PI Extraction Testing

PI Extraction

Planet Destruction

PI extracting is serious business. I went to the TEST server to see how much I can deplete the surface. My method was simply to chose a 24h program length and cancel it after two or more cycles. Then simply restarting it.

It is clear that the resources will get depleted and while I only mined for 2-4 cycles the whole amount of the program length was extracted. Below  is a gif animation showing the resource map (skills are 4/5). The whole process took about 18h to deplete a WH Gas Planet.

I actually managed to deplete a part of the Planet to the absolute 0. :P

Edit: It's been a whole week since and the spot has not regenerated any resources. Might this be permadamage to the planet?

Day 51

PLEX

Pilot License Extension (PLEX)

Today I bought a PLEX and extended my account subscription by 30 days. I got a little worried if I would make it. At day 26 I had about 26 mill ISK in my Wallet and P2 materials worth 74 mill ISK. All that experimenting, destroying and rebuilding of structures costed me a lot, but in the last 25 days I managed to get 400 mill ISK from PI to buy a PLEX. My last 7 days or so where rly easy. When I had about 260 mill I could run my P4 planets for 2 days. In the end it might have taken me about 20-30 min every 2 days to restart planet production on all planets. So if I wanted I could do all the PvP/PvE and mining or whatever someone likes to do in EVE.


Resource depletion did happen and was about 30% over a period of a month. This means that every 2 days I was extracting less and less till I hit equilibrium. A state where extraction rate gets to the same value as resource regeneration.

My testing of PI in HighSec is finally over and below is proof of me buying a PLEX. So next time some one tells you that PI in HighSec is not worth it then point him to this Blog and show him how wrong he is :P

Day 21

The decision is made

The last day of fooling around

So my subscription ends in 31 days. If I rly wan't to pay for a PLEX then I need to stop changing planets, destroying stuff, rebuilding it. For the next 30 days I should stick to a Plan.

The best thing to do would be to go back on producing P1. I'll chose some nice planets and try to avoid extracting the chip stuff. Maybe I'll do a mix and have 2 planets producing P4. At this point I rly don't want to rebuild all the planets. I'll destroy the planets that make the least profit and replace them one by one. The whole experimenting thing hit hard on my wallet. I could say it was not worth it, but without that I could not know today what is best for PI in HighSec.

So this is what I'm aiming for:

I think I'll train both Command Center Upgrades and Interplanetary Consolidation to lvl 4 to get more profit from planets. I will also set the extraction programs to 2 days. This will give me a bit less resources, but with 20 min of work for every 2 days, what's there to complain about :P. The two P4 planets will require a bit more attention, but can run up to 3 days without me being online. All planets are either 7 or 9 jumps from Jita which is not far, except for both P4 planets that are right at my dor, one jump from Jita ^_^.

Conclusion

Plan A - Extracting and producing P1. This is what you can do everywhere. It has low initial cost and will always make profit. Is perfect to start with if you are new to PI. Depending on security status and quality of a planet you decide what to extract and produce to P1. In Null/WH you extract what is most profitable on the Market at the moment, while in HighSec you need to compromise with an items value and its availability on a planet. The big downside is that the generated items will quickly pile up and take much cargo space to be brought back to a market hub. While in HighSec you only need to haul to the nearest station and then use a Freighter or a Currier Contract to get them to market, but in Null/WH the sheer volume of items represents a logistical nightmare and can quickly make you to give up.

Plan B - Extracting and producing all the way up to P4. While this plan is similar to Plan A with the exception that you extract the exact resources that are needed to produce the desired P4. This was for me one of the worst ways of making money in HighSec. The benefits in Null/WH are that you shrink the volume to a point where it's easy to haul to HighSec. The other benefit is that if you own a POCO and have 0% Tax, then every processing stage gives additional profit. Where all Tax converts into profit ^_^.

