EVE New Citizens Q&A

"The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand." - Sun Tzu

Recently I was asked what a pilot would have to do to get started with Planetary Interaction (known from here on as “PI”) and begin producing specialized commodities, and whether this is something that new citizens reasonably could expect to do. After going through the steps, I realized it is something that that new pilots could do relatively easily, and which may open a whole new part of Eve to some of you.

For the purposes of this guide, I will discuss how to produce Robotics. However, this guide should be general enough to be of use to a newer pilot looking to get into PI for the first time, or a pilot who has done PI but would like to produce more advanced (and profitable) products. The skills in this guide will transfer to the production of other products, although the recipes used will differ.

Contents of This Guide
Post #1: Skills needed, Overview of process, Deciding what to produce
Post #2: Choosing which planets to colonize
Post #3: Seting up your colonies, except for routing, which is in....
Post #4: Routes in your colonies, Managing your colonies, and A reward for those who read to the end!

Although some of you already may have done basic PI, I will assume that a pilot is starting from zero as far as PI is concerned. I am assuming relatively new pilots will be using this guide, so we will stick with high sec and close-in low sec. However, the same principles and procedures here apply to wormhole systems and null sec as well.

The skill requirements and initial capital are quite low to begin PI, even for specialized products. It will take only about 25 million ISK for the skill books and to set up the three colonies to produce your specialized product. The skill books are almost half of that cost, so those that already have started PI for basic products need even less of an investment.

Recommended skills:
- Remote Sensing 3
- Planetology 4
- Advanced Planetology 1 or 2
- Command Center Upgrade 4
- Interplanetary Consolidation 2
- These skills are ok to start. Training Advanced Planetology to 4 and then Command Center Upgrade to 5 are worth doing, but not necessary to start profitable PI. Once you have set up your first planets for PI, you will want to train Interplanetary Consolidation to set up more planets for a maximum of six planets at level 5.

Depending upon implants, you can train these required skills in about a week. Although some may disagree with me – I welcome opposing opinions – I feel the Planetology and Advanced Planetology should be trained to at least the levels I have here before starting. In null sec and wormholes you may be able to get away with lesser skills (ironically), but your skills at surveying planets for resources in high and low sec can make the difference between a very profitable and a marginal setup.
Even if you were going to do only basic PI, you would want all these same skills, so if you are just starting out, you may as well start with specialized products. The skill books will cost you around 10 million. You may want to train the skills for Cloaking 3 and/or racial Industrial 1 if you have not done so, although they are not strictly necessary.

As we will see, although the capital and training time are relatively low, you do have to invest some time figuring out what you want to do, how you are gonig to do it, and setting it up. After that, the production should run smoothly without much oversight. This is generally the case with all industrial processes, I suppose. The purpose of this guide is to help you with the planning and setup, so those steps will be much easier for you.

Overview of the PI Process
(1) Decide what product you want to produce, and figure out what planet type(s) have the raw materials to make the product you want.
(2) Locate the planet(s) and
(3) Set up your colony(ies). The colony extracts the resources and (optionally) processes them, and then (optionally) you combine the processed materials into more and more advanced products until you have what you want.
(4) Once your product is produced in quantity, you export it to the customs office and pick it up for use in industry or for the market.

Like other industry and research, most of the setup and processing is done remotely, so you will visit the location only to drop off inputs or pick up finished products. Once the setups have been done, the processing should run with very little work on your part.

Deciding What to Produce
There are 15 resources, which can be processed alone or in combination with other products to produce some 68 products.

Products are classified by the amount of processing it takes to make them. You use one or more materials from a lower level to make higher level products: P0 – Raw Materials found on the planets, P1 – Processed Materials, P2 – Refined Commodities, P3 – Specialized Commodities, and P4 – Advanced Commodities. Today, we will assume you have decided to produce Robotics, a P3 product (aka a Specialized Commodity).

Using a source such as the Eve-Uni Wiki Planetary Commodities, we see that Robotics is produced from two P2 commodities, Mechanical Parts and Consumer Electronics, which in turn are each made from two P1 materials, Precious Metals and Reactive Metals (for Mechanical Parts) and Chiral Structures and Toxic Metals (for Consumer Electronics). Finally, each of these processed materials each come from a single P0 raw material: in this case, Noble Metals, Base Metals, Non-CS Crystals, and Heavy Metals.

To be continued... Next, finding planets to colonize

"In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good." - Sun Tzu

Set up Your Colonies
Time to go to market for three Command Centers – one for each colony. Be sure to get the correct one for each planet. The cost usually is less than 100K and they take 1000 m3 each, so this may be the place to use your industrial ship I mentioned earlier. This is the only item you will need from the market -- all other structures will be built on the planet.

If you wish, you might buy several units of Consumer Electronics and Mechanical Parts in order to "seed" your factory colony.

You then fly to the system and while in space open the planet view (you can do this while cloaked). After doing the scan again to find the location for your colony, you click on “Build” and then on “Command Centers.” If you have the appropriate Command Center in your cargo hold, the command center will be lit. Click on it and place your command center on the planet. It doesn’t really matter where it is, but I like to place it near where my colony will go, close to but not on either of the white areas. Click “submit” and your Command Center is placed on the planet.

