EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi. I'm living in a nullsec corp. and trying to start to Planetary Interaction. Before that, I've read articles and watched videos then looked at my corp. market and neighbor market volume for P2, P3 and P4 commodities. Almost all P2 commodities have 3-4 quantities volume in a day and nearly non for P3 and P4. So I think, I should use our corp. freight service to move my commodities to a trade hub. But this service has a price and P2 commodities make no sense for that. On the other hand, as much as I read, I can't produce P3 and P4 commodities efficiently with a single character. I don't want to create a PI alt. I have friends but can't be sure if they make commitment for this work one month later.

So I'm trying to find a way to produce P4 commodities efficiently own my own. I read something factory planets. In our corp. there are so much supply but low demand so I think I can buy P2 commodities directly from the market with a low price and move them to my factory planets and produce P4 commodities and move them to a trade hub with freight service.

So is it possible (and more importantly efficient) to make 5 or 6 factory planets without any extractors and follow the plan above? I need to get veteran opinions.

Personally, I'd prefer to farm P2 and then wait until I find convenient wormholes to ship it all to market. But assuming you've run the numbers (and included import/export taxes), then what you have suggested can and does work. Just be aware that you are very much at the mercy of the markets, and a change in prices can turn your profit into a loss. This is why I prefer extraction - while my profits might drop, they never turn negative.

If you like this approach, by the way, consider manufacturing as well. It's the same thing, really. You buy mats off the market, and try to turn them into something you can sell at a profit.

Don't think the calculation is right. Maybe with a fully researched T2 BPO in an Sotiyo in nullsec optimised for drones you can get close to your 55K (ex PI). Mind sharing yours? My calculation shows selling the PI is more profitable. Getting the stuff out is easy with wormholes, especially the low volume P3 and P4.

EDIT: you edited the invention costs, but still my estimation shows a ~180K (none decryptor is optimal).

The skills are limited to 5 squares each, so that limits each character to 6 planets max (with the last planet taking much longer to unlock than the first 5), and only so much CPU and Power Grid available per planet to install factories.

To give you an idea of what you can do per planet:

- 6-8 P1 processors and a single extractor with 10 heads for maximized P0 -> P1 refining. Equivalent of 6-8 processing pipes.
- 2 extractors (5 heads each) -> P1 (each) -> combined to P2. This is the equivalent of 1 processing pipe.
- 16-20 processors for several processing pipes P1 -> P3 or P2 -> P4

Efficiency is calculated in terms of how much import and export you have to do (because of taxes) vs. how many parallel pipes you can have going (production volume). The problem with trying to collect all P0 materials and take them to P4 is that you can't find all P0's that you need on a single planet, and even if you do, some of them are barely there, and each production pipe only functions as slow as the weakest extractor.

EDIT: People make PI alts because:

- you can have decent Trading skills, excellent PI extraction skills, AND be able to fly a T2 transport (for cov-ops cloak and/or large space) with approx 6 mil SP, which you can get in 3-4 months (Omega training speed) or with a 6-PLEX pack ($100 or so).

- it's faster to train the skills to 4 and unlock 5 planets than it is to train the skills from 4 to 5 to unlock the last planet.

- your alts can stay near the planets, whereas your main may be involved in alliance wars on the other side of the map, and the most profitable PI cycle is 24 hrs (move the extractors every 24 hrs to follow resources, and / or empty your storage silos every 24 hours or they get full).

herewith my $0.02 PI copypasta.