Science & Industry

I'm planning on mass-producing coolant and have found a system with 5 gas planets (along with a few others)

In a week or so, I will have Command Center Upgrades and Interplanetary Consolidation at rank IV.

The way I see it, I have four choices.

1. Build on all 5 gas planets, Setup to extract Electrolytes and Water on each planet and manufacture the coolant locally.
2. Build on 3 gas planets dedicated to pure Electrolyte extraction. Build on an ocean planet and use it for pure water extraction. Build my 5th colony on some random world and use it as a dedicated factory planet to make the coolant.
3. Build 4 gas colonies to extract Electrolytes, Build 1 factory planet. Purchase the water (which is about 250 isk each cheaper than Electrolytes) on the open market and combine it with the extracted Electrolytes on the factory planet.
4. Build 4 gas colonies for Electrolytes, Build my 5th on an ocean planet. Make it a hybrid water extraction/Coolant manufacturing world, and import the electrolytes to be combined with the locally produced water.

This is all in high sec, so keep CONCORD's 10% tax rate in mind.
Looking at the planets, I can extract about 3 times more water per extractor head than I can electrolytes.

For you PI veterans out there, which option would you suggest as being most economical?

Well, you have asked pretty much all the right questions, but have skipped the math part, eh? You do know that this game is also called 'Spreadsheets in Space', right?

Anyway, the 'easiest' way to go is coolant on all five planets - you skip the hassle (and taxes) of export, transport, and import. In addition, you can balance each planet in a pretty straight forward manner (you don't have to look at your total extraction system-wide). The down side is that you are unlikely to maximize your total coolant production, especially since gas planets tend to be large (some massive!), which makes the long link(s) from the two P0 sources quite grid intensive. And aqueous liquids and Ionic solutions are ALWAYS in different bands on gas planets.

OTOH, pure factory planets tend to work best (in my experience) in producing P3 (robotics, smartfabs), so I don't have much experience in P2 factory planets (and my planets are in w-space, not hi sec).

Based on your extraction rates you have provided, option 2 seems to be a good option and fairly straight forward, as long as you are not running the factory planet too 'dry' because you cannot feed it enough materials. I do not personally like option 3, but you could combine 2 and 3 - build a factory planet larger than you need and top it off with P1 from the market if the numbers work out.

Be aware that option 4 ties your water production to your factory location, so if the water resources move, you have to be able to run long links. If the planet is small enough, this may work without problem. Also, you can make a hybrid option 3 and 4, as well.

In any case, if you make a pure factory world, you will not be able to feed it completely from 4 planets in hi sec - you will need to either run 'skinny' a lot of the time, top off from the market, or downsize the factories to match your extraction, and use the surplus grid/cpu to extracting something else.

That...is a very good idea. I hadn't realized that different P1s were taxed differently. I always thought they were all taxed the same.

Not just your hauling time, but your discretionary time.

Dedicated P0->P1 and factory planets tend to give you the highest total output, but you'll be making daily runs to keep things moving. If you want to go play somewhere else for a few days, you can expect those planets to shut down.

P0->P2/P3 planets tend to give lower total output, but there's much less hauling involved. I visit my planets once a week to make pick-ups (If I feel like it, I can actually go 3 weeks w/o a pick-up) & the rest of the time I can be where I want to be.
Another advantage to this method is that you are gathering less of any one resource on each of your planets, minimizing the effects of resource depletion.

There really is no single best answer. It comes down to how you want to spend your time and the quality of of the planets you choose to set up on.

Any P2 processing on a planet, pulling P0 to convert to P1, takes AWAY DRASTICALLY from your possible total yield of P1. And your amount of P1 obviously determines how much P2 you could otherwise make......on another planet entirely.

ALL wrong-ish as those market prices vary.

BOILERPLATE BS is not necessary to understanding this, and in fact does nothing but lend itself to unreadable tl;dr.

For the gas planets (assuming they are geared for pure extraction)

I was going to do 2 ECUs, I was going to do two launch pads, one at each pole with the P0 processors there. I would then place the ECUs near any hot spots that appear and move them as needed. Since the ionic solutions only ever appear in the rings near the pole, the relative distance of my ECU to my launch pad will be fairly static. It also seems that each ring always has at least one relatively hot spot each, so doing that will let me follow the hotspots without having to constantly uproot my expensive launch pads.

Granted, I need to see how huge these gas planets are to see if two long links will chew up too much power/cpu for having to travel a long distance.

For my ocean planet, assuming dedicated water production, I was just going to do 1 ECU with 10 heads and the rest filled with a ton of P0 processors to handle the immense volume generated. The Ocean planet I found has a particularly high concentration of aqueous liquids by high sec standards.

Thank you for the math on the P0 vs P1. I had a feeling that P0 hauling was a bad Idea.

What it really comes down to is how much work you want to put into it. running extraction planets exporting P1 and making all P2 on a factory planet will give the most return but will also require the most work. The logistics can really get to be a pain in the butt. With regard to extracting some P1 and buying the rest, it all depends on what you can extract in what volumes. This varies greatly from planet to planet

I run all my PI for minimal effort/logistics and maximum passive income. I run all my P2 of single planets only moving mats around for making robotics. I make all needed mats for POS fuel. Personally I find storm planets much better for making coolant than gas planets, but if you found some good gas planets go for it

Keep in mind though many P1 mats at times are worth more than the P2 they go into. By the time you factor import/export, and shipping, you may lose money buying the P1 even if you are only buying one of the two components. The reason for this is logistics. Many players who have been doing PI for a long time realize what the logistics are worth. you are better off selling P2 at a lower price than the value of the P1 mats as it means you make far more isk/m3 for the loads you actually haul to the point of sale. You can easily fit 100 mil worth of P2 and P3 in a single load with a mammoth or itty 5. Is it really worth it to you to run 5-6 loads of P1 just to make 10% more isk over running a single load of P2. you isk/hour is way higher making P2

There is another option. I personally process everything to the highest level possible before exporting, every P2 can be produced from scratch on at least one type of planet. I have 4 characters doing PI at level 4, giving me 20 planets all making mats needed for POS fuel. A single gas planet on one character makes all the Oxygen I need. 4 planets making mechanical parts, 4 planets making coolant, 5 planets making enriched uranium, 3 planets making consumer electronics to be used in robotics factories, and 3 planets making mechanical parts to feed advanced factories making robotics with the consumer electronics imported from other planets. This gives me enough PI mats to make over 50,000 fuel blocks per month, even buying the ICE at Jita prices I make about 600 mil per month only spending about 4 hours a week keeping it going and hauling everything.

Or tell me what you are doing, and i can invite you to our corp and you will export 0 % TAX and make rat and mine if you want, and do exploration. Only thing is that at the end of the month the we pay rent, acording to how many players we are in corp.
And thing is i mad a calculation, only the export tax only, not import covers that tax alone. plus the many nr of things you do more.
but more ingame.:) later dudes.

True for s single planet, but not a rule for a network of planets. If you use a dedicated factory planet to make P2, then that planet will have no extraction (or severely limited, I suppose), so making some P2 on a planet (especially if you are importing, not extracting, the second P1) can free up your factory planet for extraction service - potentially more than your lost extraction due to running some P2 on other planets.

I would show you the math, but I am sure you aren't interested :).