This is the latest batch from my alt’s six-planet P4 lowsec network. So much isk for so little product. 
I myself have a little hisec operation on a barren planet making mechanical parts. PI is either a good way to supplement one’s income with a load of P1 or P2 commodities, or (with enough time and patience) it can be your own personal isk faucet.
So, what are you making?
I currently make guidance systems and robotics which I use to build T2 weapons and drones. A low maintenance, high margin business that works in all regions of space - including highsec (train customs code expertise to cut the NPC portion of the POCO tax in half)
Your sales tax is to high, would suggest training Accounting to V.
I’m doing R0->P2 on 5 planets in nullsec. Restart every second day, export every one or two weeks, hauling to Jita for sale if a suitable wormhole chain pops up.
I’m making P0 > P1 and exporting that every third day or so. I like it because it’s really easy. I can use 6 planets with my skills. I used to make Transcranial Microcontrollers but I got sick of the import export thing.
PI is surprisingly fun and keeps me logging in everyday
You’re right about that, PI is hella fun.
PI fun?!
Whatever you guys are smoking/drinking/eating please sure. 
Wile Im just a humble alpha and have no idea what PI is like or how I could use it. Form the outside I did hope I could be some kind of Colony governor general. Wile I haven’t looked into the what of it much. I did hope I could maybe micro manage it some like a city in CIV games. Either that or specialize the colony like something from Master Of Orion 3. If there issen’t it would be cool if there was a way to integrate trade goods and such into the colony. You go to stations and buy the contracts for a number of cononists. Then you set them to making themselves self sustaining but low on trade good output or visa versa. Then you could buy contracts for things like entertainers or scientists. This could allow you to make them happy and increase production. Or make a random chance to produce blueprints or something sciencey.
Alpha clones could be used a haulers to bring items form colony to colony to meet material shortfalls. SO much potential. I think i would throw $ at CCP if they added CIV and Master of Orion elements into this game.
PI is probably the least updated feature of this game … likely because it’s an ISK faucet.
PI needs a full rework, personally I’d turn the PI installations into planetside citadels.
As for produce I build citadels with my PI. One thing I like about PI is you build the most basic to the most complex structures from the same resources as long as you are willing to put the work in.
I think if they mess with PI, many people dont bother more. Myself use around 12 accounts for only PI purposes, but if they mess with PI, probably i sell 30 characters… or simple dont play more with that accounts.
Sigh It’s not, it’s an ISK sink (highsec tax).
Actually I kind of love this idea. Build a special planetary Citadel or something? Or maybe a module for an Astrahus perhaps. With one character, you’re limited to up to 6 planets, so to have a huge planetary empire you have to alt up. What if POCO’s and Citadels had a baby and you could mine more than just one kind of resource per planet…
It’s not bad once you figure out the current screen it’s just beyond the average persons patience.
I’m currently in step two of my PI output plans. Nanite Paste eventually, wheee! As I’m currently a HighSec Scrub the frustrating part is no matter how well I train up Customs Code Expertise (maxed now) POCO taxes get painful when I have to rearrange to get all the PI products to the same planet for further along results. I’d go through the trouble of trying to contact the POCO owners about negotiating a lower %, but I’m watching who owns which ones connected to the planets I’m operating from change more often than they used to. Why put out the effort only to have to re-negotiate with yet another new owner? Le sigh.
As for the UI setup for PI, I’m thinking someone who has a serious crush on micro-managing had their fingers in the coding! The results can be rather profitable (even in HighSec) but the lack of intuitiveness gets obvious at times. I’m also glad I’m not flying ships with fatigue cooldowns, the wait for expedited transferring annoys me already. To argue with both would likely be a dealbreaker. 
~Mikk
I make 1024 Robotics a day, I am very happy.
Tipa Riot said > Sigh It’s not, it’s an ISK sink (highsec tax).
heheh
Getting dinged on taxes and worrying about gankers is why I stick to selling P1 . I’ve figured I can make as much or more spending an hour every 5 days rearranging extractors. Twice a month I make my runs in my Epithal to collect and deliver to my station close to Jita, then contract the goods over to my other alt and pay Push Industries to haul it all to market in one trip. Takes about 4 or 5 hours a month and it pays for a PLEX.
Replace the existing POCO with your own and you’ll pay less tax. 
Hello there! 
does anybody noticed that time to time some planet goods disappearing from stockhouse? 
i was confused one day when saw that the number of processed water was not in proportion to factory output. the factory production is by 20 units per cycle. so the number of processed materials (water in my example) allways should be multiple of 20. well that day i found out that missing 6 units. 
and is not a big problem for 6 units of processed materials (i guess you call it P2), but another day i found out that was missing some of special commodities (industrial explosive for example). 
what the reason of that? is it any solution?
Do you always(!) route output first to a storage / launchpad and then to the next step? Otherwise it’s likely stuff get lost in desync cycles. Also storage is not full? Did you forget to actually route stuff (drawing a line is not enough)?
yes i do. but if i did not make a route output nothing will come to storage. i am speaking about difference of number of producted goods. i will try to explain better (my english is not good).
example :
basic industry facility use 3000 noble gas to processed 20 units of oxygen per cycle. thats mean after 10 cycles i should have 200 oxygen in storage/launchpad. but there are 194 units! where i lost 6 units? if i stop the progress before it’s finish the last cycle, i guess it should be 180 oxygen at storage.
why this strange difference in numbers?
