Science & Industry

All the processed materials (Biofuels, Bacteria, Biomass, etc) seem to all be highly unprofitable to make.

Why does anyone make them?

Just for reference here are current numbers for a colony with 20 installations running for 50 hours:

(16)  ......................Bacteria      -5,253,447  -22.00%
(17)  ......................Biofuels     -22,326,693  -70.34%
(18)  .......................Biomass    -105,827,253  -69.44%
(19)  .............Chiral Structures     -14,177,283  -33.83%
(20)  ..................Electrolytes     -67,245,907  -77.94%
(21)  .............Industrial Fibers     -23,827,666  -42.34%
(22)  ............Oxidizing Compound      -3,870,460  -12.27%
(23)  ........................Oxygen     -36,066,991  -64.92%
(24)  .....................Plasmoids     -10,730,039  -33.81%
(25)  ...............Precious Metals      -7,456,516  -21.98%
(26)  ......................Proteins     -23,315,033  -46.43%
(27)  ...............Reactive Metals     -28,750,312  -58.01%
(28)  .......................Silicon     -12,780,584  -23.05%
(29)  ..................Toxic Metals     -34,449,000  -60.50%
(30)  .........................Water     -24,934,016  -59.00%

Not a pretty picture.

Somethings wrong somewhere... what are those negative numbers? full table please

Yeah, I'm mad and I'm not going to take it anymore! I want biomass factories to be profitable!

Biomass is used to make Hermetic Membranes which are used to make Prototype Cloaking devices which are used to make Covert Ops Cloaking Device II which have been very profitable for me. Maybe you need to move up the value chain!

I don't understand the hostility towards this guy's question, as it is *fairly* legitimate if you underestimate the intelligence of the average player in EVE.

I would wager that the reason you're seeing a loss on building those items is because you've found what the "what I mine is free"-crowd is building with their PI colonies.
There is simply no good way to make proper profit on those items because you're fighting against people who are working on a completely different level than you.

What you could do is buy their undervalued items and start turning them into the higher tiered items. All I can say is you should probably just laugh at the uninformed and move on to greener pastures like the rest of us.

You have to remember that most people don't buy pi to run factory planets. I'd wager that most people run p2 set ups were they harvest and refine on the same planet, then ship it to market. If they have extra of one of the lower tiers, then they just take it as well and dump it on market.

The shear volumes alone make running a p0-p1 factory make it difficult if not impossible to run profitably. So most of what's on the market is from people dumping their extra.

There could be a few reasons. Some people could be dumb and not running the numbers to see what is or isn't profitable. Other people could be buying P0 or P1 to fix the imbalance they have on their planets. Lastly people could be buying up all of the PI mats for speculation purposes with the impending release of citadels.

I am sure there are probably other reasons I haven't thought of as well.

I reached the same conclusion you did years ago, and resolved to export P0 instead of P1 since it showed so much more profit.

P0 takes awhile to move, especially if you only sell them in your home system rather than a trade hub, but people will buy them.

You didn't really get a proper answer to this whole issue so far, so let's look at details.
Sheeth there is largely correct. There is nothing you can do with P0 mats besides convert them to P1. For most of the P1s, there is nothing you can do with them besides make P2s. So normally one doesn't sell P0 at all, they are at least made into P1s on the same planet they are extracted on. Nothing to do with "I mine it so it's free" and everything to do with efficiency. Why do P0 show up on the market at all then? Could be a new player who doesn't realize the previous facts. Could be someone who is clearing out their planets and dumping everything, or perhaps someone who is just bad at PI.

Two things I suggest looking at when trying to figure out WTF. The first is, are these items being sold in a major trade hub, or just dumped in some random system? P0 on the market a few jumps away from Jita, near one of the rookie systems, that's an ignorant new player. Second is, look at the big picture. What is the actual volume for sale compared to other PI? It takes 3000 P0 to make 20 P1, 12k P0 to make 5 P2, 48k or 72k P0 to make 3 P3, and 198k to 432k P0 to make 1 P4. Figure 300,000 units of P4 on the market right now, which required roughly 900 million units of P0 to make. Now here's the key part. If you look at market history in Jita, you will see about 45,000 units of P4 traded every day. If you look at P0s, you very rarely see tens of millions of units. You see maybe tens of thousands, maybe a few thousand, maybe zero. The market for P0 is not even 0.1% the size of the market for P4s.

IMO anyone selling P0 is either someone who doesn't understand how PI works, or is a trader hoping to sell to factory world owners who don't check prices and don't understand how PI works.

The people that buy at that price will probably be going for a higher P# like a P4. I've not done the full math but I presume going from a P1 product like you mention to a P4 may well turn a profit (I hope so as that is what I am doing). Also dont forget though if you buy a lots of PI (regardless of P#) and put it on a planet you will pay an import cost, then an export cost when you take it off planet. Given the extortionate taxes that are on high sec POCOs I would wager that (unless you of course control the POCOs ) you will not make much of a profit.

I do PI in a WH, the yields are good, the taxes are low, apart from the initial set up fees (which are covered in about the 1st month) everything you make is profit -transport costs (if you have those) -taxes if your corp adds a small tax to them.

You could also sell direct to people via contract which will save transaction taxes.