I’ve made a preliminary decision to do PI on a Barren Planet for Noble Metals and one other yet to be determined resource. I’m thinking a comfortable bank roll to get set up would be somewhere in the 400 million ISK range. Is that an accurate estimate?
If any advice is available on what resource/planet type is best suited to a first time PI miner, I’m all ears!
Thanks in advance!
Hi,
I wouldn’t start so large. Focus on tier 1 and maybe some tier 2 products.
Anything higher becomes a chore and will need corp wide support.
Do it just for fun or as an income boost.
Also highsec pi is very slow and you’ll need to move to Nullsec or wormhole space if you’re serious about being lucrative.
A command center is about 100k isk, the stuff you construct from it might run a few million, but if we’re talking about a single planet, 400M is overkill by a factor of at least 100x.
what you mine is dependent upon what planets are in the system you are in.
PI flowchart
basically just find a system with low tax custom houses and a reasonable mix of planets.
Also PI gets more profitable with scale. however it also gets more tedious.
another helpful pi site
@Qia_Kare That’s good news. I was thinking about this: Barren Command Center and all the stuff you have to build from it.
@Natocha_Daisy I’m already in null-sec. Villasen to be exact.
To get started, you just need to drop that on a planet, build an extractor and probably a factory.
That won’t cost you hardly anything. You can destruct and construct any buildings you want other than the command center at a later date as you learn how it all works.
Most of us use launchpads to ferry our goods up and down from the customs offices, but a command center will launch your stuff into a random space spot around the planet, so they’re not required.
There are taxes and expenses for launching your goods or transferring them to/from a customs office, but they should be pretty low compared to the value of your product.
All in all, the cost of setting up something just to see what it is like should be very low, and it can grow on demand, so I don’t see much reason to save up 400M before you give it a try.
@Qia_Kare Oops. I mistook a period for a comma. 
Very affordable!
Ah ok.
Make some tier 2 as I said then as your max level.
Anything further is a drain on you.
There are lots of good resources on PI out there, but here’s a helpful one for beginners and pros alike:
It will let you see what can be built with/from what, and allows you to see chains by product, top down or bottom up, and will also let you sort by planet to let you decide what to harvest and produce.
Take seriously the above suggestion to start slow. Grow your operation by small steps as you get comfortable with it.
PI is decent passive income PI is NOT fun or engaging gameplay.
If your setup requires more than a few hours a week it becomes a job and has a negative impact on your entire Eve experience.
I have seen PI drive people right out of the game. Don’t fall into that.
regarding “cost” there are essentially two ways to view pi - one way is that you try and make every thing yourself every step of the way. The cost to you from doing this is nominal. But you need to make sure that you have cheap taxes on custom houses to ensure that you are not just giving everything you make to another player. The second way to do this is that you buy your component products on the market and then transport them to factory worlds that you set up to make the higher tier products. This system has the potential to be less tedious but costs and profit depend entirely upon the market.
I disagree.
It may be an odd way of fun, but you can enjoy PI like jigsaw puzzling or Sudoku. When all the components work together and your plans work out because your calculations prove right, it can be fun.
But perhaps you must be a slightly autistic person who feels the urge to change a name to “LaBlanche” 
I’ve got a faint feeling there’s plenty of them in EVE…
I certainly respect your right to disagree with me. I do not think however, that a difference of opinion on Planetary Interaction needed to result in personal attacks and claims of mental illness.
While you may enjoy the game play of PI, and I’m sure there are many whom do, I have personally seen dozens of new players set up twelve+ planets on three day cycles and burn themselves right out of the game before the first months sub was up.
It’s a real concern and the advice to start slow and not grow past the point it stops being fun is sound.
Its the rare person that likes PI. That is a G-d awful part of the game. I’m sure there are some that are into the mind numbing tedium of PI, but then again there are also masochists and people who get their kink off by eating poo. The truly unfortunate thing about PI is that there is such a low barrier to entry that new players are frequently directed to it as a way to make isk. And yes, I to have seen new players burn out on the game doing PI even though they were making billions passively.
All that being said, I do control quite a number of lowsec POCOs with minimal taxes and potentially decent standings from the local pirate groups, so if anybody is interested, feel free to hit me up in game.
Well, I plan on doing PI (a planet or two) to stay busy while I grow into my Prospect and do me some null-sec mining, eventually branching out into gas and ice mining. Then see about some manufacturing. Maybe set my alt up for that end of it.
So… I had the idea of going after Barren planets and maybe grabbing Noble Metals and something else. Maybe some further refinement right there.
Is there any suggestions as to what it might be best, in your opinion, to go after? I’m in Low-Sec space right now so I’ thought I’d start there. The system I’m in contains 2 Barren, 3 Gas, an Ice and a Lava Planet. A decent variety to start with.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
Please excuse my french…
And it’s no illness but a personal trait, but as you feel attacked, feel free to be into the face.
I’ve never seen people leaving EVE because of PI, but I’ve seen plenty of players leaving their planets unattended after a while. There is no penalty on not doing PI.
For it’s a game, most players do what they want to and try different ways. I do not claim everbody should like PI, but so you can’t claim nobody likes it.
My advice to new players: Just try it after some months, if you like industry, after 2 weeks of skilling you are skilled enough to get a feeling, and as soon as you think it’s boring, leave PI. There’s no pressure, and if there is, you may be in the wrong corp.
PI is a typical job for an Alt, so normally your main character is a hero and after you had some adventures and learned about EVE, you may set up a PI character to earn some easy money.
I see it as a way to finance my development to go onto bigger things. Fat Stacks and all that sort of rot. lol
I think it all comes to what share of the market are you filling for, or do you already have a low/null sec client willing to buy in bulk from you. Ultimately what would appeal to me might not be profitable for you.
So my advice, is first of all see the viable selling potentials, and how safe would it be to deliver those stacks. If you don’t need the ISK right away, before you sell (patience is a virtue), it would be preferable to stack them up, until you find the right buyer. Also read a lot (of Eve news, etc) to speculate when/where is the most profitable time to sell your PI materials. And in the long run if you enjoy this, also think of the wormhole opportunities. Some people make enough ISK to fuel many accounts that only do PI.