Science & Industry

The math can get somewhat complicated so I'm just going to focus on P4 production; someone else can work the math for P3 or lower to see whether that's more profitable. I won't tell you what to build since that link you provided tells you what your options are. It won't take much market research to figure which of those options will be the most profitable for you. What I will tell you is that:

• 3000 P0 -> 20 P1 every 30 minutes per Basic Industry Facility
• 40 + 40 P1 -> 5 P2 every 60 minutes per Advanced Industry Facility
• 10 + 10 P2 -> 3 P3 every 60 minutes per Advanced Industry Facility. Some P3s take 10 of a third P2 as input.
• 6 + 6 + 6 P3 -> 1 P4 every 60 minutes per High Tech Production Plant. Some P4s substitute 40 P1 for one of the P3 inputs.
• Each P4 will require six P3 Facilities to feed it continuously.
• Each P3 will require four P2 Facilities to feed it continuously.
• Each P2 will require two P1 Facilities to feed it continuously.
• Each P1 will require 6000 P0 resources extracted per hour to feed it continuously.
• This gives us a total of 1 High Tech Industry Facility, 30 Advanced Industry Facilities, 48 Basic Industry Facilities and enough extractors to produce 24,000 each of twelve P0 resources just to produce a single P4 per hour.

Extracting 24,000 resources per hour should be child's play in a WH. My high-sec planets, on average, generate about half of that between two resources, one of which is typically not on the best of the planet's hotspots. With all extractors on the best hotspots for a single resource on a WH planet, I daresay you might even be able to get 48,000 per hour, allowing for production of two P4s per hour. I haven't actually done this myself so it's all theorycraft but if you can get that level of extraction, here's how you would set up your planets to manufacture two P4s per hour. Note that we'll also have to double the number of facilities as well. This means you will need 96 Basic Facilities, 60 Advanced Facilities (48 producing P2 and 12 producing P3) and 2 High Tech Facilities. To handle all that, we'll need 18 planets with level 5 Command Centers so you'll have to train up that third character.

Twelve extraction planets with the following building setups, each focusing on producing a single P1:

• 1x Command Center 5
• 1x Storage Facility
• 1x Launch Pad
• 3x Basic Industry Facility
• 2x Extractor Control Unit
• 16x Extractor Head

Total Power Required: 17,800 + links


Three P1 Factory Planets with the following building setups, each producing some of the P1s needed:

• 1x Command Center 5
• 1x Storage Facility
• 1x Launch Pad
• 20x Basic Industry Facility

Total Power Required: 17,400 + links


Two P3 Factory Planets with the following building setup, each focusing on producing one of the P3s needed:

• 1x Command Center 5
• 1x Storage Facility
• 1x Launch Pad
• 20x Advanced Industry Facility (16 producing P2 and 4 producing P3)

Total Power Required: 15,400 + links


One P4 Factory Planet with the following building setup, focusing on producing the other P3 and the P4. This planet must be either the Barren or the Temperate as those are the only ones that can host the High Tech facility:

• 1x Command Center 5
• 1x Storage Facility
• 1x Launch Pad
• 20x Advanced Industry Facility (16 producing P2 and 4 producing P3)
• 2x High Tech Industry Facility

Total Power Required: 16,200 + links


I estimate this setup will require about 1-2 hours of maintenance per day to reset your extractors and then haul your P0s and P1s to your factory planets. With uninterrupted production, you'll get 48 units of P4 product per day or 1,440 every thirty days, which should easily be able to generate a couple billion isk per month. If you tell me which P4 you want to produce, I (or someone else) should be able to tell you which planets to set up as what.

If you don't want to train the 3rd character to level 5 or can't generate the 48,000 P0s per hour on all twelve planets, I can provide a reduced plan that will only produce one P4 per hour and some extra P1s that can either be saved for a rainy day or sold for additional profit.

Hope that helps!