Science & Industry

Version 1.1 of my substantially updated guide is now available (for free of course!) at:

http://www.kevinsthoughts.com/?p=435

This guide is centered around the concept of building PI infrastructure around ones Launch Pad - thus LPC: Launch Pad Centric.

Please note the Section Index to the left of the article in the blog space. That should make it easier to find specific things if you routinely use the guide.

Besides revamping the documentation around LPC, additional sections have been added around Cost and Figures, Capability by Command Center level, and a small section on using an Alt for PI without diverting much of your real training time to do so.

Thanks for your support!

Kevin

Thanks for the kind words. Your absolutely correct on all counts - so much information, so little time!

This guide really is for the novice, and I still claim that title even after writing the guide. Its basically what I wish I could have found before I started doing PI.

Thanks again.

Looks like a pretty nice and detailed guide perfect reading material for anyone just starting out.

I just have a note with regards to routing. It is entirely possible to create all the routes required for the entire colony the moment all structures are built and have thier relevant jobs installed. Once you have a factory installed with a schematic or an extractor started and routed the products they will produce to a storage facility you can see the incoming item in the routes section of that storage facility, you can use that to create the next part of a route without the need to wait for the relevant structures to complete their first cycle.

As a complete novice to PI, I found your guide very helpful in getting started.

It was a bit unclear in bits but the work put into it shows.

Thanks for putting the effort in for other players

Honestly, having both a storage facility and the launch pad strikes me as a waste of 700 MWs! You can easily upgrade your links from your extractors to your launch pad for a lot less MWs, eliminate the storage facility, and perhaps have enough left over to add another extractor head. Just watch your volume, although raw materials are pretty small. My primary PI character runs around in a triple stabbed, cloaked, Hoarder which has about 5000 M3 of storage space - so my launch pads 10,000 M3 is seldom taxed.

Your problem with losing product is what drove me to this design. I found myself having extra, mostly idle, factories in place just to handle the peak. By using the LPC method, the launch pad storage serves as a buffer keeping the smaller number of factories 100% busy - ideally until just before your extraction cycle ends.

Please feel free to post the link to the useful threads if you feel its deserving. To be 100% honest, my Blog needs the traffic, and the post is designed for that environment, so I probably won't place a copy anywhere. It also become a problem to keep multiple copies up to date, and I'm sure there are things that need updating - such as the routing information already mentioned (oh, I'll fix with when I set up my next planet and actually do it once!).

Kevin

Excellent guide thx.

Now on a side note I never use storage's just because they are almost that expensive than launch pads but with 50% capacity.

Also, I never route my raw materials directly to factories but to the fly pad, re route to factories, re route from base factory to storage and again to advanced before final stock, nothing is lost like this.

producer consumer works in reallity only with a queue or a buffer in between. Otherwise we would have shops with only one customer inside etc. Using the launchpad as buffer is not only straight forward, it is very easy to maintain. If you have a bottleneck you won't lose stuff that fast.

Kevin,

The second read through went a lot better! Probably just late at night etc, my apologies

I have tried a few different ways to do the final production and basically concluded that barring the initial raw material transition to goods, its a lot easier to just have a factory planet set aside to process into more complex items. Possibly as my skills increase that will change, however as most is in low sec I prefer to get in and out asap and manufacture at leisure. Just personal preference however with blockade runner its no big deal either way.

Re: CCP Zyrmugist:

As has been mentioned by those far more experienced than me, the storage facilities really seem pointless at present. I tried them initially, however given the launch pad has the same requirements, holds 2x the goods and can directly launch items, its use was a no brainer over the storage facilities.
Multiple upgraded links to the launch pad from extractor, for raw materials that the factories can't immediately store sorts the problems of lost raw materials nicely (and linked from pad to factories again). I also, possibly at the cost of wasted grid, like to use a launch pad solely for completed goods on that planet.

Thanks again for the great guide!

LPC is definitely the most efficient way to go, I've used it on all my installations since day 1.

In WH space, 1 LP, 1 or 2 Extractors (usually you end up needing 2 as things tend to deplete over time; typically you will run 8 heads on one and 3 on the other), and 7 BPs are a decent setup. If you only need 1 extractor, you can run more than 7 BPs, but given that a good strategy is 4 producer planets and one P2->P4 planet, having one planet overproducing isn't usually worth it, unless of course you can get two of them overproducing that can be combined for some extra P3.

The key is to keep the links as short as possible, especially for the extractors since you will need to upgrade them. But you can put your basics in strings of 3 without needing to upgrade the link to the LPC.

The P2->P4 planet will have 3 LPCs, 16 APs running P2->P3 (sourcing from all 3 LPCs, sending to the output LPC), and 4 APs producing the P4. There is room for an extra AP to generate some P3 on the side. All you do is dump 15360 of each of the P1's into the LPCs and come back 2 days later.

You need all your P2 planets to have 8 processors running full time to keep the pipeline full, but usually that isn't possible (I run my extractors on a 23.75 hr cycle, btw), so every so often you have to skip a day. You can futz around overproducing P1 and then chopping back the extractors and adding a BP but it usually isn't worth the time.

One suggestion I have made in the CSM internal forums is that, with a little simplification and smartening, PI methods could be the basis for revamping a lot of EVE industrial processes. The key elements:

1) Processors should automatically source from any accessible storage facility, LP or CC that has the required raw material, taking from the most full location first. You should be able to set a destination for a processor/extractor, but if you don't, it should just output to a default storage location (ie: first to launchpads, in alpha order, then to storage locations, in alpha order, then to the CC; if something is full, move to the next location).

2) Simplify links; eliminate upgrading, just make their cost related to distance.

3) Higher-level programming. Forget about programming individual BPs and APs to do things. Instead, tell the CC what tasks you want done. Whenever a processor is idle, it just rotates through the list until it finds a task it can perform, and does it.

So my P2->P4 planet program is:

Make Robotics x 1
+ Make Mechanical Parts x 2
+ Make Consumer Electronics x 2

This would make PI a lot simpler, and get rid of all the tiresome rewiring needed to change what you're doing.

And it would be the template for revamping just about every industrial process in the game.

No apologies are appropriate. I tend to write as I think, and according to my family, thats not an easy thing to follow!

Actually, one of the biggest concerns I had when writing this was the "learning cliff" Eve is so famous for. I just couldn't find a way to define every term in meaningful ways before using it and simply begging for patience.