I’m not a massive multi-boxer (my tiny brain can only handle so much multi tasking) but I do happen to have two accounts - one Omega and one Alpha, with three characters in total two Omega and one Alpha. I have maxed out (L5) PI skills on one Omega character, I’m 41 days off maxing them out on the second and the Alpha character currently has no PI skills at all.
I’ve dabbled in PI before, a little bit unsuccessfully and not in a very organised way, but I thought I’d have another go and try and be a bit more serious about it and so I’m looking for some advice, please.
There are a dazzling myriad of options available in terms of what you can make (there’s a couple of good schematics here and here if you’re looking) so how do other people decide on what to build and manufacture?
PI is a slow burn activity so you can’t be madly dynamic about it and chop and change every two days (or can can you?) and given that prices fluctuate so how do you build something that is consistently lucrative? Is this even possible? Is it a matter of looking up the material that you can end up with and finding one that sells well most of the time in your chunk of the universe?
I’d appreciate any constructive ideas and tips that others could offer. Thanks.
Thanks for the reply. I think I had read that somewhere. My thought was, broadly speaking that one strategy is to use the Alpha for the hauling and the Omegas for the technical stuff.
PI is used for making structures, fuel, implants and Tech2 ships, modules and ammunition. At the moment the PI market is depressed - prices have been falling for a year. It isn’t obvious that this will turn around anytime soon since recent changes encourage structure consolidation.
The lowest maintenance way to do PI is to build P2 on a single planet. Items like Transmitters, Rocket Fuel, Miniature Electronics and Superconductors are easy to make - even in highsec - on Storm and Lava planets and continue to hold their value reasonably well. Not a road to riches but a reasonable return on the time investment required.
Whether PI is a good investment depends on the development projects CCP will be delivering. We’re now over a month into the new quadrant and don’t even know the theme, let alone what changes they’ll be making as part of the ecosystem rebalance! I personally would be reluctant to speculate in advance of the quadrant announcement - hopefully next week, new content like the Guardians Gala is starting to show up on Hoboleaks.
Only the Omega character itself can access their planetary goods at the planets, so each of them should have an Epithal for hauling PI towards and from the planets. I see no role for the alpha hauler in there, unless you want to use the Alpha to haul your PI goods from the nearby station to the market. And as you cannot multibox this pilot, I don’t see much value in having a specific character to do that when all 3 Omega pilots too have an Epithal, except in some use cases like an out-of-corp high sec hauler.
As to what you should produce: I wouldn’t know.
I used to make fuel (takes PI and ice) but the changes to ice (less spawns) and the changes to structures (fewer structures to need fuel because of expensive cores) mean that my produced PI is worthless. Not even the buybacks in my region pay for it anymore, I guess because it’s too large to move and overproduced, so everyone is trying to get rid of it. And this is a general trend, because if one type of PI is worthless, people all start producing the other that still pays a little.
If you find something to produce, please let me know!
