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P1 -> P4 on one planet? Possible?
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Pinstar Colton
Sweet Asteroid Acres
#1 - 2012-05-11 18:06:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Pinstar Colton
Assuming I had abundant supplies of P1 from other planets, would it be possible to fit an entire production chain to make 1 type of P4 using only imported P1 materials? In my case Wetware Mainframes.



There would be no extractors to compete for power/cpu and all the structures would be next to each other so minimal power/cpu is lost to them.

I have Command Center Upgrades IV.

Just looking for a proof of concept here.

In the cat-and-mouse game that is low sec, there is no shame in learning to be a better mouse.

Katja Faith
Doomheim
#2 - 2012-05-11 18:18:56 UTC
Assuming you had adequate raw mats (P1) imported sure.
Ideki
Wolf Brothers INC
United Neopian Federation
#3 - 2012-05-11 19:10:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Ideki
yup, if you import all the raw resources and do not have any extractors then you can go from 0 to 4 on one planet.
But to be efficient you would need an awfull lot of raw resources to keep the level 4 factory running full time.
Meaning that your spaceport might not have enough storage to hold it all.
You might have to use another storage and immediate tranfer between you spaceport and that secondary storage when you send your raw resources down to the planet.

Unless you let it run a few hours/days max.

Creator of The EVE Planetary Planner
Telchin Dai
TarNec
Invisible Exchequer
#4 - 2012-05-11 23:00:03 UTC
Yup, there are a couple of spreadsheets which help you figure out how many of each type of factory you need, this sheet is kinda handy too

PDF for PI
Linsel Harvnor
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#5 - 2012-05-12 01:07:38 UTC
I do this. I'm not convinced it's worth it.

I have a "production planet" with three spaceports and one storage facility. Two of the spaceports are to hold imported P1 components, and the third spaceport is my output spaceport for the produced P4. The storage facility holes intermediate P2 and P3 components.

I have a single high-tech production plant making the P4s, and three advanced plants each making one of the three P3s that goes into a P4. I have 18 advanced plants making P2; two plants for each of the 9 P2s that are necessary for the various P3s.

I then have five planets extracting and doing basic processing to P1s. Two of the planets extract 27,000 units of raw materials a day, and the other three extract 36,000 units of raw materials a day. Assuming I keep everything running, that runs my P2 production plants at a 3/4 duty cycle, which is also a 3/4 duty cycle for the P3 production, and thus a 3/8 duty cycle for the single high-tech plant.

I'm able to keep all of my extraction going poking at it a couple of times a day. Each extractor can go unsupervised for at least a day (3-4 days in some cases), but of course they aren't all sycned. I keep them running so that they'll produce enough, but not overflow the spaceport buffers on the extraction planets.

However, I don't think this is worth it. Another thing I could do is just have six planets all extracting and producing P2s locally, which I would then sell. I used to do this, extracting 36,000 units of raw materials on each planet, with six basic plants and three advanced plants all running at full duty cycle. At the price I can sell my P4s at, in order to make more than that from six planets producing P2s I'd have to be able to sell my P2s at something like 5100ISK per unit. And, if you troll the markets, there are a number of P2 items that sell at well more than 5100ISK per unit-- so if you chose your planets well, you actually profit more by not bothering with P4 production, and just having each planet produce one of the more valuable P2s independent of all your other planets.

I have *not* looked into the possibility of making *all* of my planets P4 production planets, and buying the P2s necessary. It may well be that the *average* price of the P2s that go into making a single P4 is low enough that a "pure production" operation would be profitable. Probably worth exploring. Right now, though, I'm in the mode of going from extraction to P4 entirely on my own operations.
Invictra Atreides
Toward the Terra
#6 - 2012-05-12 08:47:54 UTC
I can do a P1 to P2 factory planet that converts 2x 52.000 units of P1 into P2 within 6+ days in one fill. No maintenance required for 6+ days. As I experienced for a P1-P4 setup would require daily maintenance and for me this was the biggest turn off, since I have access to a 0% POCO.

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Ideki
Wolf Brothers INC
United Neopian Federation
#7 - 2012-05-12 11:12:57 UTC
I have made the calculation for the profit between producing P2 or P3 or P4 (by buying the lower levels).
And each time the profit margin is about the same.

