I’m currently extracting a boat load of P2’s across a large number of planets to churn into p4’s. With a setup of 6 Basic Factories (with CCU 5) I need to be extracting 18000 units minimum, of each raw material, per hour to fully fuel the 6 factories making the initial P1. However, its obviously not always possible to get out the required 18000 units even with shifting the heads about every 24 hours…
My question is this, if I cannot get the required units of raw material when I log in to reset the process going, is it better to;
reduce the time for that resource (which could mean one is pulling for 24 hours, whilst the other is pulling for say 10 hours) and ship the leftovers to market,
keep both extractors running at 24 hours but have one just pulling in less than required
another option?
Any feedback to get things running optimal would be greatly appreciated!
No matter what “optimal” won’t be met in these circumstances. Optimal is to have your minimum 18k units produced over 24h. The bottleneck of course is your extractors, which you can’t change.
Personally, I undersize my P4 factory by 1 factory. That means I always have a surplus, which I store in the nearest citadel.
Every time it’s time to ship, I allocate X number of each P2 out to each of the PI characters, they throw it all into their hauler, I fleet warp to the poco, each drops off the set number of resources.
If I have excess, I don’t sell it; I hold onto it for the next shortfall.
When I was doing PI in Nullsec I designed for an average yield of 2000 units of P2/planet/week with 48 hour programs and a weekly harvest. I usually had a small surplus and built up a buffer over time to protect against occasional under-performing planets.