On Deciding What To Do With The Coloured Balls In Space

A recent post by Letrange has twinged my industrial nerves and I was motivated to actually put words to thoughts about Planetary Interaction. I have had my own opinion swing back and forth a number of times on the subject as I give weight to various facets of the whole operation. On the one hand there is the raw price breakdown where P3 > P2 > P1 but balanced by the fact it is so very, very easy to just dump P1 [or even P2] on the market without worrying about colony setup/mainenance/balance.

The P1-chain is a pure set and forget production line with only a basic industry facility. It does not take much work and can easily be exported, scooped and marketed.

A quick and dirty look at P2 gives us a slightly more complicated chain for about 8% increase in isk. Again not bad if the markets hold and the post-production transport/sales are easy.

The P3-chain is another 8-9% increase in revenue but with a much higher investment and management cost. So far, I have been able to generate more than 10% in excess of the necessary P2 reagents for producing P3. This negates the increased revenue from the P3 by sheer volume of P2 [and even P1] produced.

For anything greater P4 and even tower/array building [tower prices on the rise], it takes a significantly larger time investment that I have not been able to integrate.

So in the end, I build some P3 [Robotics] to use for fuel because it is easier than importing to the wormhole, but much prefer to just produce P1 or P2 for market sales. Getting it to the market can be a bit annoying from deep in w-space, but is not something that must be sold quickly to maintain the operation.

On Using PI In Our Wormhole

What seems like a sure-win situation with the planets we had available before the release has turned into an annoying state of affairs that will need a lot more work to make it a production reality. Whereas we initially had a fairly good spread of lava, gas, barren, ice, storm – we now have lava, barren, temperate, plasma, storm. This is coupled with the fact that it would appear that any two given resources needed on a planet to manufacture a specific tier 2 product are in fact separated by a fairly large distance. This requires a lot of CPU for links and reduces a given colony’s effectiveness.

After polling the other pilots who are setting up shop in the w’hole, it seems that they are needing about 2-3 million per planet set-up in extractor and refinery costs. This is assuming that you get it right and don’t have to move anything around later. We’re still in the exploratory phase and will likely end tearing down and rebuilding several times before we get it ‘right’. This is also coupled with the fact that we’ll need to start co-ordinating our productions once people have a better handle on the process.

On the plus side, we have more than enough enriched uranium to last out the decade. Too bad we can’t set up a shop out here in the nether world for pilots passing through to buy from us. Corporate Sales Array anyone?

I like to be able to quickly evaluate a set of asteroid choices and decide what I want to mine. It can be confusing to me to have to get out the spreadsheet and calculator to figure out how much it’s worth to mine such-and-such if I refine it and sell it. To that end, I started the Isk Per Jetcan calculation that were originally posted on the front page. I’ve modified that a bit now to just be the Isk Per M³ calculations and then to know how much I can get relative to the others.

The combined Isk Per M³ and Isk Per Jetcan table is listed below. I try to keep these updated on a weekly basis for my own usage, but you are welcome to refer to them as you like.

I’d like to introduce you to a new concept I’ve come to know very well. I like to call it late night math. I’m sure you all have a great familiarity with it. It’s the math that leads you to undock in a poorly fit ship because “it’ll do” and cause you to reprocess something because you just “know” you can sell the minerals for more. It’s the kind of math that leads you out into low-sec because you were ok there last time and cause you to see a market on an item at a great price, only to realize after you’ve bought it that the bottom has also dropped out of the demand as well.

Occasionally you’ll see minor variations of this. Some of the more popular ones include:

• Emoragequit – blindly screaming at the computer, turning it off and saying you’ll never be back
• Drunken Master – established player gives away stuff or blows it all up while drunk
• EFT – Empty Forum Threats – favorite home of the whine and whinge that really mean nothing
• Lovesick Loser – unrequited love blossoms in the deepest reaches of space

One or more of these may end up being combined into a sad state of pitiable pod pilot puke. Please ignore all of them and help stamp out Late Night Math.

How you might ask? Simple – don’t buy, sell or make major decisions after midnight, a couple of drinks or a fight. Simple. Really. No, honest.