Plan C - Buying Materials and processing them into higher tiers. This is the best way of making money with PI in EVE online. The profits can go from some billion to more ten billion if done on a massive scale. You could say that 1/3 of profits comes from buying cheap and selling high, 1/3 comes from the processing itself and 1/3 of profit comes from paying no Tax (0%). The biggest downside of this plan is that it requires a big capital investment. Not every one has the ISK to do this. Doing this in HighSec will reduce your profits because you need to pay Tax. It will still pay more than Plan A and B. Doing it in Null/WH will give you massive profits. It is not limited by the amount of Accounts you are willing to have, but by the amount of hauling you are willing to do. Going Extreme here can mean that you need more than one Freighter of materials per day to let your processors run 24/7. It's not a problem in HighSec where you are one jump away from Jita, but in Null/WH this will break you :D.


With my Command Center Upgrades at lvl 4 I now have the following planet setups:

Plasmoids P1

It has 4x Basic processors, 2x Launchpads and 2x Extraction Control Units(6 heads each). It can be split in 2 parts and positioned on different locations.

Wetware Mainframe P4 (or any other P4)

Day 20

Today I setup my first P4 production planet. For this planet setup I needed CC upgrade to lvl 4. I didn't have enough ISK on hand to run both P4 processors. I calculated that I would need 55 mil ISK to run both P4 processors for 24h. This is one of the most profitable ways of making money with PI, but the initial capital requirements are much bigger.

Materials for 1 planet 24h - 55 mil ISK
Materials for 1 planet 5 days - 275 mil ISK
Materials for 12 planet 24h - 660 mil ISK
Materials for 12 planet 5 days - 3,300 mil ISK

I'm not sure I have the ISK for this just yet :P

Day 19

With the right skills I can do 2-3 P4 processors on one planet. Also depending on the P4 product. I decided to dedicate a storage for every P3 that I make. This will let me run the factories for 5+ days once they are filled. In the middle is a Launchpad that will distribute the materials. There is a cooldown on every expedited transfare. To reduce it as much as possible, I had to upgrade the links connecting launchpad with storages. On lvl 5-6 this brings the cooldown down to 5 min.

Different P4 items

they are not all the same?

So by now many might have noticed that P4 come in 2 different setups. Some use 2x P3 + 1x P1 and others use 3x P3. Processing from P2 to P4 requires some P3 processors to convert the P2 materials.

On the left all 3 inputs are P3. On the right only 2 inputs are P3 and 1 input is P1. We see that we actually need less buildings for the right setup. The difference in powergrid/CPU is:

Item	Left	Right
Launchpad	700 MW/3600 tf	700 MW/3600 tf
Storage Facility	2100 MW/1500 tf	1400 MW/1000 tf
Advanced Industry Facility	4200 MW/3000 tf	2800 MW/2000 tf
High-Tech Production Plant	400 MW/1100 tf	400 MW/1100 tf
Links	~200 MW/~300 tf	~140 MW/~210 tf
	7600 MW/9500 tf	5440 MW/7910 tf
without storage	5500 MW/8000 tf	4040 MW/6910 tf

We can see some P4 needing more powergrid/CPU. It also seems that storage facilities take up much resources. We might replace all storage facilities with launchpads, but the enormous CPU requirements would only allow for 4-5 launchpads per planet with max skills. Or we can forget about storages and have  some powergrid/CPU left for more P4/P3 buildings.

Storages

why do we use them

In PI there are 3 different buildings that can store products. The Command Center(500 m3), Launchpad(10.000 m3) and Storage Facility(12.000 m3). A single P4 product takes up a volume of 100 m3 and one P2 material 1.5 m3. With production planets volume is a major concern. Would you like to produce more P4s in a short amount and refiling storages on a daily basis or do you like it easy and wan't them to run for several days without your attention.

Launchpads:
- 10.000 m3 volume
- can directly import/export materials
- requires 700MW/3600 tf

Storage Facilities:
- 12.000 m3 volume
- requires 700MW/500 tf

With extraction it was clear that Powergrid is the bottleneck mainly because the ECU uses so much power and little CPU. With Factory planets we also need to worry about the CPU consumption. With Max skills you get 19.000MW/25.415 tf. The max number of either storage or launchpads is: 7x LP or 27x Storage. Launchpads are easy to use, but with its low CPU consumption Storages are the clear winners for storing massive volumes.

