I would like to discuss planetary
interaction (or pi for short). I started doing pi over a year
ago when living in a wormhole for a short time. I went in with
having learned only a few skills and then trained up while I was in
the wormhole. I think it was about a few months or maybe three
before we decided to leave the wormhole (see the July issue of the
Industrialist for those experiences). While in the wormhole, it
is super easy to do pi. The quantity of the minerals and the
quality of hot spots are amazing. Having never done pi in high
sec, I was amazed at how easy it (and quick) it was to put together a
shit-ton of raw, tier 1 and tier 2 commodities. I thought it
was "normal" to have to upgrade your links two or three
levels in order to deal with the incoming flow of raw materials from
the extractor heads. I should point out that the pi mechanics
were the same as they are now, not the old school ones where you
could mix and match extractor heads (or so I have read). I was
pulling so much in raw material that I had to empty the spaceport
every day.
Then I moved back to high sec and
the pedestal that I put pi on fell over and lay broken in
pieces on the floor. High sec pi pretty much sucks. The
hot spots aren't great and the amount of raw material coming off the
planet is a fraction of wh space. I can leave the planet to run
for a week without any problem.
PI is
important to the EVE community because all of the commodities made
are no longer seeded by CCP. Everything has to be player-made. PI
is mainly used in T2 and capital construction (including POS spikes).
So they are always in demand. Someone once coined it, Passive
Income. While it is pretty easy and low cost (once set up properly)
it still has costs involved that can crush your profits is
overlooked. Most notably, tax rates at customs houses. This is
where your spaceports send PI items from off planet to space where
you can retrieve them in your hauler. High Sec taxes are 10%. Low,
null and WH space can be whatever the owner wants. I don’t even
know if there is a limit other than 100%.
While in high sec I usually run a 2
extractors (pulling two different raw materials) and 4 basic
factories making t1 commodities. Also, I have a spaceport (dual
use: storage and to transfer to ships in orbit). Sometimes I
have an advanced factory turning the two t1's into t2 commodities. I
usually use lava planets to make consumer electronics, gas or oceanic
planets to make coolant and temperate or barren planets to make
mechanical parts. I also run a factory planet with a mix of
factories and spaceports and drop all my t2 commodities to make the
3-part t2 and t3 commodities. It may not be the
most efficient use of planets, but in high sec that is
pretty much what you get due to lower extraction rates. I have
4 alts doing pi and refresh it once a week. I pool all the
items made in factories and sell the finished ones and install
the precursor in the factories. It is a lot of moving
around with 4 alts, but it is only once every 7 days. It works
out well for me.
As with all layouts, the links
themselves use up CPU and PG, so keep them as short as possible. On
gas planets, the links will be longer due to the nature of the planet
size. The icons can only be so close together, so while it may look
as close together as a temperate planet, the links are actually
magnitudes longer thus lowering your already miniscule CPU/PG
capacity. High Tech factories can only be built on Barren and
Temperate planets. Keep this in mind when setting up manufacturing
planets. Also chose either so that in the eventuality that you want
to make tier 3 commodities, you can just add the factories and not
have to move to another planet. That would be a costly endeavor.
Here are some designs/layouts I use on
my planets to give you some ideas.
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