Science & Industry

Never ever ever EVER do 2 extractor control units. You cannot match the yield of materials made from doing 2-5 day cycles. Simply extract P1 for a few days, fill up a silo, then extract the 2nd P1. You will lose the initial day or two of P2 production, but after this you will have 24/7 production, with a ton of P1 materials left over which you can then throw into a factory planet to make other P2 products.

Best setup is command centers IV and adv planetlogy IV. 8 basic factories, 1 ECU with 10 heads (or less depending on yields), 1 launch pad, and 1 silo. Your link to your ECU should be able to reach around 1/2 of the planet (25% ain any direction) and you should be able to fit 2 adv factories depending on the radius of the planet (gas planets are too large to have this setup, so no adv factories).

For best yields you will want to do 24 hour cycles (max 24h 45m). Any more and the extraction rates steadily decrease.

FWIW, I used to do WH PI that I considered fairly low maintenance and yet made me tons of isk. At the time it was just coolant, but more advanced setups would be similar.

I think i had around 9 toons. I had three factory planets running about 12 processors each. So at the time I was producing ~130,000 coolant a month. At the time it was when coolant was way up, at around 14,000/unit so I was making just shy of 2bil a month.

All of my other toons were dedicated to just sucking up P0 and refining to P1. They would have a maxed out ECU, and enough basic factories to keep up.

I ran the ECU's on 5 day cycles. So every 5 days or so I would spend maybe 30-40min picking up PI, refilling the factory planets etc. About as low maintenance as I could make it.

Sounds pretty much like what I have. ignore the fools who say not to put two ECU's on a planet. Having to spend 10 hours a week or more managing PI is no longer a passive income. I am set up very similar to you. The key is to match your extraction with your production as close as possible. Extra P0 is just a waste of storage. A single basic factory needs 6000 units of P0 and puts out 40 units of P1 per hour. 30 minute cycles so two cycles per hour. A advanced factory producing P2 needs 40 units of each P1 per hour. So basically you need two PI basic factories(one for each P1 needed) to to feed a single P2 advanced factory. You can easily balance a setup in null for two P2 factories, any more and it can get tight.

You need two ECU's pulling at least 12000 units of each P0 per hour. This P0 will feed 4 basic factories (two for each P1 material) which will in turn feed two P2 factories. It is often worth while to use a storage facility for the P0 and P1 materials as it will prevent the launch pad for running out of room for P2 outputs.

If you have really good planets you can try to pull 18000 units of each P0 to feed 6 basic and three advanced factories but in my experience the fitting for this is very tight, you need really good planets to make it work. The idea is to keep the P2 factories running 24/7. I generally make my extraction programs longer if possible to reduce maintenance on the PI rather than try to squeeze in another set of factories. But I guess it depends on your true sec which way is easier.

Doing it this way you might need to restart extractors every day, but will only need to haul once per week. it is very low maintenance for the returns. Other set ups can make more isk, but take much more time to run.

I also generally stick to making POS fuel components. Although I have recently added Bio-gel, nanites, and data chips, to the mix to produce nanite paste. The demand for nanite paste has gone way up since the ancillary armor repair module came out, plus I use alot of it myself.

that being said. if you have the patience for it, having a bunch of planets only making P1 and exporting to a factory planet to make P3 and P4 materials can generate a much higher income, but does take a little more work. Especially with 10 accounts. The biggest hurdle for factory planets is the tax for so much import and exporting. But in deep null this should be a non issues as you should have access to 0 tax POCO's.

Really just started playing with PI myself, and I am doing it in high sec and making damn good isk.

BUT, it's not low maint because I am am buying extra P0 and P1 stuff off the market to feed my factory planets.

One extractor???? Pffft.

Heck I have extra extractors on my factory planets collecting some of the harder to get P0 stuff and making it into the rarer (in high sec) P1 stuff I need.

I am spending too much time on it though, and will prolly just settle in with a bunch of P1 planets with the 4 basic and 2 advanced processor set up discussed above and just haul to my factory planets every few days.

Doing this with 3 toons I am hauling and selling around 10k robotics every 10 days or so. But, like I said, too much time involved in it right now. Working on getting to that 4 day cycle thing.

OP, what you've got is basically the best low-effort setup for nullsec. I'd recommend training command center upgrades V on your guys if possible as the extra powergrid helps the dual extractor setup a lot.