Once all command centers have been placed, the rest of the building of the colony can be done while docked, and you do not even need to be in system. However, I like to do the initial build while in system in case distance affects my scanning.

You are going to set up one "factory" colony with three Launchpads and five Advanced Industry Facilities ("advanced factories"), and two "resource" colonies, each of which will have two sets of: one Extractor Control Unit (ECU), 6 or 7 extractor heads, two Basic Industry Facilities ("basic factories") and one Launchpad.

The basic procedure to set up a colony is:
1. Using planet view mode, upgrade Command Center to desired level.
2. Use menus to build desired structures and install schematics.
3. Create links between structures.
4. Set up the ECU and extractor heads, if any.
5. Route the products to move along the links.
6. Click "submit" to finalize your colony setup. Now you can go to next colony.

Upgrade Command Center
Upgrade Command Center for factory colony to level 4. Each level costs some isk, but not much, and increases power and cpu for the colony. The Command Centers for the resource colonies should be upgraded to level 5. Be sure to click the “submit” button, which finalizes your upgrade, so other structures can be built.

Build Structures and Install Schematics
Generally, we will place structures immediately adjacent to a Launchpad. For the factory colony, place all five of the advanced factories in a cluster around one Launchpad and then add the two Launchpads on opposite sides of the cluster. Set up two factories close to one of the outside Launchpads, and two factories at the opposite side with the Mechanical Parts schematic, and the two at the other end with the Consumer Electronics schematic. Finally, install the Robotics schematic in the middle factory.

For the resource colonies, place each "set" close to the best area for the raw material we want to extract. Place the ECU first so that its area of control covers white area. You will want to use the "Scan" to do this. As with all structures, put them close to but not on the white or red resource areas.

Resource Colony Schematics: The ECU that will extract Non-CS Crystals will have two basic factories that use the Chiral Structures schematic, the ECU for Heavy Metals will have two basic factories building Toxic Metals, the ECU for Noble Metals will have two basic factories producing Precious Metals, and the ECU for Base Metals will have factories producing Reactive Metals. Select the schematics for the basic factories accordingly.

Create Links
For the factory colony, create links from the central Launchpad to all five factories. Then create links from each of the two outer Launchpads to the two factories on its side.

You create links by clicking on Planetary Links>Create Link or by clicking on the Launchpad and then clicking the “Links” button and then clicking on “Create New.” Right click to dismiss the link.

For the resource colonies, link each "set" by creating a link from the Launchpad to the ECU and to each of the two factories.

Set up the ECU and Extractor Heads
Now it is time to set up the Extractor Heads (only in the resource colonies). Before we do that, let's see how we are doing. Click on the command center and look at the power remaining. Although a colony needs both cpu and power, most likely your constraint is power. The upgraded Command Center provides 17,000 MW. The 16 Extractor Heads in each colony will need 8800 MW, so be sure you have that much remaining. If not, move structures closer to each other and shorten some links.

You already have placed the ECU close to the raw material it will extract. Choose "Survey for Deposits" and then click the raw material. Then choose an amount of time you want to let the ECU run in "Extraction area size." Let's start with two days -- I suggest one to four days, depending upon how often you want to manage your ECUs. Move the slider under “Extraction area size” to two days.

You want eight extractor heads per ECU, so click eight of the little blue buttons on the left of the ECU survey program window. Now you will drag the extractor heads to the white area for the raw material. Our production would be optimized if we were extracting an average of 12,000 (or more) units of raw material per hour, so look at the “Per hour” statistic to see how good the setup is. When the heads are where you want them, click “Install program.”

Coming up next... Setting up routes and completing your colony

Google docs and pdf heard of those ?

PI was a part of the game I knew almost nothing about, even I can learn a lot from this guide. If I wasn't lazy, I'd set up planets. Thanks, Sun-Tzu.




They are somewhat different processes. PI is useful if you are starting with basically nothing - my guide on this forum to entry level tech 2 production recommends you have 250m in investable capital before starting the production process (for reasons I won't go into here, tech 1 actually needs *more* capital than that; I don't recommend T1 production other than ammo or small numbers of modules until you can sink 2-3 billion into it)

Any advice on how to deal with POCO's and player taxes? "See what's there and what the taxes are" doesn't help much.

Def a wall of text, Shiloh.
Let's consider this guide a work in progress, and I will supplement this. Thanks.

Holy crap Sun. I didn't know squat about PI...until now. Very informative.

Count me among those who knew nothing of this before you posted, seems like it might be an interesting diversion. Much appreciated.

Holy **** man, I will be reading this later. I'll be picking your brain on how to set it up. If you want to set up in a wormhole together, let me know.

A question if i may about PI in WH. How this kind does setup(-s) sound

Extractor with 2x heads -> storage/launchpad -> 2x Basic making something like eletrolyte -> 2x Advanced's making coolant
Second Extractor with 2x heads -> 2x basics making making water -> Sending it to same 2x Advanced's

Thoughts?