Sense and Sensibility

This is not a Jane Austen Book but feels it could be just as long

The past ten days have been quite piss poor if I'm honest. Both in EVE and in the real world, the only place where things have been going good is actually my day job and when you don't want to leave and go home that at the end of your shift you know something is either:

1. a. going well
   
   or
   
2. b. seriously wrong 

I've been inpatient and rude with two friends who I was playing World of Warships...

Aside: I lost my temper in WoWS last night and "went pink" doing team damage; I was sick of dying so quickly because teamwork was not in the team vocabulary; when I lose my temper I know there's a problem with the game I'm playing but i digress.

... and EVE Online with. I knew it but I was too bullheaded to admit what a bastard I was and fix it. I've basically been wallowing in my own machinations and that isn't a good place for me to be in.

But tonight that's been fixed and all it took was a constant squeaking from the newest member of the family...

6 week old Hybrid Rainbow/Mustard Lorikeet baby

I've been off my feet for most of the past ten days, I injured my foot and have had serious issues walking. This guy was born just before Christmas and had a sibling but unfortunately in the changeable weather we've had this past week the sibling didn't survive.

Right now I'm hand feeding him (or her) and after they eat they make quite a loud squeaking noise as they digest their food. It can get very annoying if you have to listen to it for any length of time.... and tonight he's been sat less than a metre away from me the whole time he's been squeaking.

Epiphany

It's amazing what a constant annoying noise can do to clear you mind. I've mentioned the PI work I'm starting to manufacture Wetware Mainframes. I've had four characters working for nearly a week collecting raw materials, I've had great feedback and comments (it's my most commented post. Ever!) yet I've ignored all the feedback, the suggestions and the best practices.

In the last 30 minutes I've destroyed every single Command Centre on each planet on every character I was using. Gone, deleted including all materials extracted.

Why? Simple, I was doing it wrong.

From this I realized I needed to change a few things and get out of this rut. I loved PI when it came out, people asked me for advice and help. Am I that much of an expert that I don't need help to do mine? Fark No.

I know nothing, I need to remember that. What I was trying to do was great in principle but it would not work long term, Bex told me that. Althanear told me that and so did other commentators but I ignored them to my mistake.

Making Repairs

I'll be making repairs with my friends over the next day or two. Need to work out what to say and try to repair things the right way rather than an empty apology.

As for the PI well I'm going to go with a different tack and use the suggestions I've got. I'm lucky I have six characters to use with high PI skills so why not try to do things efficiently and try to maximize my return on investment (which is standing at a rather depressing negative four hundred million ISK at the moment).

Better Planning 

Five of the Six characters will make Refined components from each of their planets such as:

• Water-Cooled CPU
• Coolant
• Consumer Electronics
• Nanites
• Livestock
• Construction Blocks
• Test Cultures
• Synthetic Oil
• Fertilizer

I'll then use the final character to combine these into the Specialized commodities that will then be used to make the Wetware Mainframes.

On paper (or Excel) it looks more complicated than what I was trying to do but it is not, it's actually simpler as I don't have to move (large amounts of) raw materials between planets only Refined components (which are considerably smaller).

Watch, Learn, React, Be Proactive

With six characters to use I'm going to have to make changes to production slowly, bottlenecks identified then new production lines bought in to fix those. 

Unfortunately PI hasn't had any worthwhile changes for several releases but what we have is functional.

I'd certainly like to have better control over the flow of materials, I hate that you can't setup links from one storage to another (to act as buffers) like you can with Reactions. I'd love to have templates for planets, being able to select "Coolant Setup" from a predetermined list and see the required factories, links and extractors appear for dropping on a raw material patch would be something I'd very much like.

But this is a space game not planet based :)

In Conclusion

I've rabbited on too much but I now have a clearer view of my way forward with EVE Online and my PI as well as fixing some RL issues that have been ignored for too long.

Getting back to Planets

For more than a year now I've been running a small albeit efficient production of Guidance  Systems in a multi-character PI setup. I say efficient but it's when I remember to update production on planets and move materials between other planets.

 

So not very efficient at all.

