Science & Industry

So I'm a miner by trade but looking to branch out a little bit and PI has PIqued my interest (ok bad pun). I've read the PI guide, which keeps saying it is probably outdated. I will read it again but I could use some guidance. Here is my situation:

This would be high sec only (for starters, I'm new)
Solo, one account, not using any alts nor in a corp.
I'm looking to net in the vicinity of 500 mil/month.
I wouldn't start without having CCU up to 4.


I'm an active miner, not an afk miner, so the PI would be more of a passive ISK thing for me. I'd probably choose the 4 day extractor cycle, which I understand has the lowest yield. I was initially looking at doing Robotics "because big ISK", but upon further review it seems like I would either need to produce the two inputs myself or shuttle them back and forth from the market whereupon import/export taxes and broker's fees will kill me. I'm leary of jumping into a high level product to start and was thinking of something small, so if I lose I lose small.

So my question is am I crazy to think i can do this in high sec, and if not, which product should I be looking at?

Regards,

Athos.

500mil in hisec with one character?
Uhm....no.
If you get 100mil you might consider yourself lucky.

From my own experience ( lowsec PI ) :

As far as robotics go - don't bother with it, better stick to P2 products. Robotics are very hard to produce ( where efficiency is concerned ) because of Noble Metals and Non-CS Crystals ( found only in small quantities in hisec, even in lowsec you won't extract enough to get your factory planet 100% efficient ).
I needed about 1.000.000 raw materials ( each type so multiply it by 4 ) per 24h to make my robotics factory planet 100% efficient.
The best I got in lowsec was ~500.000 per 24h.
Level 5 in CCU would help of course ( more extractor heads ). Still it wouldn't be enough.

I used 4 extraction->p1 planets ( one for each raw material need for robotics - 8 factories on each planet ) and 1 factory planet ( 4 p1->p3 complexes, 5 factories in each ). Even with reduced factory count and increased head count it didn't really help.

I made more iskies by doing simple p0->p2 on each planet. Less effort that way.

Using alts will make things different of course.

You might want to check out this thread : PI isk/h



Isn't the import tax half of export for all spaces ? ( haven't tried hisec so might be wrong )

One toon, high sec only, you won't get anywhere near 500mil. Do Robotics, that'll get you a decent amount, but you'll quickly deplete some of the more important planets (precious or chiral) quickly if you intend to do all products yourself (versus buying products). Diversify, choose your planets CAREFULLY (in case you need to change production lines without going to expense of moving to another planet), and produce what sells best in your market area (Robotics, Coolant, EU, etc).

Here is a thread I posted about a week ago on Reddit

Its about 10 pages of bad grammer and hypothetical yield amounts but it contains a ton of information on PI, manufacturing, maximizing yields etc.


To give a quick summary:
Train up to Advanced Planetology IV. The increased number of hot spots will increase your maximum weekly yield by almost 50%.

Don't extract PI goods you want. Only extract PI that will give the most yield for a 24 hour period. This means each day when you go to your planet to reset your extractors choose theresource with the maximum yield (generally from hotspots).

Do not be afraid to re-place your extractors every day. 45,000 isk is nothing. If you can increase your yield by roughly 1,100 per hour the cost will be covered.

Extract and export P1 goods. Don't do anything fancy. If you have CC V then p2 and _MAYBE_ P3 can be researched, but until you know what you're doing don't try it. You'll just lower your daily yields.


Do NOT do p3 manufacturing planets unless you are ONLY making P3 goods for ice. The export/import/export tax cuts your profits to 1/3, and the only way to cover this is though ice manufacturing.

Train all 3 accounts. Yeah it sucks having your main stop training for a month, but it is worth it. Having 15 planets gives you the ablity to setup factory planets to make P4 materials.

The best ultimate goal you can achieve for maximum monthly yield is manufacturing with PI. Keep in mind its expensive and time consuming. To give you an idea 1 factory planet will yield roughly 22 P4, and it takes roughly 125 P4 to make 1 large control tower (225M isk sell price). So 1 factory planet will take you 6 days. Currently with 50 planets and 10 factory planets I can yield just about enough per-day to make almost 1.75 control tower (220 P4 per day). So 225M per day to give you an idea of Isk per month.

I have to disagree here.
If doing producing p3 is not profitable per se, just dont do.
If fuel block making is profitabe, do it. Buy the resources needed, if it is not profitable to produce them on your own.

are you kidding us? So instead of planning your production chain you should scan all your planets for each resource everyday, find the hotspots, replace extractors, route them, place the heads around..... and maybe



on 15 planets?? Everyday??? How long could you last before burning out? 2 weeks?



hmmm....... I don't get it. How can you set up a factory planet for P4's if you change P0's everyday? Ah yes, you must modify all your AIF and High-Tech things everyday too! And since you're using a factory planet hauling all those P0's around isn't time consuming and doesn't cost isk correct? Hell no!


this is blatantly not true!


omg! weren't they 15? and weren't you changing P0's everyday? If you don't how much shell you spread you manifacturing chain to have all the needed planets? 225M per day on a 50 planets chain is not really impressive. It's maybe a bit more than the average, being the average a business that needs like 10 mins per day and sometime 20.