Science & Industry

Hey, was wondering if i could get some expert opinions on factory planets.

I've been doing PI for quite some time now, and have amassed a sizeable amount of P1 material. My attempts to convert this amount from P1 to P3 is a very slow process, and i wonder if anyone has perfected a factory planet to do this easily. As it stands i have a few that have 2 launchpads, the first connecting to 10 advanced factories, and the other connects to 11. Unfortunately, this is the limit of the planets powergrid. This has allowed me to effectively dump the required resources into either launchpad, and the factories chew them up, and place the P2 back into the same launchpad the factory is connected to. Unfortunately there are 24 P2 materials, so im forced to occationally switch 3 of my factories to the ones i've been missing.

Once i've got a good amount of P2, its a simple matter of switching the factories. This works perfectly because there are 21 P3 materials, and 21 factories.

The issue im having is the correct distibution of P1 resources between the two launchpads for making the P2. As each P2 factory takes 2 seperate P1 materials combined to be created, i've been trying to work out the best arrangement, so that the resources are consumed evenly (or as evenly as possible). I've come to find that certain materials are consumed faster, depending how i arrange which factory is running which process. This in turn can make other process' stop, resulting in their secondary resource to be used by other factories, resulting in a further disparity between resources consumed. I've tried working out the "best" arrangement, but regardless i still encounter this issue.

So, does anyone have any insight into improving my existing method? Or perhaps a better system/arrangement that would improve my coversion from P1 to P2? My search of the internet has revealed little insight into factory planets, and any advice would be greatly appreciated!

The two general setups for P1->P2, or P2->P3 with CCU4 skill are:

(3) LPs, each with (6) AIFs (for a total of 18)
(2) LPs, each with (10) AIFs (for a total of 20)

The 3+18 method runs for about 54-55 hours before needing to be refilled, the 2+20 runs for about 36 hours.

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Colony_Management#Barren_Planet_.28P2.2FP3_Factories.29

There's also a P1->P3 setup that I've been playing around with which is (2) LPs and (20) AIFs (or 25 with CCU5). Primary advantage of the P1->P3 setup is that it avoids the import/export tax on the P2 interim product. Right now, tariffs paid on P2 are rather tiny, but if P2 tariffs were put in line with the other tariffs then it would make more sense to go straight from P1 to P3.

My (partial) setup:

Extract+P1

P2

P3+P4

Any which way, but make sure you do it in high sec.

Just wanted to share the setup I have for producing Integrity Response Drones from P1 inputs.

With CCU 4 it has the capacity to produce 18 P4s. It's not the speediest setup but all I have to do is just drop the P1s and wait for the P4s at the other end.

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1yBTs1eeuENjDuqcswKtuLXeEWWtdYkxh6TFFVGD3-Os/edit?hl=en_US

I did a set up that would chew through P2 materials and output Robotics quite quickly on my characters doing PI. I can attest that it's a ROYAL pain in the ass to have 8 characters making robotics from P2 materials when your set up can only hold around 18 hours worth of 'stuff'. So much so that I burnt out after the 2nd week and now have all my characters PI planets sitting there doing nothing.

I really should fix that this weekend but thats not the point. The point I'm trying to say is, as Scrapyard Bob has said, set up a 'fire and forget' forget factory system and go about other things. Yes micro managing the 'optimal' factory world set up will net you the 'best' income assuming you picked the right things to make, but the amount of time you need to invest extra be it hauling more crap more often, resetting up schematics or reshuffling stuff around will cut into your fun and also profits else where if you do other ISK making activities to suppliment your daily income.

