EVE New Citizens Q&A

As a new player in Eve i searching my way of making money and how can you the best do this with trying it all,

Im setting up PI in Hi-sec, when I like it I will setup something in low-sec

I read on the forum or google that there is no profit to make with it in hi- sec, so i seek some answers because follow my calculations and all the taxes it can turn out I will make a profit.
But maybe my calculations are wrong.

So I seek information of there are lists of wat the costs are for setting up factories command centers etc, of there are returning costs in it every cycle, my first setup did cost me around the 28 million for 3 planet setup that is a bit high because of starters mistakes like wrong way building or on the wrong planet with to les resources

Highsec suffers from 2 disadvantages with PI:
1. Resources are inversely proportional to security status. - the lower the security of a system the more resources it will have.
2. There is a 10% export tax (5% import) paid to CCP . This tax can be reduced with the customs code expertise skill. The tax is only charged in highsec. EDIT: this is in addition to the tax paid to the POCO owner.

Your best option in highsec is to build P2 on your planets. Look at "Refined Planetary Materials" in the Manufacture & Research section of the market to see pricing and market volumes in your region. Use https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Planetary_Commodities to see which raw materials are required. Most can be built on 1 planet.

With level 4 skills you can fit 2 advanced processors, each fed by 2 basic processors, each fed by an extractor. Put a launchpad in the middle and route all materials through it - you need to buffer, don't feed directly from extractors to processors. The number of extractor heads you can fit will depend on the length of your links - pick small planets where the raw materials you need are close together.

Theoretical maximum with this setup is 1680 units of P2/week. Prices vary but if you get 12.000 ISK per unit that works out to 20 million ISK/week. You won't achieve the theoretical maximum. With level 4 skills and highsec planets expect half that - any more is a bonus. It will take you at most 10 minutes/week to manage each planet so the ISK/hour is still pretty good!

You can also train the 2nd and 3rd characters on your account to do PI by giving them the skill queue for a couple of weeks which will triple your PI income.

In nullsec, with level 5 skills, I am averaging a little over 2000 units of P2 per planet per week. Roughly 450 million ISK per week for the 3 characters (18 planets) on the account.

On export / import. The max number of factories is difficult to say as it depends on the planet size and the rest of your setup. Rule for factory only planets: pick one with the smallest possible diameter. This gives you the lowest cost for connections. Then place factories and the launchpad as close as possible together. You can find setups with google.

Train the customs tax skill to level III or IV. This is only relevant for highsec PI. It will reduce that 10% export tax down to something more manageable, like 5%. Assuming you find a POCO with a cheap player set tax rate you should be able to find one with an export tax rate of 6% after skills.... Don't accept anything more than this.


The next thing you need to realise is that raw material harvesting in highsec is crap. However, this does nothing to influence the economics of factory planets, (wherein you import raw materials and turn them into more expensive ones), and with the added safety of highsec transportation going for high-tec factory worlds is a viable option. If you want to do harvesting, you need to go to lowsec. Otherwise you're just wasting your time.

The PI process is very complex and it's hard to get your head around. Raw materials are harvested on world and I call these "P0" or P zero. They can all be put through a basic processor to produce, "P1 - and if you want a simple and economical PI setup you should go no further than this. Despite P2, and P3 having a higher value, they often don't have a markup to justify spending on-world resources (CPU and Powergrid) to justifty them. Just use all of your on world resources to plant more extractor heads and stick with a bulk harvesting operation. If you just want to sell on market then this will get you the most ISK - and the marginal rates for P2 and P3 are break even, and sometimes negative.

Hi-tech PI doesn't become worthwhile until you start using Hi-tech processors on either Barren or Temerperate worlds - and even then you need to be particular about what you choose to make. Your only money making alternative for highsec factory world PI is a Either a P3 to P4, or a P1 to P4 transition.. Making P2 or P3 will loose you ISK.

The PI becomes profitable with lvl III skills on: Interplanetary Consolidation, Command Center Upgrades. You’ll feel essential income with lvl IV skills on them, because it will let to assemble one addition planet and what is the most important will let to install more structures there.

The POCO Total Tax = CONCORD Tax (10%) and POCO Owner Tax (0% - 100%). You can reduce the CONCORD tax with the Custom Code Expertise skill (Trading tab). Avoid any Hi-Sec POCOS with Total Tax over 15% if you want to make ISK on it. The closer is POCO to the main trading hub (Jita, Dodixie, Hek) the higher is Owner Tax on it, with some exclusions.

Always do P0->P1 or P3->P4 in Hi-Sec and avoid simple P0 or P0->P1->P2 manufacturing schemes. I did P0 for a while and that’s completely unprofitable, will require many installed storages and a lot of attention. The most P0 raw materials have very low demand with very low buy prices. The P0->P1->P2 Hi-Sec model will give you just very low output production quantity, based on your available CPU/Power source and planet resources… already crafted Nanites, huh, … Avoid P3->P4 in Low-Sec – just choose a good barren planet in 0.9-1 system as close to trading hub as possible. Avoid P3->P4 if tax if high – it’s just too much ISK lost. The best systems for Hi-Sec P0->P1 are 0.5-0.6 systems. There is hard to find two or more planets per system to install good P0->P1 colonies.

Always install the same P0->P1 production on all planets – manufacture just one kind of goods. 28M for 3 planets is high price. What you done there?

Try to install your colonies on little planets firstly: barren, temperament, lava, ice. The big gas and storm planets requires more skills to collect the materials.

The Hi-Sec profit for P0->P1 (Planetary IV) is around 20-30M ISK/week while Low-Sec is 40-50M ISK/week.

About Low-Sec PI I can tell more (doing this over a month), but I’ll be laconic. You can find POCOS with Total Tax under 6% there. Some planets have one type of resource in quantity like most average Null-Sec of the same planets have. Choose some dead-end constellation. Prepare an Epithal with Cloaking Device II and MJD and 2 Core Stabilizers will be ok and make your ship more agile in any case. Make bookmarks in every system. Firstly, buy and deliver frigates and shuttles to all available stations around. Plan and make the optimal align angle for every respective POCOS (because sometime your ship will interfere with the structure, making hard to warp away). Mainly most of your beekeeper visits to those system will happen calmly, but sometime the locals will begin a thrilling buzzing saga, after which only a shuttle will let you escape from there.

Level V PI is serious time and SP investment - over 36 days! If you want this then choose and join to some Null-Sec Corp/Alliance better than Low-Sec project. A good option is to produce Plasmoids, Oxygen, Silicon, Rocket fuel there.

You can’t improve extractor head unit directly. Firstly, you have skills Planetology and Advanced Planetology which will let you to see where the raw material concentration is higher. To see the landmark of resources just push the Scan button and choose the interesting resource (top-left corner). Upward is a tracking module which will let you filter the landmark diagram to display more exactly the resolution overview from green color (poorest concentration) to white color (richest concentration). Always drop the extractor heads over white or light red zones and DON’T overlap extractor zones. Secondly, you have an extractor area tracking module in your surveying program UI, which will let you set 1 day program with higher extracting speed or 14day program – with lowest extracting speed. It depends by how much time you can give to this. The Planetology III is enough. No need in Advanced Planetology.

None of those need to be replaced, but you might want to move extractor control unit around after stuff depletes around it.
The heads you will need to move almost every new cycle since the hotspots move often.
Shorter cycles = more stuff but more work too.