Science & Industry

Seriously, **** this ****.

But really though, if you're good at PI and don't mind helping me out with some of it, convo me in game. I've read most of the guides etc. It's the actual planning the colonies I'm having trouble with. Mainly because ccp doesn't know how to document a damn thing, and the planetary planner tool I'm trying to use has the most un-intuitive interface I've ever seen.

I understand the basics. I'm trying to actually plan my colonies, and am having trouble with that aspect. Mainly I suck at spreadsheets, and can't seem to find a decent tool to plan colonies with.

Well I plan on having at least 15 of them. And if that's successful then it will probably double depending on the amount of work involved to keep things running at decent efficiency. I'm currently training a PI character (though I used to have a perfect PI character), so I'm not really able to use trial and error. I also used the trial and error method before and ended up with a clusterfuck. So I'm trying to plan things out this time, and also run some calculations to figure out whether I would make more isk/month buying p1 materials and turning them into p4 via factory planets. Or buying the cheaper p1 materials and producing the more expensive ones myself, then combining them via factory planets. Or producing everything myself. Etc.

You're not making any sense... you say you know all the basics and are only having trouble making a plan for all your colonies. Then you go on to say CCP doesn't document a damn thing.... but how can CCP document a plan tailored specifically to your needs/planets? It just doesn't make any sense.....

If I may suggest...

Don't start with 15 colonies. That's like learning to swim by diving into the ocean.
Start with 1 or 2. Figure out what's effective, whether you like the amount of work needed, whether the ISK is worth the management. Once you've figured a couple out, then expand if you feel it's worthwhile.

What about the planning of the colonies is giving you grief?

Is it the placement on the planet, the efficiency of the colony, profit per click?

Way to assume the worst.

When I talk about lack of documentation, I mean lack of documentation on each facility's cycle times, input requirements, etc. One particularly undocumented thing that I never would have known had I not chanced upon a post that mentioned it (I've not seen it mentioned in the 10 or so guides/wiki pages/etc that I've read), is that the size of the planet actually makes a difference in your link costs.

Did you try the EVE Planetary Planner tool ?

I did. My main problem with it is the lack of a tree-like view. Try setting up a factory planet with that tool, and you will quickly understand how tough it can be to work with, and how confusing it gets. If you could make it so that routes make a tree-like view, or maybe even make it so I can set up different groups of extractors, then it would make things much better. Basically there needs to be some visual representation of what is feeding into what. A list of all the facilities is just a pita, and it takes ages to scroll through the list to set them up etc. Don't get me wrong it's a nice tool, it's just a bit of a PITA to work with.

Also the materials list scrollbar in the production data is broken. The list itself goes too far down so you can't see the bottom items.

I don't use them. Ever. Makes EVE into too much of a job.

It is best to learn from trial and error and observation, and base quantities for any Industrial activity upon the results found.