How to: A PI Guide

Before we start make sure you have the necessary skills to get started with Planetary Interaction.

1. Decide on what you want to make
Before I go any further I take a look at this handy PI commodities chart. I pick a few potential items and then cross check the market in game or over at Eve Central.

2.  Plan the Production
Understand what other commodities you need to buy or build planet side and what raw resources you will need to produce the PI commodity you choose.

Map feature showing my ability to remotely scan planets from a distance.

3. Picking Planets and Scanning for Resources

• Needs to have the raw resources required for the product you want to produce.
• Close to your area of operation or your home system.
• Have a low radius. Lower radius planets use less CPU to connect structures meaning more extractors.
• Have similar planets close by in system or one jump out so all your PI operations are close for ease of up keep.

Eveeye.com has an excellent database of system's planets and there sizes(radius).

4. Scan to find a spot for your Command Center
Find and choose a good location for your command center. If your extracting more than one resource try and place your command center between the two.

5. Get your equipment planet side
Time to get into space. Get your indy hauler out and buy the specific command center for the planet you want to colonize. If you have already chosen a location on the planet all you need to do is be in system with your hauler with the command center in the cargo hold. In planet mode, place the command center on the surface and hit submit.

6. Build your factories/route your products

 
7. Start your extractors(or drop off resources for a larger operations)
I run a 3 day cycle for my specific operations and using Google Calendar to keep track of when the cycle needs to be reset. I also have google calendar send me a reminder email.

8. Once a week pick up/ship to market
I pick one day out of the week for pick up and shipping.

Don't be afraid to dump a planet if the production just isn't there. Resources can change over time or maybe your skills just weren't that great when you first scanned down the planet. Also don't be afraid to retool to a different product if its going for higher on the market. Unless you have some sort of emotional attachment to what your building its ok to build something else for more isk.

PI Investment Guides:

Basic Planetary Interaction: covers the basic skills, ships and material costs for a simple 3 planet PI production. Total Investment Cost: 5,631,000 isk.

Intermediate Planetary Interaction: a more advanced version of the basic guide, this will show you what you need to maximize your PI production. Total Investment Cost: 6,431,000 isk. 

Reaction to Odyssey 1.1 Changes

Industrial Ship Changes - They have put the fun into a 14 day old pilots hands. Given you can't fly industrials during a trial account. I was an industrial player from the get go. I would make trip after trip hauling ore this way and that for a little profit.
These new specilized bays give power to new players and utility to old ones. You now have more options and more choices. Lets take a look at these ships and what they mean for you in terms of real utility.

Miasmos - Ore, Ice and Gas bay allows younger players and miners to get ore back to market hubs or refineries easier expect a lot more ore in trade hubs.

Epithal - PI bay the ship I am looking forward to the most. If you even run a causal amount of PI without deep skills into an industrial ship you know how frustrating it can be to move commodities back and forth when your managing 5 or 10 different planets across several characters.

Kyros- Mineral Bay same as ore bay increase movement in minerals around New Eden escpessialy for younger players.

Hoarder - Ammo Bay aside from the PI bay I think this has limited uses, its one more option and we have established choice is a good thing.

Iteron, Wreathe, Badger, Sigil - Faster AU ships I do a lot of my own hauling I except these to replace my Iteron V for quick trips here and there. I just don't have that much time to fly around space. The only thing better than having more options is saving time in game and these ships are a win win.

In other areas renaming and consolidating the layout of skills is a natural simplification that of course the blog Eve Simplified loves.

Lowering the timer for jump clones - Again a great option that makes an already powerful feature in the game even more powerful. Along with the option to create even more jump clones.

A great set of new features to what might seem like a simple patch. These are all the changes that caught my eye. Check out all the changes at the Features and Ideas Discussion Thread on the forums. Patch notes can be found here.

Eve Online Market Watch: 2013 Quarter 3 Report

Talk about summer doldrums. I took most of the summer off but lets take a quick look at a couple of things that are going on.

In other areas, PLEX prices standing at or around 540 million isk a unit. If you take a quick look down at volume you will notice a drop. Is this duel training consumption or just people not playing as much? The last time volume slowed we got the PLEX Intervention.

My Quarter 3 Investment Report:
When Odyssey was released I was just getting Operation: Iteron V under way. It held for the month of June and as markets adjusted and things slowed down from the expansion, I decided to take a break for the summer. I have just recently started getting my manufacturing operations back online. Things just seem slow online right now. Not a lot of pilots logging in and markets seem sluggish at best. Keep in mind I tend to shy away from large market hubs, trading in lower traffic areas.

Hopefully things pick back up here as school starts again and fall hits. Odyssey 1.1 should be interesting and I will have a few quick write ups about the patch in the coming weeks.

Operation: Iteron V

I didn't have trillions of dollars to invest in R64s. I didn't have billions to invest in ice. I did have a few million to invest in some of the Odyssey ships changes though. Namely the Iteron Mark V back in February when the ship skill changes were released I took notice of the changes in Industrial ship skill change requiring only level one not the hilarious level five required before. I bought a Iteron Mark V BPO put it in the ME research que and forgot about it.

Fast Forward three months, I have been busy investing and saving up isk. I built a freighter to haul those massive Iteron V. It was time to cash in. Not only did I make almost 1 million in profit per ship the first week of trading saw these things flying off the shelves literally. I could barely keep stock piles of sell orders on the market before they were gone. I was happy with the invested time glad to see I could make a little money in retrospect of the bigger markets out there.

Total Ships produced in June: 467 Iteron Mark V

The dust has settled for now and markets are slowly adjusting back to normal levels. Can't wait for the next expansion to make a little money.

Weekend Interest Rates

A bit of real world investment advice applied to the game world. A large company operates with a certain amount of cash on hand each day. The funds are used for daily operations at the company. When everyone goes home at 5 suddenly you have a large sum of money that is just sitting in the bank. What financial people will do is take those funds and transfer them, for a low interest rate, to another company on the other side of the world that is just starting its operations for the day. The next morning the funds are shifted back to the first company to begin its days operations. In short a sort of micro loan that last 12 hours. It doesn't sound like much but count it up times 365 and you might have a positive number on your hands.

How can I use this system and apply it to Eve. This is what I came up with. My quick turn over investment for the weekend. I usually don't have much time to play over the weekend so I don't really need any isk in my wallet during that time(Note I don't have any active buy orders). Lots of players are playing during the weekend so plenty of money to be made. The only requirement is that I want my isk liquid and back in the bank come Tuesday or whenever I am going to be back online. So I pick out a few items, they are typically more expensive items but offer a decent return if you want to sit on them for a couple of days. I buy a very small amount and place several of them in stations a little off the beaten path but still have decent traffic. If I push one or two of them over the weekend I have been keeping my money working for me all weekend.

The second option is to find an item that moves very fast buy just enough to cover a weekends worth of sells. Place it in a station where you won't have to babysit the sell order but know it has a solid population or traffic. Come Monday morning you find your sell order is almost sold out and you have a few more iskies in your pocket.