Category Archives: PI 30 Day Challenge

PI Challenge – Final Results (Edited to Respond to Mabrick)

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Edit:  Mabrick responded to this post, and I want to share/respond to some of his thoughts, as I may have not been clear about some things.  I made isk, 134m isk specifically.  I did not lose any money on this.  HS PI will MAKE YOU ISK! In Mabrick’s initial post, he gives a specific skill set.  I DID NOT use this skill set.  I tried to note this below, and in the previous posts, giving my skills, and revised estimates for how much might be earnable. Even given the above, based on my experience, Kao’s results, and Mabrick’s own writing, I stand by my claim: Mabrick’s original and revised amounts per month, and my own revised amount per month, are false given the current state of PI in High Sec. I did wholeheartedly try to make as much as possible, and was in no way trying to sabotage Mabrick’s claims.  I only wanted to test them. I am in no way opposed to the “passive” playstyle.  I have an alt that only does industry, and did this challenge.  It is my opinion that for a brand new player, however, spending the first 2 months of the game training skills that Continue Reading →

PI Challenge – Day 18

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More results for you: Up from 36m isk in profits to 72m isk.  The daily average profit is now at 3.6m/ day, or an end estimate of 108m isk, in profit.  Interestingly there is a side to this that I have not spoken of:  What you will profit not including the initial costs.  Since my initial outlay of about 33m isk, my daily costs have hovered around 1.5m, and my total sales are at 133m.  That means the profit only including day-to day costs is 106m, or 5.9m isk per day.  That gives a final profit, less sunk costs, of an estimated 177m isk. So month one may be a bit of a bust, but subsequent months will be more profitable, by a considerable amount.  I’m interested to see how this plays out. I also moved a lot of ECUs around today to combat depletion, which cost 315k isk.

PI Day 11

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Here’s the update: Trending a little bit better.  I got the Precious Metals output a bit higher, and now Chiral Structures are the rate limiting factor.  This means I’m pulling in an extra 1.4m or so per day on Enriched Uranium sales.  The POCO taxes have taken about 16m in profits at the 10% high sec rate.  That’s not 10%.  That’s an effective tax rate of about 18%. They get you coming and going!  Interstingly, the tax rates are pegged to old values, with P1s going for 50isk/unit and P2s going for 900isk/unit, and P3s for 7000isk/unit.  This results in interesting tax rate anomolies as shown above.  There are a few errors, as I lumped a few things together in the beginning and I can’t sort the out now.  Stupid March 11.  But the overall tax rate of 18% is correct.  If I had no taxes, I’d be at about 51m in profit 11 days in. Edit:  My original effective tax chart was poorly formatted.  I updated it.

Ugh – PI Challenge – Day 8

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Just a quick update on the PI challenge.  I’ve made lots of tweaks to max out extraction.  Last update, I was at about -9.3m isk on the whole affair.  Today’s total running numbers: I broke into the black!  And so far, over 8 days, I’ve averaged a little over 2 million per day in profit.  In revenue, I’ve averaged about 8 million.  8m x 30 days is 240m isk.  For the 500m isk goal, this thing is probably going to be a complete failure.  Assuming no more costs, I’ll be surprised if I get much past the 200m mark. Some mid-challenge analysis.  In 2.5 hours, while working on other stuff, I went mining today.  The sales from that were 29.3m isk.  On another front, I ran a max run of Phased Plasma L ammo.  That sold for 18m isk.  So in less than the time it took me to do a week’s PI, I netted 47m isk into my pocket, for less actual effort than the PI.  I have no idea what that ammo cost me to make, because the materials were lying around, but there you have it. This brings up a bigger question:  What is the most enjoyable Continue Reading →

The Downward Spiral of Depletion

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Warning, this post contains many charts. Edit: Thanks for the link Mabrick! First:  Mabrick stated this in my last comments section: You have extra R) and P1? The way I deal with extra R0 and P1 is to not have any. That may seem a bit arrogant, but hear me out. Robotics is a 2 extractor, 4xP1 and 2xP2 production chain – per planet. When you get to Elite command centers it will be easier to do, but you should aim for 2 extractors each pulling 288,000 m3 of R0 with 2xP1 facilities per R0 type and 2xP2 facilities to take their product. You then have to move one of the P2 products to another planet to make the Robotics. I move Mechanical Parts to my Lava worlds where I have on additional P3 facility in my setup. Precious Metals is typically the weakest producer across all the planets I’ve run and that’s why I produce Robotics on the Lava worlds. All three Lava planets process 1/3 of my Robotics each. I use no silos and I try and keep a day’s worth of R0 in each Landing Pad as a buffer. To keep this working as stated, I actively Continue Reading →

