Let’s talk about, Planetary Interaction. Bear with me here, this is going to be quite a bit of text but worth it.
For those of you who have no idea what Planetary Interaction (PI) is, you’ll find out here. And even find out a bit on how to set it up.
PI is basically the extraction or reprocessing of materials from planets based in any given system. You can do it in High, Low and Null sec.
High Security planets are slightly worse for extracting materials but if you feel like setting up a factory planet (we’ll get there) it’s perfect.
The extracted and processed materials are mostly used in the creation of T2 items or fuel. Meaning that the items you extract and process, are worth quite a bit of ISK on the market.
In order to start with PI I urge you to get the following skills: Command Center Upgrades (Get it to lvl 4, your command center needs to be upgraded in order to get more buildings on your planet), Interplanetary Consolidation (Each level in this means one extra planet. At 3 you have 4 planets, at 4 you have 5 planets and at 5 you can have 6) and remote sensing (this is so you can check out the goods on the planets from a few light years away).
The main reason people do this, is to make a passive amount of ISK each month. Why passive? Well because you need to do a minimal amount of effort for a few hundred million ISK a month.
In general all you would need to do is set up your planets (20 minutes, ish) and afterwards come back to them every other day, press a few buttons (not more than 5 minutes) and be on your way again. And in the end you go get your materials (30-60 minutes) and get them to a market hub for sale.
Lava? I’m not afraid of lava!
Now! On to the good part. Setting up your planet.
I’m not saying that I know much about correct set ups or even what works well and what doesn’t. I’m just going to show you how mine are set-up. I’m sure that there are things I can improve upon and if you have any comments, feel free to drop them below, I’d be happy to discuss and improve upon what I’m doing now.
The first thing you need to do, is decide in which system you want to start your PI endeavours. Do you want to do it in your home system, or do you have a system your industry is based in? Well, click on the name and check which planets are there. You will see all different types of planets (Barren, Temperate, Storm, Lava…) every planet has a different kind of materials that can be extracted from them.
To know what you can do with the planets in your system, head over to http://eveplanets.com/ this site allows you to click on a planet, and it’ll tell you what can be extracted/created here.
Resources are split up into 4 groups (T1, T2, T3 and T4) T1 are the basic materials, the ones you extract directly from the planet. T2 and higher are created from the other materials. T2 uses T1 materials, T3 uses T2 materials and T4 uses T3. Easy right? Right.
In this example I will be using a Barren planet. And on it I will be creating Mechanical parts. These sell in Jita for about 10 000 ISK each at the time of writing. My planets can create 240 parts a day. Meaning that at the end of the month I have 288mill (4 planets * 240 parts * 30 days * 10 000 ISK). Not bad for only a bit of work right? Right.
Please not, that if you want to set up a planet, you need a command centre in your inventory, in my example it will be the Barren Command Centre.
In order to create Mechanical Parts, you need to extract Base and Noble metals from a planet. Go to the planetary overview and press scan. Press the base metal options and you’ll see a bunch of green and red, maybe white on the planet. These are the concentrations of the metals. Now, press Noble metals. You’ll see the same thing. What you need to do, is to find a spot, with Base and Noble metals concentrated near each other. Or at least near enough. Seeing as you will need to put an extractor on each. Place your command centre around here somewhere, I’ve been told that your command centre doesn’t need to be too close by but, just put it there, better safe than sorry.
Scanning a barren planet for Noble metals
Once this is done we can start with the extractors, click on extractor control unit, and set one at the edge of each concentration. Once you click on it, you can assign Head Units. Click on the metal of which the concentration you picked, and place four of them on it (check my below example if you wonder what I mean with this.) Once this is done, check the extraction size. I put mine on 3 days of extracting. Make sure that the areas don’t touch, you get a slight penalty when they do. Once this is done, do the same for noble metals.
You’ve just started extracting. The next problem to tackle is sending the good around your planet.
What I do is make a storage facility, send everything there, and from there on out send things to the different facilities. That way you have one local point on your planet that gets used for storage.
Set your storage facility, press control, click it and then click your extractor. You’ve just made your first link. These are used to send goods from one facility to the next. You can send your products by clicking your extractor, and the second icon (products). You’ll see that your metals aren’t routed yet, so click create route, press your facility and create route again. Now every single cycle it will get send to your storage facility.
Next, place a basic industry facility near your storage unit and link it with the unit. These are needed to create the reactive/precious metals. Click on it, press schematic and scroll down for the correct one (reactive or precious). Make sure to link up your facility once more. And make a route for the product created.
You also need to send the T1 product to this facility, so go to your storage facility, click on routes (4th icon) and make a route with your noble/base metals to your factories. There we go, you have just started your creation of T2 material.
One more and we’re almost good to go.
The last one works the same as the Basic facility. Put down an advanced facility, link it up, press the schematic and make sure they’re linked to your storage facility, set up routes and you’re now making mechanical parts (once the first few cycles have completed from your basic facilities).
In order to get your products off planet, you will need a space port. This is the last link in your chain. Put down a space port, link it with your last factories or storage facility, and set up a route for your mechanical parts to the space port.
Once a month, you will be going to the customs office of the planet, and transfer everything in your space port to it. Which you can then drag into your cargo bay.
Not, that you can transfer your materials from planet to POCO without being near the customs office, you just have to be in the same system. So make sure that you’re safe until you go grab it. Don’t blame me for dying 😉
As a little added extra, you can also make a factory planet. This usually means that you import the T1 or T2 materials to the POCO and from there on make it into T2/T3/T4. This is what high-sec planets are usually used for. Buy your T1/T2 in your local hub, and process it for a nice little profit!
Factories!
I hope this was somewhat enlightening for you my dear reader. And may you make a nice little profit from whichever planet you decide on.
If you still have no idea, or want to learn more, there are some pretty good videos about PI on YouTube that can help you out too.
Stay tuned o7