Science & Industry

TL;DR: In PI, do outgoing routes from storage facilities share a common pool of resources?

I'm running some planets for S&G (read: moolah). I'm trying to get the maximum efficiency, fully aware there's a serious bottleneck at T1 processors. But I figure if I put a storage facility between my extractor and as many processors as I can fit on-planet, I'll still come away with my queue fairly close to 100% efficiency.

My question is: if two ECUs feed one SF, is each outgoing route from the SF only fed from the incoming route associated with the outgoing route at the route's creation? Are incoming resources pooled in an SF and then that common pool feeds all outgoing routes?

Much appreciated for any insight!

The routes "end" in the storage facility (or any other facility), the outgoing routes have nothing to do with the incoming routes anymore, only thing that matters is that if there is materials to move out.
Just make sure the routes actually go from ECU to BF and then to BIF, and not just pull the route through the SF without stopping there.

Extractors require a lot of PG. Only use as many as you need to keep your processors running. I typically run 2 extractors, 6 processors, and a launch pad.

I'm assuming you're doing this in nulsec.

As others have said, you need to rout extractors to storage, either silo or launchpad, then from there to factories and back. Always rout to storage between endpoints, that way if factories get out of sinc nothing is lost.

As far as efficiency goes, max extraction is no always the best route. Each basic factory will take 3000 units of P0(raw extracted material) per 30 minute cycle, or 6000 units per hour. I look at by the hour as the basic factories are the only facility with 30 minute cycles.

What you want to do is balance average extraction with the number of factories. So for every 6000 units per hour extracted, you need a factory to process it. having a little extra is good, but no too much, round it down. Other wise your storage will fill up with P0, shutting down factories as there is no room for there output.

If you are pulling 24,000 units of P0 you need 4 basic factories, if you are pulling 32000 units of P0 you need 5 basic factories with 2000 extra P0 per hour.

Often what I do for planets I do not want to travel to often is drop a factory for a storage silo. Route all P0 to silo, then to factories, then factories to launch pad. This ensures the launch pad fills with only your exports.

On a side note, do not neglect your planetology skills. When you are setting up your extractors the average extraction rate shown is not the real rate, it is on a planet survey, which is based on your planetology skills. Once the job is installed and submitted that number will change to the real number. With no skills that number could be out by 50% or more. With planetology 4 and advanced planetology 4 the change is negligible, with both skills to 5, your survey is 100% accurate.

many players complain that they set up extraction on a planet, only to come back later and their extraction rate is not near what they thought it was. This is the reason. Moving the heads around looking for the best spot, regardless of the color gradient is all and good, but your extraction displayed rate is still based on your survey skills. If you get a bad survey, you may think you have heads in the perfect spot, but once installed and submitted, that rate will change to the real rate. These skills are very important. Even though some players seem to think they are useless and PI is broken.