Science & Industry

I'm just getting into PI, but the P4 factory examples I've found import most, if not all, of the p1 materials.

Are you located on the smallest planet you can find and using short links?

While you might be able to do that, it's going to be woefully inefficient. Past P2 products you probably want to extract on multiple planets and have one as a factory. Yes, more hauling, but you'll be able to fit all the factories you need and they won't be sitting idle most of the time.

I also tried to figure out how to work on a single planet, but that was for robotics. I figured I could mine out the mechanical parts to fill one silo then switch my extractor heads and processors to do the consumer electronics. Theoretically possible, but slow and impractical. I can do it quicker and cheaper by extracting from 4 planets and taking the materials to a nice little .2% planet I found. I load two launch pads with materials and run through 16 processors. About two days later I have enough robotics and guidance systems for a weeks worth of T2 drone production.

For my next trick, however, I am trying to figure out the most efficient way to produce materials for mobile tractor units whilemnot sacrificing my fuel block, T2 drone and T2 ammo production planets. I have two characters without any PI going, when I train them to level 4, thats 10 planets with which to work.

The trick I learned that really made my PI stuff more efficient was to only use the absolute bare minimum number of silos necessary (ideally none). My PI alt had Command Center Upgrades 3 when I set up shop, and I found that my optimal colony was:

2 ECUs
8-10 Extractor Heads (+more with CCU 4)
4 Basic Processors
1 Advanced Processor (+1 with CCU 4)
1 Launchpad.

This fits but is very tight so you'll want to be very careful about your building/link placements. You'll have relatively limited storage capacity, so you'll need to offload your colonies every 2-3 days.

Basically, link everything to the Launchpad and use it as a silo. Two sets of raw materials route to the launchpad and feed the two pairs of basic processors. Each pair makes a different input for the Advanced Processor. If you have a good enough planet (losec), you can keep your Advanced Processor running almost all the time. With CCU 4 or 5, you should be able to keep your AP running almost nonstop on most planets. (EDIT: I forgot to add that this is a setup optimized for CCU 3 assuming that CCU 4/5 was coming. Once you have CCU 4, you'll want to add a second AP.)

I'm doing PI to make fuel block components. I have one planet each for: Coolant, Oxygen, Enriched Uranium, and Consumer Electronics, and two planets for Mechanical Parts. One of the MP planets has a second Advanced Processor to make Robotics; that AP can only ever be running at half capacity, but given how few Robotics you need for fuel blocks, it works.

Don't you need 1 Advanced for every 2 Basics. With you setup you are either going to over produce P1 or just be limiting the number of heads you can have running.