Planetary Interaction (PI)

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PI, Planetary Interaction, is an easy way to make passive ISK. But what is involved? PI is utilizing the planets in the world of New Eden to generate commodities which are used in the manufacturing process of just about everything. This is accomplished through a supply-chain meets assembly line of extractors, processors and command centers placed on planets. The extractor heads spider outward and siphon materials from nodes which you then run through processor facilities to turn raw materials into something more useful. Initially one must survey a planet in order to determine the best location for placing facilities. Once that is done, it’s a matter of configuring your planetary colony and then setting your extractor units to run on a resettable cycle and then waiting.

That’s it. That is as simple as I can make PI. But it still doesn’t facilitate the question “How do I make ISK with PI”.

That part is simple. Take a look at the area in which you live. There are a number of solar systems. If you want you can reference http://eveplanets.com/. Once you’ve decided on a solar system you can then use this tool, http://fazenda.w-space.org/, to cross-reference planet types to obtain an output material. In order to determine what sort of materials you should produce you should simply ask what is in demand but you’ll never get a straight answer to that question because of market crashing paranoia. Generating materials for fuel blocks is the way to go in my opinion, in Fade that's Oxygen Fuel Blocks . That means a focus on the following materials: Coolant, Enriched Uranium, Mechanical Parts, Oxygen, and Robotics. These are P1-P3 Products that should be fairly easy to create with any normal setup on one character working 5-6 planets. But of course, all PI material has uses so if you can’t make any of these try for another.

Verdict: Plausible. It is true that Planetary Interaction can be difficult to set up, but that’s not the case as this guide is going to take you step by step through getting your first planet set up and producing materials.

• PI Lesson: There is a logistical aspect of getting PI running that is a one-time initial investment after which you should never have to do it again except in the event of an evacuation.

Verdict: Busted. The amount of money you can make is proportional to the amount of effort and time you want to invest into the prospect. Nobody can say for certain without significant number crunching what your time is worth to you.

• PI Lesson: Your extractor heads for extracting raw materials to process into P0-P4 Commodities operate on cycle that you must restart at an interval you decide. A longer cycle (up to 14 days) will not yield you any more than 1 hour cycles over the same amount of time. I personally set mine to 3 days (72 hours) at a convenient time that I could check and restart the process.

Verdict: Busted. All commodities are used in some way or another. P0, raw materials, are the building blocks of better materials. Compression, converting Raw → P1 → P2 etc., is just as important as managing 6 colonies that only produce P1 Materials.

• PI Lesson: Such negativity! I made plenty of money focusing only on P1 and P2 materials. If I were using 3 characters and using 18 Planets to produce P4s, I probably could’ve PLEX’d my account and then some but at the end of the day I was happy to make what I made because it was PASSIVE income.

Verdict: Busted. PI is good anywhere you can lay down a Command Center and suck the planet dry without having to fight for nodes. PI is not worth it in Hi-Sec because it’s so heavily farmed. Null-sec and W-Space are ideal places to do PI because for the most part there isn’t much competition.

• PI Lesson:

Planetary interaction is just a fancy way of saying money printers; to set up your money printers you need to train a few skills first:

• Required

1. Interplanetary Consolidation IV. (allows you to have more planets)
2. Command Centre Upgrades IV. (upgrades the amount of installations you can install per planet)
3. I wouldn't train one to five without training them both, since they sort of multiply together. And it's generally better to make an alt on the same account with all skills trained to 4 than to train these to 5.

• Optional

1. Planetology. (Shows you accurately where planet resources are concentrated)
2. Advanced Planetology. (Same as Planetology only stronger, more accurate results)
3. Remote Sensing. [allows you to scan planets from 'x' light years away (not really useful for this guide)]

You now have everything planned out; you've chosen your planets, you've chosen what you're making on those planets and you even know what resources to mine so that you can make your items.

Before we get to the Step by Step there is a few things you need:

• an industrial ship. I strongly suggest buying an Epithal, they have a PI bay which can hold a lot of PI commodities. (for dropping command centres and picking up your items)
• having access to a POS in system is very helpful for dropping your command centres, just keep a little bit safer.
• A small amount of ISK to upgrade your command centre and set up your planet.

Step 1: Command Centres.

Buy your command centres- each planet has a specific command centre, for example. 'Lava planets' need 'Lava command centres'

Step 2: Get into space.

Load your command centres into your ship's hangar and safely get it to your local POS. (If you got the Epithal then you will be able to fit it full of Warp Core Stabs)

Step 3: Drop the Command Centres.

Drop all of your command centres onto your planet. Don't scan for the best spot during this step, the command centre DOES NOT need to be connected to the Spaceport.

Step 4: Go home, Get drunk.

Dock up and drink some whiskey… you don't need to have your hauler in space till you pick up your stuff in a week or two.

Step 5: Scan for the sweet spot

Now you start scanning your Planet.

Quickest PI scanning guide ever Keep making the scan better until you can only see one dot of white. This is the highest concentration of that resource on the whole planet.

