Planetary Interaction
Planetary Interaction (PI)
This is my tutorial on doing Planetary Interaction. This involves training some skills, getting a specific hauler, buying some command nodes, placing them, and then regularly harvesting them.
Did you enjoy those Facebook clicking games? If so, keep on reading. I'm not a fan, so I'm giving a realistic viewpoint of this profession.
It is "good" supplemental income for players a few weeks in, really bad for brand new players. This profession is filled with people who exaggerate their income and play down the amount of their life doing it.
If you are inside Pandemic Horde, please see this thread: https://www.pandemic-horde.org/forum/index.php?threads/nbi-guide-beginners-guide-to-planetary-production-pp-pi.2232/
Or if you want something handed to you: https://www.pandemic-horde.org/forum/index.php?threads/guide-p2-planetary-industry-miniature-electronics.3638/
Note: Gantries and pocos are all changed to Skyhooks 'soon' in null sec. Note that this process will be uneven and rough until November 2024. I will work on updating this page, some day :D
I want to be successful
Your results and success depend on a bunch of questions:
Are you Omega? Must be Omega to run PI.
How many characters do you plan to train for this. more than 3 is required for larger chains/profits
How much skill point time do you plan to invest. It takes 13 days for omega to hit level 4's on some of these skills, 73 days for 5's.
How often are you going to harvest. Are you going to run once ev ery two weeks? once a week? once a day? be a masocist and run once a day?
How often are you going to export. This depends on how often you are harvest and are willing to fly out to your planet...
Where are you going to sell it. And you'll have to fly that hauler to wherever you're going to sell it.
Do you have other isk to pay the taxes involved. Each of the items have a tax rate based on the material and the corporation running it.
Are you doing this in high sec, low sec, or null sec. High sec harvest are tiny compared to null sec. The lower the security, the faster P0 regenerates.
Do you have the isk for the skills, the Epithal hauler, the command centers, and the planet building fees. fees below, like 10 mil minimum.
This is what Success looks like to one helpful vet:
Mithral DeFrense: In null-sec I make around 1.5 million per planet ust extracting P0, per day on PI (circa 2023 Q2).
If we extrapolate this out, assuming you're doing the exact right thing, in null sec. High sec, doing things wrong, or dying will GREATLY reduce your income.
1 character with level 4 skills: 225 mil a month
3 chars with level 4 skills: 675 mil a month
6 chars with level 5 skills: 1.6 bil a month. And maybe 2 hours of your life a day, aka 60 hours. But hey, more than 2/3rds towards Omega? But might be higher because you can do P4.
Yes, I'm ready to spend money
You start off with finding where you are going to operate. It should be the same system for all your planets, ideally. It should have Player Owned Skyhooks (used to be POCOs) with good tax rates in a system you will be flying near regularly.
From there, you need the following things:
Gallente Hauler - 1 or 3 is fine, book costs 500k in Gallente school or 650k injected, plus fitting costs like 6.2 mil in jita.
Remote Sensing - Remotely operate, plan to be nearby, need to be 3 for rest. 300k isk at school station.
Planetology - Better scanning, need 4 for next skill. 1 mil at school station.
Advanced Planetology - Even better scanning, not required on small scale! Costs 10 mil isk at school station.
Command Center Upgrades - Increase cpu/grid of command center, need at least 4. 500k isk at school station.
Interplanetary Consolidation - 4 gives you 5 planets, 5 gives you 6 planets. 500k isk at school station.
Command centers appropriate per planet - Note, these have upgrade costs too, it's around 5 mil per.
A brain on moving a hauler, which are vulnerable. Interdiction Nullifier, warp core stabalizer, and Cloak recommended for null sec.
Your total is now approximately 20 mil isk with all skills and a 5 centers with another 20 mil to spend in upgrades (assuming you don't burn out during setup)
Yes, I want to click my brains out
It's not just that, you have to set a schedule.
If you do multiple times a day, you can make a lot more isk. It is a LOT of clicking, and you need to find a place to sell that stuff.
Anyone who minimizes the time they spend doing serious PI work is fooling you. Some are spending upwards of 2-4 hours a DAY to make these reported 'I make easy 400 mil'. Which is an insane amount of time with this extremely boring content.
Yes, I found a system
You have to ask yourself what product you'll make. https://hanns.io/pi/ can help you figure out what planets you have available versus what
Any account can just extract P0 and sell it. Or vice versa, buy someone else's P0 and import.
With a single planet, you can only do P1 generally, possibly P2 with enough imports.
With multiple planets, you will be able to make a P2, the default for a new player.
You need multiple characters to do P3. Can do this if you an extreme expert and get lucky on pixel perfect placement.
You need multiple accounts to do P4.
Each one of these levels of PI require great amounts of effort, importing/buying/selling and eve knowledge and get progressively less passive and more very very active. Which leads to burn out.
General overview
You place down command center. You pay to upgrade it.
You place down nodes around it in a VERY certain pattern. Certain planets are better for certain setups, and if you're doing advanced builds, you need factory planets which are organized differently. If you mess this up, you lower your income, but can always reset.
You figure out how many extractors you can fit. You figure out how many processors you need to process it all. You make sure your bandwidth is minimized. There is a lot of min-maxing here, so doing tight clusters of pyramids with flat tops is common.