And no you absolutely don't need to move extractor heads every day, not sure if Asina is a highsec/lowsec PI person using high effort methods to compensate for worse yields or wants all their factories to be working all the time. vOv

Yeah you should probably move the extractor heads every once in a while, but not every day, once or twice a week is good. You should be able to keep your factories running most (but not all of the time, maybe 80-95% depending on the planet) doing it right with the yield bonuses from being in nullsec.

Edit: In null you can probably get your factories working 100% of the time with 24 hour cycles but I run 2 day cycles myself.

I'm currently doing PI in low sec about 9 jumps from high sec border. I do only P1 extractor planets. Focusing on high priced resources like silicon and precious metals etc.

A 24h cycle extracts approx 1 mil to 1.5 mil P0 per day which my basic factories can handle fine. every 2-3 day I quickly undock
from station to move the stuff remotely to the customs office. and maybe once a week I haul the stuff from the customs office to my station. So thats like 10 min a day for restarting and transfer plus 1h per week moving heads around and hauling to keep a steady output. I set my personal minimum to 1mil P0 per day per planet. If an ECU falls below that I move it around a bit.

Ask yourself if you really need to be that far into null for your PI. At my location I'm looking at 55mil ISK black frog fee to have 800k P1 moved to high-sec. that adds a production cost for the P1 of 70 isk to each unit. So my total production cost is 120 isk for something that sells for approx 750isk in the hub. thats approx profit 480'000'000 ISK per transport. good enough for me.

If I would go for the P2 path, I would continue with P1 planets with my high skill PI alts and train up a production alt , only need CCU and Planetary Consolidation as skills + hauling because you don't need to extract on the pure production planet.
Yes you loose some on exporting and importing on the P1.
I made a P1 -> P2 conversion sheet to see how much I gain on the conversion per type. I calculate:

Income from Selling the P1 (Jita) used by one P2 cycle - Export Tax - TransportCost = Profit P1

Exporting the P1 and re-importing to production planet = (with my taxes) approx 6600 ISK = my P1 Cost

Income from Selling the P2 (Jita) - Export Tax - TransportCost - P1 Cost = Profit P2

Then Profit P2 - Profit P1 = the profit from the conversion P1 -> P2.

With current prices the conversion profit increase ranges from -19'000 ISK for watercooled CPU to +21'000 for ISK Polyaramids. (all prices based on 1 cycle). Polyaramids also has the second highest P2 sell price so I'd go for that.


I think selling high value P1 is still the best option maintenance vs profit. P2 adds maintenance Unless you go for P0 - P2 on one planet. Yes it will be low maintenance but also low yields.

just my 2 isk on the topic.

Yeah, please do not do this. Me and my alts would enjoy less competition since I have 13 structure 2 ECU, 6 P1 Fac, 3 P2 Fac on each of my planets (And I think 2 or so would need a resetup since I sometimes only reach extractions of 17xxx P0 for an extractor - But I somehow cannot be arsed).

I started like a month ago (started Dual Character Training on some accounts).

I am close to filling my first Rhea so I will make my first sales soon(tm).

So far every planet nets 360 P2 per day which sell at 6800-7200 when selling to Jita buy orders.

So that means 440.640.000 ISK per month, although there are some taxes in NPC 0.0 (10% POCOs). It would be nice to do it in SOV 0.0 with 0% tax obviously.

At the moment I run 5 characters with 2 more being into training. The setup is indeed a fricking clickfest, but in NPC 0.0 you will not lose access so it's really a one-timer unless you have chosen a bad spot.

I'd say it is still easily 400m ISK profit per character per month. That means 2 characters and you can recoup the cost for PLEX for dual character training and basically play for free afterwards (or alternatively: lose a lot of ships :D)

What I do:

23hour cycles that I reset every day. There is almost no moving of the pins required.
When the Launchpad reaches somewhere above 7-8k and my Clone CDs are free (since the chars are also manufacturing) I go for the hauling.

The hauling really pisses me off, but usually not more than 2 chars need hauling at once (couldn't stand all at once probably).

The JF trip is negligible. 2 of my characters are cynos at the proper positions and basically just clonejump to those locations and light the cynos.

EDIT: Didn't know the forums make partial posts go poof as well!

In case you meant the missing last sentence: Forum ate it probably. Edited it.

Also on topic:



Didn't know this was possible. But I think it's quite unlikely since they earn a nice profit for doing nothing. The POCOs in my system are at 10% at the moment which earns them 3-4m export tax per planet.

With 5 characters at the moment thats a juicy 90-120m per week roughly for not doing anything.

Regarding the ganks: I use cheap T1 Haulers on most of my characters, I try to not use the same exporting pattern and I have ongrid warpins. Buy yeah, key is getting a quiet system :)