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PI: Balancing Time and Production
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Hung TuLo
Running with Dogs
OnlyFleets.
#1 - 2012-11-01 12:30:09 UTC
Hi all,

I am trying to find the best balance between extractor time, product production and reduced replenishment of the product. I find that when setting the extractors to run the max time for 15min pulls (around 1day and 45 min) I do get alot of products but also lose alot of the abundance of product available. Too much time and not enough product.

I am making pos fuel and need to have a constant steady flow of the products.

What have you found to be the best balance of extracting the product and keeping the replenishment rate of the production?

Thanks in advance,

Hung

"In space all warriors are cold warriors" ---  General Chang  Star Trek VI
Bugsy VanHalen
Society of lost Souls
#2 - 2012-11-01 15:33:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Bugsy VanHalen
In high sec resource depletion generally has much more to do with how many other players are using that same planet, and less about how quickly you are extracting.

Also the concentrations shift every down time. new hotspots pop up while the spot that was good yesterday might not be good today. I run the 1 day 45 minute cycles and reset them every day. When resetting the extractors you can move the heads to the best spot. On occasion there will not be a good spot and you need to move the whole extractor. I have at times had extractors half way around the planet with long links to reach the good hot spots.

I also make POS fuel and it is quite easy to balance. I am sure you already understand this but for clarity, an advanced factory making P2 needs two stacks P1 products per hour. A basic factory produces 1/2 of the needed P1 per 30 minutes giving the full required P1 per hour for the advanced factory. So you need two basic factories each producing one of the needed P1 mats to supply one advanced factory making P2. Each of those basic factories needs 6000 units of P0 per hour to be kept running.

So to produce a P2 for POS fuel on a single planet you need two extractors with enough heads out to bring in an average of 6000 per hour of each P0 needed. Every P2 can be produced from scratch on at least 1 planet type. Many planets the needed resources available close together are hard to find. Usually one is harder to find a good spot than the other. I generally find the best spot for the harder to find one an just take what is available for the other. for example making mechanical parts on a barren planet the noble metals can be harder to find. Once you find your spot you can balance the number of heads out to get as close as possible to 6000 units per hour of each material while still keeping enough CPU/PG to run two basic factories, 1 advanced factory, and a launch pad. On many low sec, null sec, and W-space planets you can bring in over 12000 units per hour of each and still have enough CPU/PG to run 4 basic factories, 2 advanced factories, and a launch pad, Although harder to balance this would basically double the output of a high sec planet.

The key is to balance the amount of P0 you pull in with the amount needed for production to get the most out of that planet at the lowest effort. Many others claim that having dedicated extraction planets and hauling all the P1 to a factory planet is more efficient. While I do not disagree with that, it also takes much more time to maintain. Also in high sec the taxes on a factory planet can really hurt as you are paying to export from your extraction planet, import to your factory planet, and again to export finished goods. While making P2 from scratch on a single planet you only pay tax once to export the finished product. I find the drop in efficiency is more than made up for in the time saved and tax savings. At least when making P2 for POS fuel. If you are making P4 then you have no choice but to use factory planets.
Hung TuLo
Running with Dogs
OnlyFleets.
#3 - 2012-11-01 18:20:11 UTC
I am in Null with 11 planets 2 of which are factory. I also am using the 1 day 45 min cycle. Trying to find a way to be able to produce items on a constant basis without having to move the heads so much. Maybe thats impossible.

Thanks for you reply I appreciate it.

"In space all warriors are cold warriors" ---  General Chang  Star Trek VI
Denal Umbra
Coffee Hub
#4 - 2012-11-01 19:18:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Denal Umbra
Using a strip mining setup you will need to move the heads at least twice a week. Sometimes the whole extractors even to 1000+ PG distances to keep the production running on a 24h schedule.

If you however are not going after "max profits" and would rather have less movement then you could consider producing p2 on the spot. Doing so, will require you to move the extractor heads at most once a week. Quite often even once every 2-3 weeks and you no longer have to haul the PI to different planets all the time, freeing up the time you need to spend on PI maintenance daily.

The profits lost doing so is 25% or so on good planets.

