Science & Industry

I've heard people claim you can make two billion a month running PI.

I'm guessing to do this you'd need 6 installations in low or null sec.

Is it possible? I've only just started with PI so I've yet to really see how profitable it is.

I see.

So your main does the final reaction while the others provide tier 2 or 3 items?

It doesn't really matter who does final assembly, the skills for PI are pretty quick to train, and none give any advantage in assembly. More skill lets you build colonies with more buildings, have colonies on more planets, and locate resources a little more precisely, but not make anything faster per building.

And as the previous reply suggests, trying to pin down an hourly income doesn't really work... most of your income is made when you are offline or doing something else. Its not an active profession like mining or running complexes, where income is directly proportional to time spent.

And I seriously doubt anyone can make 2 biliion a month with a measly six colonies. Serious PI industrialists train multiple characters. The second and third toons on your account are fine for doing PI.

Yeah I'm not sure why people say Yeah, you can make 2 bil a month (with 5 accounts)! That sort of question and answer needs to be relative to something. If it takes you 5 accounts to make 2 bill, that's 400 per character, which isn't enough for a plex. So do you really need those accounts? Be a hell of a lot easier to just buy/sell plex with your 15 bucks. More isk too.

Wormhole PI deserves a honourable mention too, for smaller entities or even solo players.

I agree that it has to be maintained and is not truely passive.

But compare having an alt-account to be a dedicated hauler for your main who mines. You need that hauler to be a 2nd account since the whole point is having two ships active at the same time so they can work together.

With two PI alts, you can easily log onto 1, do PI updates/hauling. Then Log off, log onto alt #2 and repeat. You don't need to have them online at the same time to gain their full benefit. Sure, the alt halts your main's training for a little while while they train up PI skills, but that is just a one time cost.

I only used the P1 example as that is what I do right now. However, I operate in the same area as my planets so visiting them every other day is part of my routine. There are certainly more passive ways to do PI

The most passive thing I can think of is a single-planet P2 setup. Because P2s are so much smaller than their component P1 materials, you can have them cook even longer before needing to pick up and empty the launchpads. When you do need to haul, you visit it once to take the P2s to market. No fussing with importing needed. I find success with 2 ECUs, 4 basic factories (2 for each type) and 2 advanced factories. The only tricky part is balancing the supply of the two materials so that you don't get a buildup of too much of one type over the other.

IC V and CC V aren't really worth the time IMO. If you really want more PI once you hit rank IV in both, roll an alt and train them up. You'll get a full set of 5 more colonies in the time it would take you to get a 6th with your main.

IPC V is debatable (extra planet means more money, but more work as well), but on anything but your main CCUV is a really good skill to have. More grid/cpu gives you more extractors, which is longer cycles, which is less work. That's definitely worth it, doubly so if you're running multiple PI accounts.

It's the only PI skill really worth having at V, though.

edit: this is of course assuming P2 setups (assumed b/c the person you quoted was producing P2's). I really don't know if it'd be a difference on P1 setups or not, as far as less work goes anyway.

Not entirely sure how accurate these numbers are, but Trollin here definitely has a point. Even if you can make 2B per month that is still only around ~66.6M per day. Let's say that you are super efficient - and you 'only' need 2 hours on average for your PI operation (restarting extractors, hauling PI goods around, etc...) that averages out to like ~33.3M per hour played. At a cost of 2 accounts and quite a few character slots.

I see PI as a good side project for people that multi-task:

- low/null-sec residents that hang around in the same system and can do PI while doing something else.
- wormhole residents.
- or new pilots with not a lot of skill points and low initial capital (and even then you would need a WH/low/null-sec system and access to POCOs as doing PI in high-sec is not worth it)

On the other hand, starting a PI operation just for the sake of PI is a bad idea in my opinion. Contrary to what most people seem to think PI is NOT passive income. Setting up ~30 something planets takes pretty much the whole day (12+ hours) and I'm pretty sure managing ~30 colonies for a long period of time would get very tiresome and you would burn out sooner or later.

I do PI with 5 characters in high sec, it takes me 1 or 2 hours a day to keep them running on cycles of 1day45 minutes. I extract and then produce to P2 materials on most of my planets.

If you can manage to extract 6000 P0 per hour (x2) you can keep one basic factory running producing 40 P1 per hour (x2) producing 5 P2 per hour. Let's say I waste some time or don't extract enough materials but still get 100 P2 per day on each planet.

P2 export tax is 900. Let's say you sell P2 for 4900 giving you 4k profit per P2.
4000*100*5 planets*3 characters = 6 million per day or 180 million a month.

PI is low risk so low reward. null/lowsec gives better numbers of course.