Ever Increasing Complexity – PI Day 2

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In response to my own questions from last post regarding the shortcomings of my production as it was implemented, I went looking at how to use the excess resources from my over-producing R0>P1 planets.  If you are running 4 planets to get the materials for Robotics, you end up with an imbalance among the following P1s: Chiral Structures Precious Metals Reactive Metals Toxic Metals These in turn can be used to create a variety of P2s: Consumer Electronics (used in Robotics) Mechanical Parts (used in Robotics) Enriched Uranium Construction Blocks For nice list of all the PI flow charts, take a look at this.  So the question I had to answer was how can I take my excess PI products and make them profitable, and easy to get to market?  The answer, I think, lies in looking at market prices for the P1s and comparing those to the prces for the various potential P2s, and making the P2s which are worth more than the P1s you started with.  Given the high rate of import and export taxes, this is not a trivial calculation.  I’ll let you run your own numbers, but I was able to find a solid excess line, Continue Reading →

PI Challenge Day 1 Part II

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Although it’s another day for me, it’s the same Eve day, so this goes into the first day, hence the Part II. I took the first batch of Robotics to market.  111 units to be exact.  I also removed some storage facilities and added some ECU Extractor heads on my low yield planets.  I’ve adjusted the tracking sheet to account for a few more things.  Here are the results from my labors: Back of the envelope calculations show this scheme, if static for the next 29 days, will yield the following: Hmm.  We might have a problem here. At roughly 5/6 capacity of Mabrick’s approach, we are looking at about 30% of his estimated income. I found I could add a second production line on the factory planet, which accounts for the increase in Construction costs.  But I am not sure high sec planets will be able to keep two robotics lines fed.  The resource density on one of the planets is already starting to take a hit, and cannot feed 4 R0 > P1 factories.  That means I may not be able to keep even one robotics line running at full capacity. For reference, one Robotics line running at Continue Reading →

Mabrick’s PI Challenge Day 1

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I set up all the planets for the challenge, 3 barren, 2 lava, and have the production planet going.  I also have a sheet set up to track the costs by line item.  I loves me some Excel!  Without further ado, here are the costs incurred in buying the command centers, setting up the planets (including a few mistakes in placing and rebuilding PI buildings), and transferring the first production loads from the resources planets to the production planet (also including one mistake): The Customs Office interface is still horrible, and you can easily transfer crap back to a planet when you think you are loading it to your ship.  Why?  Because CCP decided that the CO inventory screen should not be part of the unified inventory.  That’s great.  That cost me about $500k isk.  Remember to open your ship inventory and drag the items from to CO to there, and not hit the Transfer button. The PI interface still leaves important info out of the equation when placing buildings.  So if you click the wrong facility, you cannot check what it makes until after you spend the money on it once you are in that process.  Yes, I could Continue Reading →

Precocious Pod-Dweller Planetary Puzzle Day -1

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As mentioned, I am giving Mabrick’s proposition a shot.  From the latest post, there a few things I am unsure of, namely, if his 500m isk/month claim was based in HS or WH space.  But, here are the conditions of my experiment: Skills:   Command Center Upgrades 4  Interplanetary Consolidation 4  Planetology 2  Remote Sensing 3 Production Final Product: Robotics Planets: 2 Barren R0 > P1 2 Lava R0 > P1 1 Barren Production Planet P1 > P3 All planets are in one High Sec system with standard Customs Office rates. A few other notes.  I am not taking up the challenge as presented mainly because I don’t want to move the alt, and it has about 30m skill points.  Those are almost entirely in mining, production, and recently combat. Here are the Planetary Management skills, IC 4 will be done soon: Here are the planets, pending the production planet due to IC 4: Here is the pattern used for all of the R0 > P1 planets: You’ll notice that the extractors are much further from storage than Mabrick indicates.  This is because HS planets have crap for resource distribution, so the R0 > P1 chain is located central to Continue Reading →