For example:

Doing my 8 characters on 5 planets (same 5 planets for all of them) it took me about 40-60 mins a day hauling, dropping off and buying any extra stuff my buy orders didn't catch. I would make about 25 mill a day profit per character I think it was with PI alone. Now if I swapped over to a more 'lazy boy' set up, just doing napkin maths, I would only need to spend 50-70 minutes every 2 days to haul, buy and drop off stuff and make 22 million a day doing so per character, saving me 30-50 minutes which I oculd use for doing an incursion (I'm im really bored), doing exploration or on my main pew pewing in WH's and generally having more fun that moving crap from point A to point B. I would gladly give up the 24 mill a day loss for the freedom granted.

So as said before...go for lazy boy set ups or long burn factory jobs with PI, your sanity will thank us later.

EDIT: Some of these layouts/set ups make me want to start it up again, but I don't want to train CCU 5 *sigh*


EDIT 2:

Now having looked at some of the ideas/links provided here about making things via factory worlds using P1 through to P3, are they actually as profitable as doing straight P2 to P3 production using a 'brute force' approach to pump out more product at a lower profit/unit but many more units?

For example

I could set up a pure P2 to P3 production planet with 19 factories running 24/7. 19 factories make 57 P3 products an hour. Each factory adds 10k value to the P2 products at market sale of the P3 product. The result is 190k profit an hour.

setting up a P1 > P3 factory world results in 4 factories making P3 products, thus making 12 P3 items an hour. However the whole process from P1 to P3 adds 25k value a the end for each of the 4 factories making the P3's. The result is 100k. (the numbers I have calculated myself using Jita buy orders for the P1 & P2 products and sell order price for the resulting P3, numbers are not hypothetical).

The result is the P1-P3 factory world produces much less due to lower yield of the final product, even though the added value is higher. Even if you did CCU 5 for the above example (I used CCU4 due to that being what most Alt's are trained to) just adds 25k an hour to the P1-P3 and about 30k more to the P2-P3 (not done the math properly for this).

I would hope I am wrong here with my calculations but it seems brute forcing is more profitable on an ISK per hour basis than bothering with P1's unless the P1's are really cheap compared to the P2's they make (in the example I gave the values where reasonably close).

(edited, wrong numbers cos i was looking at the wrong bit of paperwork)

Yeah i've quickly realised just how click-extensive it is to change all those processors, not to mention time consuming, and i'd have to do it twice a day. So i've simply made that my P1 > P2 planet, and set up a similar planet but with only 21 processors for the P2 > P3 stage. Means i can leave them all as they are and simply move them from one planet to another.

Spent me ages to work out all the math of how much to stick in them so they're consumed evenally, as things like water, bacteria and reactive metal are consumed faster, as they are needed in more of the processors, but i finally worked it out so that it does a 12hour run, meaning i just need to fill it up twice a day.

Did the same for the P2 > P3 planet, tho again the maths was a pain because of all the different processors using different amount of materials (3 resources are needed once, 18 are needed twice, and 3 are needed three times).

But now its all setup, and just needs me to plonk more resources in twice a day.

And another very quick and dirty trick to use to count how much you need to stock up on P1 -> P2, is each P2 factory takes (almost) 1000 P1 product per day. So if you have 18 P2 factories, in a 24 hour period, you are going to go through (almost) 18000 P1.

Gusto

Possible,but also possible they will get tired of it after a while. Low sec system near to 0.0. will be attracted to get under control so will low sec systems near high sec rather commonly under attack. (Kill mail)
But let’s assume you find a system you can do it rather undisturbed, you will have to bring down 1 bill Isk on POCO's to set up a production circle P1 –P4.

Recommendation:

1. Get your base resources (P1) from Low sec, but place any further production to High sec.
2. Join a WH Corp
3. Join a 0.0. Corp
4. Arrange with other player corporations to split CO expense.(including a sort of defense)
5. Stay in Hig sec. and get your base materials from the market.

The switch to POCO certainly has risen the risk factor ./. to reward, but than again the game is basically designed to interact with the player community. The disadvantages for single player will continue to rise over the time.

In about a months or so we will have a mutch better picture on it.

Thank you very much for your deeper consiterations.