Hi i am reinventing the way i am doing PI. I was heavy into P1 but with the new updates to resources needed for shipbuilding the prices of P1 have deminished. What are the concensus on how to apporach PI in the near future? Wil the market recover? is it smarter to spread the focus on P2 or higher?
Wall of text Warning. I am bored so wrote a PI novella.
Alot of it depends on what space you are in. High sec taxes makes the multiple transfers for factory planets kinda a no go if you are only after profit. Exception would be the products that can be harvested and built on the same planet. If my out of game memory serves me that is Coolant and Mechanicals. If your willing to dip into low security space it is a bit more to it as you will be dodging the occasional pirate. Take some time to scout out and get your planets in a area that is easily managed. Poco taxes are varied so watch out for shark planets with bad taxation. Best PI I do is in Null space within alliance space. Planets are better and taxation is regulated better. Myself I focus on Tier4 chains and then some odds and end P2 that I use for manufacturing. Guidance systems, Mechanicals and Rocket Fuel mostly. By doing that and with some very part time mining I can build for near free of charge. I sell the P4 on market. Price varies but the P4 market is fairly good at the moment compared to 6 months ago. Summer will likely see a dip in prices. That is normal when there is less activity during summers. No I do not min/max my chains nor do I stress about the prices. I focused on reducing my costs to produce the PI (taxes/transport) which goes a long way to increasing my profits. Obviously if you scale up it takes more effort to make a well working PI chain that is sustainable over a longer time frame. I run 70+ planets and spend maybe 20 minutes a day and about another 4 hours to pick up and fill my factories 2x month. It did take a bit of effort and trial and error to get it all working and synced up but that was the challenge and the fun in it for me. Now it is all coast.
sounds you did wel. I have over 120 planets mosly in wh space and focussed on P1 i am reforming a lot now to spread the risk of products going down in price. is going to be a lot of work…
P3 and P4 are mostly consumed by structures and CCP has significantly reduced the appeal of owning a structure for solo players and small groups. It’s easier and cheaper to rent offices in someone else’s structure. Fewer structures = less demand for PI. New requirements for PI in capital ship production will partly offset this depending on the rate of destruction. CCP are still tweaking the requirements so it may take a while before a new balance is achieved.
P2 on the other hand, is mostly consumed in T2 production. All T2 ships, modules, drones, ammunition, etc. require some P2 (except rigs). It’s easily made on single planets in highsec and T2 manufacturers can increase the value of their production characters by training them to make P2 passively; mine also have several research agents to harvest datacores passively. It takes a bit of work initially, but once they’re trained (or earned the required standing for research agents) you enjoy substantial savings by not having to buy these products with little additional effort.
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thx for the info did not know about the P3-4
You can do alot of different things with 120 planets. Write it out on paper then implement. Deciding what you want to do is really the difficult part. Cheers.
My feeling is that the market for P1 is just smaller.
As stated above, P2 is used for a lot of production. People that run P4 factory planets are generally going to buy P2 as a single factory planet can run P2 → P4.
I think you would increase profit and greatly reduce hauling M3 by dumping your P1 into factory plants to make P2 for sale, assuming your taxes are reasonable.
There are lots of tools to help crunch the numbers.
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