Finally, you're ready to extract. Place a head for the material, put it in the center of the high concentration. Set how long it will run for.
Repeat upwards of 6 times, on different planet types.
Come back in the 24 hours later. See what you produced to see if you'll fill your command center before you're ready for the next day.
Replace the heads in the best spots on all your planets. Import more stuff if you're doing import/export. I'm sorry this sucks so bad.
Have to export? Do a Launch. Fly to the spot. Pick up your loot and don't get popped from gankers.
Take this to the place you're going to sell it. If it's a market hub, check the price to make sure you're not taking a loss.
Wait for it to sell. Having good accounting and Broker relations skills help with these taxes.
Been informed by Estel Ciryandor:
A juicy null-sec PI planet takes 5-7 days to fill a launchpad on daily cycles. On 3/4 day cycles, a launchpad will take 1-2 days longer while requiring a storage to balance production. A skyhook has the storage size of 3.5 full launchpads, so you can move from launchpad weekly, then move one Epithal full of product every 3.5-4 weeks.
Yes, my body is ready
Okay I warned you enough. Now it's time to read guides out the wazzu and figure out which one is current and which one is an old patch version:
https://www.thonky.com/eve-online-guide/planetary-interaction - this seems to be up to date per Incursion patch.
https://hanns.io/pi/ has some easy math to figure out what you can make with what. (Alternate PI map)
https://www.eve-webtools.com/Planetary/ map of what planet does what
https://evehelper.tk/ has the prices of each step.
I've also include a recent video on setting up PI in a youtube video, though his placement is sus because his connections are long, so high cost.
Skyhook Dangers
With the https://www.eveonline.com/now/equinox Equinox expansion, CCP has changed how people interact with planetary interaction. Specifically, you get your loot from Skyhooks instead of Pocos, so you have a chance of rats appearing. Because of this, you need to make some changes to how you interact with PI.
Need to do your 'work' on your PI while docked or safe. Make sure you know where you are going, and why you are going. Think of it more as a combat mission.
You need to bring the right ship. I've attached 3 ships to this box that can get the job done.
The Epithal is the beginner one that does it just fine but doesn't have much in the way of combat opportunity.
The Squall is a slightly upgraded version as it can fit some weapon systems on it. Specifically, it has enough dps to kill NPC light tackle that might tackle you.
You want to favor getting in and out, not dwelling on the content to scoop your stuff. So when you land, first thing you are doing is aligning out to the fort/keep.
Scoop your loot.
Once it's scooped, warp out!
That's it. Just a minor change the order of operations on picking up your PI loot. :)
To help you make this transition, I'm making available a Squall BPC for free in MJ-5. These are not valuable, only like 200k-1m in empire.
If you need a squall BPC, I have 14 available today, and will have anther 14 tomorrow, let me know and I'll give you a run of a bpc. A squall will cost you around 21.6 mil to build from scratch (20.5m in minerals, 1.1m in build costs), or buy off market for 25.55m. This can be less if you know how to import from jita, https://janice.e-351.com/a/tZ3w0h showing you the current prices in jita compared to mj-5.
Contact me by doing a @Kismeteer in #industry or #newbeans to get a BPC cut today of the squall.
Skyhook Fits
Thank you to Estel Ciryandor from the NBI program with these fits! All italic words are theirs.
Epithal Basic
Cheapest possible fit. meta istabs and other things can be worth upgrading, though the extenders should stay t1 as the metas are expensive.
This was concepted out specifically for the lowest cost and most basic fit for even bad navigation skills - this is designed specifically to minimize skill requirements, and can be switched up for T2s and have additional rigs for better align, faster warp speed, or more shield buffer.
[Epithal, *Basic In-System Fit]
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Damage Control I
Inertial Stabilizers I
Inertial Stabilizers I
Medium Shield Extender I
Multispectrum Shield Hardener I
Medium Shield Extender I
Medium Shield Extender I
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Interdiction Nullifier I
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Epithal tanky mofo
This is for the AFK boys: 12K EHP, 51 HP/s 9 sec align time; there's not much additional value to optimizing for align time if you're going to end up half-AFK on the Skyhook
[Epithal, Meme Rat Tank]
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Type-D Restrained Shield Power Relay
Type-D Restrained Shield Power Relay
Type-D Restrained Shield Power Relay
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Azeotropic Restrained Shield Extender
Improved Cloaking Device II
Interdiction Nullifier I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Squall T1 fast
This squall balances warp speed (5.4AU), Align Time (7 secs on low-skill toon), and tank (almost 26K EHP, 64% base resists with hardeners on)
[Squall, T1 Squall]
Type-D Restrained Inertial Stabilizers
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Type-D Restrained Inertial Stabilizers
Compact EM Shield Hardener
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Compact Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Compact Thermal Shield Hardener
Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher
Interdiction Nullifier I
Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Mjolnir Light Missile x1038
Squall, t2 tanky boy
Basic T2 tank squall, has actually survived getting tackled in PvP
[Squall, Tanky T2 Squall]
Inertial Stabilizers II
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Large Shield Extender II
EM Shield Hardener II
Large Shield Extender II
Thermal Shield Hardener II
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II
Compact Interdiction Nullifier
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Nanite Repair Paste x10
Mjolnir Light Missile x1040