Bob do you feel like you need to spend that kind of ISK?

One skill injector will turn a brand new character into a decent extraction alt. Or you can just spend a week training up CCU IV and IPC IV.

You only really need command centre upgrades V on factory planet managers.

How long it’ll take you to manage that many planets is a good question. Back when i did a lot of PI, i reset my extraction planets once a week and had to feed my factory planets every second day. From memory, i collected resources from the pocos every two or three weeks and from the factories every four days (use the poco as extra storage for materials to minimise the amount of time you spend derping about.)
I spread it around so i didn’t have to do it all on one day. I spent maybe 10 minutes a day on my PI over it was all setup and another 10-20 minutes a couple times a fortnight picking stuff up. It’s very hard to give you any concrete estimate as there are a ton of variables.
I’d suggest taking it a little slowly. Train up two alts as extraction alts. Make a few extraction setups, try a basic factory setup.
PI is a huge PITA to get setup, the real payoff is you’ll still draw income from that setup until you move out of that area of space.

I strongly urge you not to blow 70b straight up. Go a little slowly, figure out how to be efficient in your area of space.

As for what to make: i used to make nanite paste. I’ve also done well in the past making fuel block components. I’ve never done P4 myself, but the returns could be worthwhile.

In any case, here is my standard, obligatory repost: Meph's Magical PI Setups for the Interminably Lazy

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How much does “Customs Code Expertise” save a PI character in taxes if operating in nullsec? The explanation on the skill seems to suggest it is not necessary if in null.

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Correct. It’s pointless in 0.0 or j-space.
Idk about lowsec.

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8 characters - 6 planets - good internet - 25 minutes"ish" to every time you set.

8 characters - 6 planets - good internet - good planning in set up - 1hr “ish” to pick up the material.

You want to keep your factories on all planets on all 8 characters the same. I do 4 factories, the reason you don’t want anyone out of rhythm, your efficient in time comes to same window placement, same time tables, and same on pickup day, same window setup, get familiar with the clicks are, what you are checking and you will roll through it quickly.

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Its amazing when u ask for advice all the people come to tell you BS amswers , yet always a person who has experienced PI and done it will give you the answer somewhat what you are looking for. i just have no idea why peopel need to coment whent hey dont even know.

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Maybe because PI is not PI. You can invest 2 hours per day on a 8-char setup or 30mins a week. Nobody can anwer his question unless he reveals what exactly his plan is.

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Your question was BS to start with.
It depends on a lot of parameters, like cycle duration for extractors, planet size for factories, if you are willing to purchase product from other people, etc.

It’s like asking “how long does it take to get from a town to another ?”. And then someone says “2h and a half” without knowing the towns, the time of departure, and the vehicle.

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Like others said, it really depends on what you see ad “good practice”

i personally are in the game evey day, so i do not mind restarting extractors for maximum Yield, but i certainly would not do this for 48 planets.

to give you some rough estimate, you will need about a minute per planet on average to do the restarts.
(some just take like 10 sec while on others you may have to move the extractors) so 1-2 minutes on average is a good time to calculate with.

what i would do is split them in sections so you not have to do all 48 at the same time. set them to run a month but restart them weekly so you have to take care of just 10/week which is just 2 toons.
or set them bi-weekly then it would be 4/week.

the setups itself matters little, what really matters is the extraction itself, and the more often you can reset the better, as this has 2 positive effects that do compound.

  1. when you restart your yield goes up
  2. with shorter extraction times you get shorter cycle times (meaning you will lose less material when doing the reset)

as example if the extraction is set to 4days/3Hours your extractors run 1hour-cycles
so the reset will “cost you” 1 hour of the day in materials (5% ish)
if you set it to 4days and 4 hours the cycle time will be 2 hours … which will result in a 10% loss when you reset.

lonmg story short, set extraction not based on the big picture but on the time you will be able to make the reset. if you do them in groups (like 24 at a time, the extraction time needs to be double to compensate)

the restart/reset itself does sometimes involve moving heads or the extractors itself, moving factories is rare if setup at the right place.

the “how much” question is difficult to answer, i would focus on Tier 2 Items, as it is ALOT more easy to manage since you not have to feed a manufacturing planets. that many toons plus some higher tier items do not really pay better. (bigger pricetag, doesn’t translate directly to more profit)
anything higher than P2 done efficienlty would require constant hauling to planets that make them.
and if you stretch the time you exchange factories with storage, not to mention that you will need to make multiple trips if the manufacturing is supposed to run more than a week.

The pickup is rather straight forward and has nothing to do with PI itself (assuming you using launchpads instead of storage, trust me it’s making your life like 100 times more easy) you warp to the planet, while in warp open customs and the cargo … move the items out and pay the taxes … once. you there grad & drop while the ship is aligning, this way if you get jumped, you can move the items back into customs before you go up in flames.

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