With a strip mining + factory setup, you will usually only get 8 p1 factories which are then routed into 4 p2 factories on a designated factory planet.
With a p2 on spot production, you will have up to 3 p2 factories that can run for 24-72h without a restart. On a crap planet. It may fall down to 2 p2 factories with 1-7 days for the restart.

That is assuming you are doing the PI in either in null or wh space. In high-sec... the replenishment rates are not enough by far due to the amount of people extracting there.

Edit: Thats assuming you have CCU5, with less... you will have 2 p2 factories instead of the possible 3 making the loss in profits more noticeable.
Styth spiting
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#5 - 2012-11-01 21:58:57 UTC

Short answer:

Long extraction times (longer then 24.75 hours) is a convince feature and will not help prolong a spot you are extracting from in most cases. Longer extraction times are only useful if you plan to manage your planets every few days. Basically if you are only going to manage your planets every 2 days it is better to get 1.5 the amount of materials you would get if you let your planet idle for 1 day of inactivity.

Also even in Null you can still deal with a large number of other players. In fact most alliance/corp system setups are far more saturated with PI setups then in high sec. If for example you're in a corp/alliance with 100 people and only 10% are doing PI this still means there may be upwards of 50 planet installations or about 5 PI setups per planet. And it only takes 1 player extracting the same material type to cause your daily yields to go down. And if you are doing a long extraction as someone doing 1 day long extractions for the same material type your attempt at prolonging the material will have been wasted (in fact you will have extracted much less).


Long answer:

There is alot of speculation and theory craft on how replenishment on planets occurs and in what abundance. And you have to understand how the replenishment system works to understand why you can't really prolong one extraction spot on a planet.

Now this is purely theory craft, but having spent several hundred hours doing PI and an embarrassingly amount of research and testing this is how I assume the system works (for the most part).

Planets have a base, minimum and maximum amount of materials (P0) on a planet based on size. Planets at reset will always have more then the minimum of each material type (planets will always have some of each material) and will never go past the maximum for total material amounts. Planets also have a frequency amount that they spawn (the bar graph displaying the material types available on the planet, and their frequency).

For example. Lets assume this planet has 100,000 P0 worth of materials (based on planet size, and security level) on the plant, and every reset the plant is set back to 100,000 P0. And based on the total frequency amounts (in the example below) 60% of the planet is materials. In this example we will assume there is 20,000 P0 for each material to start.

Fake Planet IV. Plasma planet type, (20,000km radius)
Maximum material amount: 100,000
Minimum material amount per material type: 10,000
Base Metals: 10%
heavy metals: 15%
Noble Metals: 5%
Non-CS crystals:5%
Suspended Plasma: 25%



The way the materials are replenished on the planet is based on how much was extracted, minimum material amounts, and then finally the material frequency percent.

Day 1: So lets say in 1 24 hour period you extracted 20,000 p0 of Base Metals. At reset the plant then needs to calculate how to replenish 20,000 p0 across all material types based on there frequency. First we need to check minimum material amounts.

In our example the planet has a minimum material type amount of 10,000. So 10,000 goes directly back to Base Metals. The extra 10,000 p0 is then spread across the remaining 4 material types based on their frequency percent. Leaving us with

+10,000 Base Metals: 10%
+3,000 (23,000) heavy metals: 15%
+1,000 (21,000) Noble Metals: 5%
+1,000 (21,000) Non-CS crystals:5%
+5,000 (25,000) Suspended Plasma: 25%

Now as you can see the frequency of base metals is decreased, but still available. This is why when even a high frequency material on a planet will start to become less frequent. It is also why low frequency items will suddenly have hot spots or become more readily available.

Day 2: The next day you setup for plasma because it is now very abundant. You setup for the day and extract 25,000 P0. At reset we calculate how the 25,000 P0 is replenished again. And again we start off with minimum material amounts.


On day 2 at reset we have 25,000 P0 to distribute across the planet. Again 10,000 (the minimum) goes back into Plasma leaving us with 15,000 P0 to distribute leaving us with

+4500 (14,500) Base Metals: 10%
+6500 (29,500) Heavy metals: 15%
+2,000 (23,000) Noble Metals: 5%
+2,000 (23,000) Non-CS crystals:5%
+10,000 (10,000) Suspended Plasma: 25%

And now you can see that after a few days some Noble and Non-CS are starting to become more noticeable.

