Science & Industry

Hello, I have been considering setting up a few sp farms and if I do I have decided to make use of the farms for more than just SP

So if I choose to use them as PI workers as well, what would you consider the most important PI skills to have? Ideally I could figure a way to get cloak as well to go along with it so I want to make sure I dont spend sp where I dont need it.

obviously if I cant get a cloak I can find myself a wormhole to do the PI in but ya... what do you consider the best skills to have in PI

I have never done PI before so I really have no clue... butr figure this is a good a time as any to start :)


Thanks

PI is very click intensive, but anyone can do it because there's only 5 skills period. Get planetary consolidation V, Advanced planetology III (plus required level of planetology), remote sensing only to the level that will allow you to work your planets in safety, and command center IV or V (but it takes a LOT of SP to get V.) You'll probably end up not wanting to mess with your planets after a little while though, because there's just so much tedious clicking, with not much reward. But, once you get tired of clickity clickity, you can always stuff those skills in an extractor, and no harm done. Good luck!

Thank you :)

You think a mass of low sp PI guys would be best in a Wormhole or lowsec or what? Id prefer not to do highsec

Not trying to hijack the thread but how dangerous is wormhole pi, and what else is there to do that would be profitable?

Ive been thinking about exploration and or life in a wormhole, or is the smallest wormholes even too dangerous?

Also the guy commented about setting up a citadel, i saw that citadels were dumb ideas but are pos stations a good idea?

I want to find ways to get rich, im like that in all my games, im new here but like it so i want to be very rich one day. Not from buying p.l.e.x. either, i want to do it without cheating or taking shortcuts.

that depends (tm).

If you're part of a decent wormhole corp, and you take sensible precautions, it's remarkably safe. I've yet to lose an Epithal in the WH. I've lost a few down the Jita-Amarr pipe, but not in the 'hole. That said, like PI in any lawless space, one day I fully expect to land at a POCO and find myself trapped inside a 'dictor bubble.

PI can make you rich, but it takes an investment of time initially and then daily maintenance.

I have 6 characters producing Wetware Mainframes in a C1 wormhole. They all have 5,4,4,4,4 skills and in total are extracting from 30 planets and final manufacturing on 1. I've been doing it for several years as my primary income source and it's highly lucrative and low maintenance once you know what you're doing and can avoid production bottle necks. It's all about practice, really.

Each character takes about 30 minutes for initial set up on five planets. As someone just starting out, this will probably take you significantly longer. Then each day I reset extraction for the next 24 hours, that takes about 2 minutes per character. Then, about once every two weeks, there's another 10 minutes per character emptying out the POCOs.

How much do I make? Well, Wetware Mainframes have spiked hard with the Citadel expansion, so I'm currently making about 1.7b a week whereas in the past it was closer to 600m. It allows you to make decent ISK without a whole lot of effort, once you know what you're doing. Fortunately, as you've no doubt seen from the comments above, most people don't consider it a viable income stream so you don't have a whole lot of price competition either.

I make about a billion a week over 4 characters, and I'm currently training up or planning to train another 8 (yay MCT offer!)

I run planets either as pure r0 extractors, as r0>p1 refiners, or as pure factory planets.

For an extractor planet, I make sure I have Command Centre Upgrades V, as this allows you to have 2 ECUs, each with 10 heads, with 2 Launchpads and enough left over for decently long links so you can reach the best possible deposits without having to decommission launchpads frequently (with CCUIV you can only do 9 heads per ECU and won't have much left over for links)

For a refinery world, you only need Command Centre upgrades IV, because your optimal ratio of Basic Processors to Launchpads is 6 to 1 (6 Basic Processors require 864000 r0 per 24 hours - 7 would need 1008000) and CCUV doesn't give you enough grid to put a 4th cluster of "1 launchpad + 6 Basic Processors" down. I have tried to work out a system using 1 launchpad that uses expedited transfers into Storage Facilities and then running 8 processors from each SF (24 hours of 8 Basic Processors uses 1152000 r0), but it doesn't work because SFs have the same grid requirement as Launchpads, and you just end up adding loads of micromanagement for no gain.

Once you're into pure factory planets you should configure them to produce everything required sequentially. I have some that simply do p1>p2, and I have some that take in p1/2 and chain everything together to spit out p4 at the other end. In theory a p1>p2 factory can be configured with 13 Processors to one launchpad, but in practice 12 is the limit if you want to have any kind of leeway in how often you do your PI runs. 12 p1>p2 processors use 23040 p1 (8755.2m3) per 24 hours. If you want to put two sets of "1 Launchpad + 12 Advanced Processors" down you need CCUV, but you can do two sets of 1+10 with CCUIV, which will also give you a few more hours leeway on when you do your PI runs.

A factory planet doing p2 > p4 can be set up with "1 Launchpad + 2 High-Tech Processors + 12 Advanced Processors" All you have to do is dump 960 of each of the 6 types of p2 in at the top and let it spit out 48 Broadcast nodes every 24 hours. You'll have enough room on planet for another Launchpad & Processor arrangement too.

The one iron rule on every manufacturing and refining planet I have is that I only ever put full sets of materials into the system.

The upshot of all this is that I have 2 characters who do nothing but extract, one who just refines r0 > p1 and one who takes p1 and builds p2 & above.

Extractors get Command Centre Upgrades V, Interplanetary Consolidation V, Remote Sensing III, Planetology IV, Advanced Planetology III

Refiners have Command Centre Upgrades IV, Interplanetary Consolidation V & nothing else.

Manufacturers go for Command Centre Upgrades V, Interplanetary Consolidation V & nothing else.

Gallente Industrial IV or V is also a good move, especially for Extractors & Refiners.

The otherother approach to PI is to put up lots of buy orders and refine whatever you get into whatever looks profitable.

As a side note, one of the reasons I'm getting more PI toons is so I can concentrate each toon in one (or at most two) systems and cut down on travel time. Once I've got the additional 8 in place with the right skills it'll be a once a week Jump Freighter run around each system in use to pick up all the r0 and take it to the bases system.

Oh, and one tip: pick a good base system for doing all your refining in, with lots of small (preferably barren) inner system planets and a Citadel in system. Do everything you can to reduce travel time.

I can't give you much help as regards J-Space PI. I hear the planets are better, but being stuck to just the planets in one system would limit your available resources, I guess?