 

Don't get me wrong, it's been profitable and when I have it running full blast it makes a lot of Guidance Systems very efficiently. It's just PI is incredibly boring and a click-fest that I really hate to do.

 

Making Money

 

I pause my PI production and I see this morning that Wetware Mainframes are at 2.2m each :S

Those were the words I received from Bex late last week that piqued my interest. Wetware Mainframes have  risen recently in price, most likely due to speculation around Citadels I thought but it could easily be due to increased POCO destruction, from an average of 1.1m ISK to 2.2m ISK.

 

A nice profit if you can make them.

 

So I reviewed my available characters and planets to see if I could manufacture this P4 item.

 

I realized I could and it would cost a whole briefcase full of ISK and need a lot of clicks in my future...

 

Planning

 

Wetware Mainframes are P4 production, meaning that you have to make P2 (Refined) items from P1 (Raw Materials) and P3 (Specialized) items to manufacture the P4 (Advanced). It's not a simple tree nor is it possible to do with one or two characters.

 

I use the wonderful EVE PI Diagrams 1.4 to see what I need to produce and to understand what planets I need to be setup. Other tools are available, many of which work in-game, but to me this PDF one with its simple flow setup is exactly what I need.

 

I spoke with Bex about his setup and decided to go a different way to him. I have available to me two systems with a variety of planet types (Barren, Temperate, Lava, Ice, Gas and Storm) from which I'll extract the raw materials then use a single character to produce each level of manufacturing I need.

 

I have six characters allowing a total of 30 planets with two having Command Centre Upgrades V and the rest all have IV.

 

My plan, which Bex commented on that it would be "labour intensive" is to use five characters (~24 planets) to extract all the raw materials which I will then hand off to the final character who will setup two or more planets to produce the P2, P3 and finally the P4 items.

 

I don't mind the labour at the moment, I can always redevelop planets at a later date to increase savings or to change how Raw Materials are gathered or processed into P2 items.

 

This isn't something that will be setup and left alone to run, I see it as an entity that will require monitoring and when I can develop it to make it more efficient or cheaper (in time) to run then I will make those changes.

 

Future Posts

 

I'll cover in the future my progress with this. I've already got three characters setup and producing Raw Materials as I type. The others will be setup over the next few days as they JC into system and are given a small amount of ISK as a float.

Would you like PI with that?

I've continued to procrastinate on PI since my post last week but I have made small headway towards getting past this by doing some research and reading up on the finer points of setting up production planets.

I've still got more to read, I wish more people shared their setups and production schedules as seeing real examples really helps me learn, but I've know the following:

• what planets I have available to me
• what characters and skills they have
• no idea of what I can produce

I also really need to pay attention to my Factories and make sure I'm keeping them running at full capacity. This means making sure I know how much input I need and produce at least that amount elsewhere in plenty of time for my production planets running at full speed.

Planets

I try to keep all my PI actions within one system, this simplifies my logistics but also the increased security I get because I'm not flying between systems with cargo. An additional benefit is the system I'll be in has several friendly POS setup which I can make use of both to share cargo (the characters I have are in not all in the same corporation)

I have the following planet types available to me:

• Barren
• Ice
• Lava
• Gas

The lack of Plasma and Storm planets really limits my P4 production possibilities, I could use Gas/Barren or lava to make up the difference but with the characters I have I'd rather maximize what I can produce.

I'm going to setup production planets, that is planets dedicated to producing the final goods from intermediate materials that are produced on other characters and planets.

Characters

I have six characters available for PI in my chosen system. All have reasonably high skills in Planetary Interaction and can all fly the the same racial industry ships. Each character has, at minimum, Interplanetary Consolidation to Level 4 and CCU Level 4. 

Available characters PI skill levels

I really should spend a little time training them all to have Advanced Planetary to Level 3 at least and at some point I really should get them all to CCU 5 and IC 5 but this is what I have and it does give me the ability to have production spread over a total of 30 planets.

Production

Deciding what to produce using my planets has proven much harder than I thought. Originally I thought I'd make POS fuels because that's always been a good seller and I've done well with them over the years.

