Planetary Interaction

I'll start by saying this, it's a good thing that once this is set-up, it's a pretty simple process to keep it going indefinitely. I'm not sure what the long-term Dust 514 ramifications will be on PI, but at this point, it's a pretty awesome and simple ISK maker.

Up until now, I've basically made some big-time P1 centers. I have 4 planets that I can run, and they were each making P1 products. After three days of cycling, I sold Precious Metals, Toxic Metals, Electrolytes and Reactive Metals on the market for a total profit of 15,038,437.

So, the goal here was to change my set up to make P2 products. I wanted to do this without lifting my command centers, thus saving me some start-up cash.

I was already using a Barren, an Ice and two Storm planets, which limited the P2 materials I could create.

I decided to make Mechanical Parts, Coolant, and Rocket Fuel. The first two are both integral to making POS Fuel. For now, they'll be great to sell, but possibly at some point, they'll be good for actually making POS Fuel (That's a ways away, though).

Mechanical Parts move relatively steady in the region, the lowest day in the last 10 was 1,000 units. Selling at an average of between 8,000 and 9,000. I'll have the ability to make about 120 per day. Without doing anymore work than clicking three times, I will make a million.

Coolant moves even faster. The lowest day in the last 10 was more than 2,000 units. The price is about the same, and I'll produce at the same rate. That brings my total/day to 2,000,000.

Rocket Fuel does not move nearly as reliably. This may end up being something I don't continue making. It's okay for tonight, but I'll be keeping my eye on this to see if it's worth making, or if I shouldn't move my production elsewhere.

Finally, I'm using my fourth planet to make Oxygen. It's a requirement for POS fuel. I should be able to produce about 2400 units a day. It sells at a price of 280, and moves in huge quantities, yesterday 270,000 units were sold. This means I should make an average of 672,000 a day. This is a free way to make nearly 3,000,000 each day.

All that said, I'm not pleased. I want to increase production of the Mechanical Parts and Coolant. If I add another Advanced Processing Facility, I should be able to double what I'm earning. That'll require an extra level in the Command Center Upgrades skill (a mere 3 day, 6 hour skill boost). I'll queue it up once I get Product Efficiency to level 5 in about two weeks.

Below, I'm adding a picture of my Mechanical Parts production center. I need more power to add more facilities, so I assume I'm going to get a backup at some point, the facilities won't be able to keep up. Once I get the upgrade, I should be able to start moving products at a better rate.

I'll have a better idea after tomorrow night how this has worked. Although, a cursory glance tells me this may have been a bad decision. It looks like I was making 5,000,000 a day with the way I was doing things. The frustration is that there is a greater volume and therefore requires multiple trips. This new way should only require one trip. Maybe I actually had more sitting in the area than I thought, meaning this was more than three days worth of PI. If I did, in fact, just cut my profitability, I hope it's a temporary problem until I skill a little bit more. I should be able to add some power to what I'm making and then add another planet to the mix, there is another planet that would be greatly valuable to me in the production of P3 materials. The P3 materials sell for exponentially more than the P2. I'll be doing more research into all of this in the coming days. Once I get set up the way I want, I'll add some alts into the mix and get them on PI. This should increase profitability even more with just a few simple clicks each day.

Special thanks to this link for the PI chart, makes life a lot easier.