I had already written in an older article that I would like to get back into PI and thus build up another mainstay for myself financially.
Currently, I am also still in the discovery phase and think about what is best to achieve my desired goal.
At the moment I have exactly 2 characters active for the trial run with 5 planets each.
Both follow a different strategy.
On Sendriss, I build products to P2 on each of my worlds and process a portion of them to P3 on a separate planet. Other planets, which are not needed for this production chain, also produce P2 independently.
Crystal has a slightly different strategy and also supplies only P2 products. The difference, however, is that the P1 products needed for this are produced on a separate planet in a kind of monoculture.
Refining to P2 is done on another planet, as is already the case.
This is the initial situation. The initial goal was to find out what is better at this point and leads to less effort.
The answer, at least at first glance, is relatively simple, even if it means more flight hours in proportion.
Personally, I like the second option much better. And offers more flexibility.
But to explain the whole thing simply step by step, why the variant has not excited me so far.
I always need two basic raw materials on the planet for the P1 components I need. Thus, I am always forced to divide my yield among several extractors.
As far as this is no problem, but depending on where they are located, I need long connections and can’t do my production centrally and then at the extractor.
So already once unnecessary resources are lost.
Secondly, I now have to make sure that there is a reasonably good balance between the extracted raw materials.
The consequence would be otherwise that my intermediate storage of a raw material or P1 product runs full and I thus deactivate an extractor to get a balance and store the surplus raw materials.
Alternatively, I would have to keep rebuilding and see how to get it into balance.
An additional effort. I also have that if I only produce P1 on a planet, but I can balance that more easily.
Here I can store my P1 products better on one station, but at the same time run a much higher and optimized utilization on the extractors.
I also have the possibility to react faster to given changes and adapt my monocultures to a new P1 product.
With the other variant, I always have to make sure that I get a P2 product as a result.
For me, this means that I go back to my computer and think about which products make sense for me at this point in time.
Beyond that, other strategies can be derived, especially for highsec, to make money with PI and little effort.
After all, I don’t have to make certain products, I just have to figure out which products bring in enough ISK in refinement.