However everyone who does PI seems to make POS fuel components and the margins aren't great, especially as in order to do well I'd need to figure jump fuel into my costs. I did some more research but was getting nowhere so I decided what I needed to do was look at the price per item in Jita and then see what the 30 day average volume was in order to better see what would be profitable and what would not.

So I came up with this:

PI options with pricing and 30 day volume information

It shows the PI materials I can produce from Base to P4 along with the item price and 30 day volume. I've highlighted in purple the POS fuel PI for reference and looking at the 30d volume you can certainly see its a good item to make should you wish too, but I don't (if I can avoid it).

I'm ignoring Base, P1 and P4 PI items (P1 because profits are small and P4 because it's a low profit/volume item) so I need to find one or two item in P2/P3 that I can make.

There are a few of items in P2 that stand out as interesting and two P3's that will warrant further investigation for me.

Further Investigation

I'm not going to say for now what they are until I've run further investigation and worked out what my margin's will be.

My further investigation uses the Planetary Interaction Diagram to see what I need and how complex any manufacturing chain will be. The more chains I need the more maintenance my manufacturing will need and I don't want to be doing PI daily, I want two to three day cycling for optimum return.

Loving and Loathing PI

I both love and loath Planetary Interaction.

I love it for the passive income it generates and the setup of the planets/systems really appeals to my OCD loving brain.

That said I do not like the process to setup planets, the lack of tools to test and theorise PI setup (think EVEMon or something more graphically orientated) but most importantly the time it takes to setup more than 1 character to produce anything.

I really shouldn't complain, I know a lot of people have more characters to deal with and have it much worse. One of my friends had 16 or so characters to setup when he moved to a new alliance in null sec. He managed to do it without, much complaint, so why am I procrastinating about this.

Anyone able to suggest good webistes and/or guides for setting up and running PI?

For every good action there is a corresponding screw up

I spent a pleasant evening setting up PI for three characters on five different planets, refuelled six towers and even managed to get myself some PvP for the first time in months.

Lock and Load

I'm not a great PvP person, I prefer the industry side of EVE, but I'm not adverse to trying to help out and I did last night in the last remaining Wolf that a friend sold me nearly two years ago. We snagged an empty Prorator and a Talwar trying to leave our base system, I didn't do the capturing but I was there to lend my dps and to help secure the pods.

 

The Wolf, based on the tried and tested Rifter hull

The Prorator was quite funny, we podded the pilot and his pod was worth more (128m vs. 120m) than the ship he'd been flying. The Talwar was just passing through but our bubbler managed to catch him as he left system and well, he didn't last at all long.

 

Screwing Up

 

Later on in the evening I was out in space doing PI setup when we had a red appear in local, checks of station showed he was not docked so d-scan was used and we caught a glimpse of a Gila. I went to report this in intel but instead what I wrote appeared in Local.

 

I'm certain it was the exiting of Planet View that caused the focus to shift from the intel chat window

to local but regardless I screwed up and kicked myself. Fortunately my fleet mate understood and my CEO was rather less impressed but he didn't yell (for once) at me.

 

Still, the guy remained in local for about 20 minutes, we think he was interested in Relic and Data sites we had, before he left not to be seen again.

 

PI Setup

 

After he left I had a period of time which I used to finish setting up PI on the planets in system. I've had four characters ready for PI setup for quite a few weeks but the 'click fest' and monotony that is PI meant I went to great lengths to avoid it but I knuckled down last night and did it.

 

I've now got four characters setup for PI, with all POS fuels being made across the characters. I've setup two alts to provide the P1 materials for making Enriched Uranium and Coolant and two mains producing Enriched Uranium and Coolant as the rest of the fuels on a one planet per item basis. It has worked nicely over the last few weeks.

 

I don't produce a huge amount of items but a consistent amount on five/seven day cycles. I've finishing Control Centre Upgrades V on one alt and if that works out well I will upgrade all my characters and try to improve output thanks to that.

 

Still what I have is working and making, passively, a couple of hundred million ISK a week for me and should I be able to get that up to 400m a week (which I think is very possible) I will be able to cover my POS fuel expenses.