I ended up using my six planets to produce P2 on each of them because I can only play a couple of hour per week.
So I cannot bother to go buy/sell and restart my extractors everyday.

In the end I just spend 30 minutes tuesday or wednesday evening to restart my extractors and saturday morning to sell/restart again.

So if you have more time and can invest it in, you can try full blown P4 production.
But it is really time consuming.
And it is a HUGE investment in isk.
Because you have to setup a lot of industries and storage.
And buy up-front the resources you need to fill them.

The good point of this is that unlike the singular P2 planet production, you can buy the exact ammount of materials you need to produce your P4 without having any waste.
Whereas it is not simple to have your extactors extract the same amount of raw resources on one planet to have no waste. (but it is possible)

There are various spreadsheets, websites, tools (I even made one) that you can use to know how you need to a 24H P4 production.

Creator of The EVE Planetary Planner
Victor Duperre
Monarch Mineral Exports Inc.
#8 - 2012-05-13 04:29:54 UTC
Yes, it is possible to manufacture P4 from P1 all in one planet. Depending on the P4 you're manufacturing, you can pretty easily fit enough P2 and P3 factories on one planet to keep a P4 factory running continuously and still have enough grid and CPU left for spaceports and/or storage facilities.

The issue, though, is that not all P4s require the same number of factories to keep running continuously. Even with a level 5 command post, it may be a tight squeeze running a Wetware Mainframe or Integrity Response Drone planet continuously because both of those require 9 P2 materials. On the other hand, Sterile Conduits and Nano-Factories only require 4. Everything else needs 6 P2 materials.I could get into the exact factory requirements for each P4 production world but if you've looked into how to do it I'm sure you can tell that if you need 9 P2s you are talking about significantly more factories than if you only needed 4 or 6 P2s.

Although links are very short since all connected buildings are as close together as possible, links can still make a significant difference in available resources. For this reason I would strongly recommend selecting a planet with a small diameter to minimize link cost. In my experience, I've found that picking a small planet can allow you to squeeze in another building or two.

With only a level 4 command post, I don't think you'll be able to fit enough stuff to run a wetware mainframe factory continuously off of P1 materials. I'm skeptical that you could even do it with a level 5 command post on a small planet, and even if you could I think you'd be seriously gimped in terms of planet side storage and space ports.

I used to have a setup similar to the one Linsel Harvnor mentioned above, with a single P1->P4 production world supplied by four P1 production worlds. I recently decided to try running 5 P1->P4 production worlds supplied by P1 materials from the market instead. After spending lots of time gathering market data and making spread sheets, I found that even when customs costs are taken into account, producing P4 from P1 bought from the market makes better profit per factory than buying P2 or P3. I didn't look into the possibility of having multiple P4 factories on a world and starting with P3 or P2 though so that could net more.

As Ideki stated, setting up P1->P4 worlds and buying P1 from the market does represent a significant initial investment because of the colony setup cost and the initial P1 cost. IIRC, it cost me ~140M to bring my first 2 clones online and supply them with enough P1 to run for 72 hours. If you can foot the upfront cost though, even selling to buy and buying from sell orders should get you enough to buy the next round of P1 and make a healthy profit. I've been running these planets for about 3 weeks and it's looking like I'm on track to make 500M this month off of the 5 P1->P4 planets. Not bad considering I only have to hull materials once every 3 days. I do take the time to post buy and sell orders to maximize my profits though.

Linsel mentioned the amount of input resources needed and it is a lot but my colonies are near a market hub and I can fly an Orca so it's not too bad to keep everything supplied. I tried doing this in an Iteron IV but it took me a couple hours of hulling just to resupply 2 worlds so an Orca or a Freighter is kind of a must for this setup.

Bottom line is that it is doable but you probably won't be able fit a Wetware Mainframe setup where the P4 factory can run continuously if you start with P1. Also, it may be more profitable for you to just convert all your worlds to P1->P4 worlds so break out your favorite spreadsheet program and give it a look. IMHO that's the best way to do PI in high sec since it doesn't matter how resource poor a planet is, you can still make some serious profit from it.

Good luck!