Input (one P4 processor)	Launchpad	Launchpad + Storage
Broadcast Node	2 days 7 hours	8 days 8 hours
Integrity Response Drones	1 day 13 hours	5 days 13 hours
Nano-Factory	3 days 1 hour	8 days 8 hours
Organic Mortar Applicators	3 days 1 hour	8 days 8 hours
Recursive Computing Module	2 days 7 hours	8 days 8 hours
Self-Harmonizing Power Core	2 days 7 hours	8 days 8 hours
Sterile Conduits	3 days 1 hour	8 days 8 hours
Wetware Mainframe	1 day 13 hours	5 days 13 hours

Note: For P4s you can't split the output: Launchpad 4 days 4 hours, Storage 5 days

How to fill em up? Every ECU and processor can output their materials to a storage overtime, but what if you need to fill up a storage in a short amount of time? Launchpads are the key to the problem as they can directly input materials from the Customs Office. Storages don't have that ability so we need to use Expedited transfer from a Launchpad to a Storage to transfer materials. The trick is that once we do that a cooldown timer will appear on the Launchpad that transferred the materials preventing us from using the same Launchpad to transfer materials to a second Storage Facility until that timer resets.

An Launchpad and a Storage Facility are connected by a link. This link can transfer 1,250 m3/hour. This means that if we use Expedited transfer and send 5,000 m3 to a Storage then we will get a cooldown of 4 hours. Upgrading the link to 2,500 m3/h will gives us a cooldown of 2h. So all we need to do is to keep upgrading the link till we hit a cooldown of 5min. Below that we can't go anymore. Seems to be the limit =/

Day 18

How to get started?

I should make some basic decisions. Would I like to produce P2 items from P1s or P4 items from P4s. It's all about risk vs reward.

• P1 to P2 - Not many items make profit. If I buy a large supply and the prices change then I'm fucked.
• P2 to P4 - I'll need a massive capital. Hauling over 100 mil in an Iteron is not safe!

The good thing will be that I can produce 1 jump away from Jita. Ok so now lets see what makes profit and how much of it I can produce.

Item	Sell	Build Cost	Profit
Broadcast Node	1,490,573.01 ISK	1,315,117.20 ISK	175,455.81 ISK
Integrity Response	1,677,012.30 ISK	1,723,117.80 ISK	-46,105.50 ISK
Nano-Factory	860,998.99 ISK	814,998.40 ISK	46,000.59 ISK
Organic Mortar Applicators	708,244.00 ISK	805,593.00 ISK	-97,349.00 ISK
Recursive Computing Module	979,767.99 ISK	942,254.00 ISK	37,513.99 ISK
Self-Harmonizing Power Core	1,592,744.94 ISK	1,433,714.00 ISK	159,030.94 ISK
Sterile Conduits	942,101.88 ISK	840,459.60 ISK	101,642.28 ISK
Wetware Mainframe	1,500,000.00 ISK	1,352,707.20 ISK	147,292.80 ISK

Date: 29.02.2012

I think I'll produce Wetware Mainframe. I probably should study the items market. Think there will always be profit for this items, I'm not sure, but lets just hope :).

Day 17

I somehow don't fell happy about this Plan B. It increases workload and pays the same. And I wen't and demolished all buildings for this :P. I'm thinking about changing the whole production chain again. At this point I might lack the money for a Plan C.

Factory planets

Market and Industry, hand in hand

This new plan is simple. If I look at the PI mechanics then factory planets are the simplest ones. Input material A and B and produce material C. The hardest part is only the 1st day where you need to setup all the buildings and need to figure out how to connect them to get the most efficient setup. Such a planet, once setup won't need any adjusting, moving of extractor heads or anything else. Basically you can totally forget about a planets problem of shifting resources. This things produce the most income possible but require much more player involvement than any other plan. If I start to do this then I'll be entering a new playground as well, The Market. With plan A and B I sell all the stuff on the market at the current prices. All I care is how good my planets are and for how much that stuff sells. With Plan C I get to play the market. Every day I'll buy materials, reprocess them and sell them back. I'll have to be careful about the market. When prices change I can find myself producing for less than I bought the input materials.