The AFK nature of Planetary Interaction

First, I think I mentioned there's a new podling in my house. Yes, about a month ago my beautiful wife gave birth to our 2nd daughter. Unsurprisingly (to anyone who spends time around children or has them), they are two very different little girls. My eldest was sleeping through the night by the 2nd week, but even when she didn't, she slept in her bassinet. My youngest is a veritable cling-on. She only falls asleep when being held (or after 30+ minutes of ear-shattering wails), and wakes easily when put down. Why do you care? Well, this explains why my posts are very Carebear in nature. When you are juggling an exhausted spouse, a 2 year old and an infant, grand combat (such as defending a sov station) really isn't realistic. And sadly, I missed out on what is being described (by both sides) as a brilliant multi-hour campaign to save (or take, depending on your position) Sovereignty and a station. But I can, instead of describing an epic battle, talk about how Planetary Interaction is a great AFK low-maintenance way to earn ISK while you can't undock.

Planetary Interaction (PI) is the latest mini-game within EVE, and although rough around the edges provides a low-maintenance path to slow ISK growth when RL prevents logging in for longer (1 hr+) sessions. The hardest part is finding and setting up a production chain that requires little maintenance, but once that chain is setup you can touch EVE for 15 minutes, say hi, update your extraction cycles and/or processors, and go back to RL.

Get skills for 3/4 planets, find a system to product tier 3 or tier 4 goods from scratch. It will take a while to break even, since you don't have time to go buy tier 1 or tier 2 goods and just process them, but it lets you log into chat-with-spaceship-backgrounds for a bit every day.

And, that's all the time I have to post.

Planetary Interaction short term review

So I've had PI processes up and running from day 1. I'm trying to keep it simple, so I'm only doing POS fuel bits, and only in one system where there are POS towers, so I can be in space safely when needed. Here's the short list of things I wish I'd known when I laid down my first centers:

1. Plan first: I knew what I wanted to produce, and thought I had it all worked out, but I didn't. I've torn down my setup on 4 of 5 planets at least twice now. Part of that was poor planning. I am still tweaking the setups, and at the cost of a few million ISK each time it does get annoying. I could have planned even more and maybe had some of those stable from the first setup.


2. Watch your processor loads.This one came to me just yesterday, and resulted in some of my rebuilding. Depending on the extraction cycle, you can overload your processor, which (I'm assuming) will lead to lost/wasted resources. Keeping track of the % of incoming materials to the processor and making sure it doesn't go over 100% (by much) will ensure you get maximum return on extraction. On the flip side, the extraction cycle you choose can affect the percentage of incoming resources, it seems, so it may be worth considering storage silos for large extraction sites - with a two way link between the processor and the silo to get the materials processed and safely stored. I'm still working through this, but I'm seeing a logical reason for silos more often than my initial setups anticipated...


3. Profitability levels: I don't know if anyone is getting rich on raw PI production. I know (from experience) that the activity/profit level seems pretty high for me, since I am doing 24 or 96 hour cycles, so I don't babysit much. However, my setup is not providing the volume of materials I wanted, so the activity/profit level may be lower for useful production. As a byproduct it's not so bad just hauling stuff to trade hubs every week or two.


4. Command Center or Spaceport... So I initially installed Spaceports on all my planets, to take advantage of the customs offices. I'm rethinking this on planets where I don't need Import and the volume is small. The PG freed up from a Spaceport for an additional extractor (or longer links) is tempting on T2 production. Don't automatically assume you need a Spaceport, and make sure your Command Center is close to the processing area - just in case you need to use it for a launchpad

begin ramble...
Start with one planet, and one process, whether it's a T1 or T2 product. Start simple. Cluster your extractors close to the first T1 processor to keep the link PG low. If you are trying to get a lot of material, add a silo between the extractors and the processor, with a two way link. If you aren't importing goods to the planet, consider using the command center as your launchpad - and apply the PG/CPU to more extraction or processing. Once you get one planet all setup, move to the next. If you are doing similar processes on similar planets, set up all those first. I did my Gas/Storm setups first to get the easy Coolant and Oxygen processes running, and since they are end products (in my chain) and there is no planetary import, I use the Command Center as my final storage and launchpad.
My robotics chain is more complicated, since I didn't have a convenient planet to run the whole chain in one place, so on my Barren planet I'm using a Spaceport for Import and Export, and (conveniently) it's a silo for the process materials as well. Two-way links FTW.
If you are just getting into PI for profit, you need to do the prerequisite research. Check the various product prices on the markets, and figure out where your top profitability lies, based on the planets available to you. Build the biggest Command Center you can. Seriously - train that skill to L4 if you didn't already. 17k PG goes so quickly you'll start rearranging your extractors and processors to minimize link distances and create shortest path links. I often use EVE Central for price checking - it's a great resource in or out of game so you don't need to log in that Jita alt.

The Carebear in me...

The carebear in me is having a bit of fun with PI on Sisi. Assuming that most of it sorts out with good information in the market for the PI command centers and skills, those who have spent a lot of time with it in Sisi and documented things should come out way ahead in the initial PI race, but it will probably balance out soon enough. What I've noticed (and hope is not consistent) is that costs to build items like extractors and storage facilities are 100% out, with no reimbursement when decommissioning a site. I would think that in the "far-future" that some small measure of recycling existed, so those decommissioned facilities return something (like 5-10%) of the commissioning cost. Either that, or they remain available but in offline mode, like various tower modules.

As I test the various processes for POS fuel creation, I know the wormhole crowd is getting excited, to go deep down the rabbit hole and hide their POS, since they can live there all alone without needing to travel out with this change. Of course as CCP does this, and the Meta 0 removal from loot tables, it is clear that they are slowly working towards a completely player-run economy. I wouldn't be surprised if in 6 months, with the next major release (or slowly, over the 6 months) Meta 0 items and those items constructable via PI disappear from the NPC hubs. Guess it's time to get my industry alt up with Production Efficiency V, and my item BPOs to ME/PE 20/20 for the oncoming change. The lag in Sisi today was crazy though - 20-30 seconds for my hangar to show any ships or items after login. Hope that isn't a failure in the battle of Lag that will make its way to Tranquility...