Science & Industry

Yet another poor new player looking to scratch together a little ISK. From reading, a pretty basic single P0 or P1 setup on a planet should be worth ~500k to 1 million ISK a day. That's looking like pretty nice (almost) passive income as a start in dabbling in PI and saving to bankroll a few cheap ships.

I found a 0.6 security system with 4 planets I like the look of, and 2 gas giants that may be usefuf in the future when I can handle the distances.

When looking at the planet mode, Planet A (the most appealing) has three materials at around 1/3 a white bar, and one at about 1/4 (I don't know how else to measure it, there's no numbers). Planets B, C, and D each have one or two materials at about 1/3 a bar. All combined, there's a few sets of P1 materials that could be made if/when I decide to expand. What I don't see when I run scans is any other facilities on planet. I have no idea if the planets are in danger of being emptied out every day, or if there's likely to be room for me. Is there a way to see what other construction (command centers, extractors, etc) there is on a planet before I try to place my own command center?

I also don't know if a useful material at 1/3 a bar is "enough" even for a modest startup. My thought on that is that I want "enough" to make placing a command center worthwhile, but not so much that more ambitious PI builders would find it interesting. I do understand that I need to have a good price for whatever I sell, and that P0 materials are sold at such a thin margin that it can be hard to pay the taxes, but refining into P1 is already an expectation and I have potential P2 materials down the road.

I frankly don't know what the white bar represents and the guides I've read on PI aren't really clear about how to read it. Just scan and adjust the slider till you get white circles and go. Is there some sort of rule of thumb to judge how much I might be able to extract with a bar of a particular length?