Also at some point hot spots will start to form. We can assume this happens when a material has based on its spawn frequency, the extraction of other materials on the planet, and the material it self not being extracted lately. With the numbers above we could assume that Heavy Metals would now start to generate a hot spot.


Now this is where things start to get (more) complicated. Normally you don't have just 1 player on a planet. You may have several other players who are extracting the same material, or other materials. 2 players extracting the same materials will both receive less per day (basically sharing the materials available). Over several days these two players will receive less and less material, while at the same time less of that material type replenishes on the plant. You may also have several players extracting Non-CH and noble metals, which then causes a huge bloom of Plasma, base, and heavy. This is the situation I suggested at in the short answer in regards to prolonging an extractor placement There may be times where other players extracting materials cause your material type to be replenished automatically.

This is also why (and how) you can force hot spats to spawn of a specific material. In theory you could setup 20 extractor heads (no factories, basically extracting/destroying) on 2 different accounts for 2 of the most dense materials on the planet to basically force the planet to generate a massive amount of materials you really want.
Styth spiting
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2012-11-01 22:04:10 UTC
Just wanted to add (ran out of space in the last post!). that again the above is all theory. It is the theory that I use for my setups and has worked quite well for me for a while now. It also doesn't touch on how materials frequently spawn in specific areas of a planet (poles, equator, etc) or how exactly materials spawn in groups vs spawning over larger areas.
Musashi Date
#7 - 2012-11-02 05:09:18 UTC
Hi, what's with the 1 day and 45 minutes? Hotspot reset?
Styth spiting
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#8 - 2012-11-02 07:33:34 UTC
Musashi Date wrote:
Hi, what's with the 1 day and 45 minutes? Hotspot reset?


As long as your extractors are set for less then 1 day, 45 minutes they will extract materials every 15 minutes. Once you hit 1 day 60 minutes your extracts will instead cycle every 30 minutes.
Denal Umbra
Coffee Hub
#9 - 2012-11-02 11:16:50 UTC
That's some quite interesting theory and looks to be solid.

I've noticed something similar with the abundancy meters and minimum replenishments per hour after DT.

50% abundance seems to replenish somewhere betwene 20-30k / h and unless someone is strip mining that spot, can use the same spot for a week or more before i have to move the heads.
75-80% abundance seems to provide 30-40k / h and i rarely, if ever need to move those heads. Once a month at most.

Note: This is with wh planets and just a few doing PI on those mentioned planets.
LordAssasin
Kenshin.
#10 - 2012-11-02 13:01:55 UTC
Omg ppl, how much time you have to spend on this topic. A virgin planet that is in 00 (-1 true status WH) yields at list 2.2 mils p0 for 48 h to approx 2.7 mil m3. This is max that i have seen except the gas planets. The gas planets have truly the best hot spots and yield until 4 mil m3 per the 2d1h30 min duration(30 min cycle). So from my exp the yield has not been lower than 1.7 mils and this is after a month of not changing the heads at all. just enter stop install submit. Then back to something else, cos damn is to much to spend on such a low income isk. Ok is passive but make it as passive as possible. i spend 6 h per week and that is all. this include also hauling. But my setup is so thought that i make from p2 to p4 on a same planet and have enough material for 48 h. Is not that hard if you use excel.
Basic input 6000/h, 40/h for advance, 10 for p3 that is all and all have same time frame : 1 H.
So you look in your pad or storage and see how much is there. You look at how much it will gather until the end of the cycles. Then look at how much will the basic industry will process and see that the p1 has a 0.38 m3 not 0.01 m3. Better yet the p2 has 1.5 m3 and the higher you go p3 p4 so forth will take less and less space. You need to plan this carefully otherwise you loose what you extract.
From what i seen a 1.8 mil yield for 48 h, need 5 basic , and 5 advance to process it . You will have a 9k6 p1 after the process and it will consume a 1.4 m yield so be careful that storage can take it. then this 9600 obtained from the planet is combined with imported goods the rest of space 15 k left in the launch pad.:) usually i leave 6k from planet and 19 k from import so there is plenty of space. And after i have created a buffer things begin to roll, or you can buy directly this buffer and get right into the middle of it.
But do your homework before.

if this was of any help pls don't forget to like so that i know you are there:)see you soon.