1. Start with the least common resource you need.
2. Check the other resource you need to make sure it isn't too far away.

Step 6: Place Extractor heads.

Extractor Head One Place your first extractor head on the edge of least common resource. make sure to place it on the closer side to the other resource you need.

Extractor Head Two Place the Second extractor head on the edge of the other resource you need. make sure its close to you other extractor head.

Step 7: Place Spaceport.

Spaceport Place your Spaceport between your two extractor units. (this will be your storage)

Step 8: Place Basic Processors.

Basic Processors Place two Basic Processor Units, one each side of the Spaceport, between the Spaceport and Extractor unit.

Step 9: Place the Advanced Processor and Link up all of your installations.

Advanced Processor and Links Place your Advanced Processor next to your Spaceport.

Step 10: Select your Schematics.

Schematics

1. Click your Processor.
2. Click on the Schematics tab.
3. look for the Schematic you need. (the basic processors will need the Schematic of P1 item you're producing)
4. Do this for all processors.

Step 11: Create your routes.

Routing

1. Start with your Advanced Processor and click the route tab- route the finished product to your spaceport.
2. Basic processors- route them to the Advanced Processor.
3. Extractor heads- route the mined resources to the Basic Processors.

Step 12: Cycling Extractor heads.

You're almost making money, all you need to do now is set up your miners to work! This bit can be a little bit fiddly till you get the hang of it, you need to balance the intake of each of you Extractors eg.

If you pull 1 million units of one resource per day on one Extractor but only 500k units on the other Extractor then the second Extractor is just going to dump the remaining 500k; so instead of wasting 500k resources try balancing it so that each Extractor pulls around 750k per day.

Extracting Resources I like to set my 'Extractor Area Size' to 1 day. if you're lazy then you can set it to 3 days or even a week.

Do not let drills overlap, it was cause interference and cause your drills to not mine as much as they could.

So its been a week or so and you have all of those glorious products sitting on your launchpad. It looks about time to go pick them up and sell them on for ISK.

1. Get back into your hauler and get to your local POS.
2. How to access your customs office
3. Transfer the items from your Launchpad to the POCO. Make sure you have ISK to launch it from your planet.
4. Repeat for all other planets you work with.

Now you can warp to all of the POCOs and pick up your bountiful harvest.

Your products probably won't sell on your local market/staging system. There is buy back systems which pay good prices and also help the alliance/coalition as a whole.

A few things to note:

• Nullsec is the second best place to do PI after than worhmholes. (seeing as thougt our Coalition has Nulsec SOV, you need to make the most of it)
• If your Extractors are pulling over 10k per cycle, stick another processor down per extractor, you may not have enough for the whole process but it does add up.
• Once your in site planet runs low on resources, do another scan and relocate your operations. (it doesn't cost a lot)
• Keep an eye on local if youre in Lowsec/Nullsec. (you dont want to lose your pay check!)
• There is no rush to move items from your planets, do it when you know nobody will be online.
• Do not forget to cycle your processors, if you don't reactivate them then you're just losing ISK.
• Use your Alliance buyback program for PI, this will help out your friends.
• Alliance buyback works from the main systems we own, such as our staging systems.
• Fly BRAVE 7o.

If you wish to improve on this guide or just add things to it, Contact Yukiko, Shei or Ralend from Brave Dojo.

If your setup doesn't fall into one of these categories, it's probably not optimal.

The most common type of setup in all of PI. There are a several variations on this.
* Standard Setup This one is a pretty lucky setup. If necessary, you can drop to 4 basic processors and 2 advanced and use more extractor heads.
* Navi Setup This will require you to switch which P0 you're extracting and routing on a regular basis. It takes significantly more clicks, but it's more efficient. It saves on power grid by placing only one extractor control unit and swapping which resource it gathers often, allowing you to use more extractor heads on your one ECU. The basic factories here always stay 3 producing 1 P1, and 3 producing the other P1. There's no need to switch those. The key is to swap which resource you're gathering often enough that you never run out of either resource. If you need to squeeze every last drop out of the planet, this is the setup to use. Keep in mind that it's nearly free to destroy and replace your ECU.

Needed for Microfiber Shielding, Polyaramids, and Silicate Glass
Avoid this whenever possible. Some P2s can not be made on one planet and will require this.
Setup

Needed for Microfiber Shielding, Polyaramids, and Silicate Glass
Avoid this whenever possible.
Setup

Double Setup (CCU5 required)
Single Setup (CCU4): You can just remove half of your processors. I recommend keeping the storages and launchpads for tons of buffer space.

Needed for Nano Factory, Organic Mortar Appliators, and Sterile Conduits
Single Setup: If your P1 can be produced on a barren or temperate planet, you're going to do this very similarly to the no P1 required setup above, but replace one of the P2 → P3 production lines with an extractor control units and P0 → P1 processors.
Shitty Diagram

Material Diagrams
Great Visual Ingredient Guide
Eve Uni's Ingredient and Use guide
Power Grid Requirements
Outline Ingredient and Amount guide
Material Amounts
List of Planets by System

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