Losec PI Planet Hunting

I have been talking about and working on my planetary interaction and probably driving corp members to distraction.

I have my Hisec P4 planet working well, making Integrity response drones and import mats, manufacturing then exporting them for just under 970K each, and selling them for about 1,080K each, giving 110K profit per unit.  However I am paying 206K tax each (mix of import and export taxes) from a 10% PI world.

Roughly 500 Integrity Response Drones and I would pay for a player owned customs house.  24 per day, assume 3 toons all with PI, and a customs office 'pays' for itself in a week.  Alternatively put up a 5% customs house and encourage 6 toons to set up shop 24/7 and it has also paid for itself and made them a profit too.

So, I went hunting for a system:

• Losec so it can have player customs house
• Must have a Temperate or Barren world for P4
• Preferably 0.1 or 0.2 for the bonus materials
• with a Temperate world for lots of Autotrophs (why they go for so much in comparison to Industrial Fibers is beyond me), though
• Low tax player custom houses - can be owned by others or one I put up.
• 4 planets with the above criteria
• Easy access to a trade hub
• The local muscle can be negotiated with - or no local muscle (so much nicer a term than pirate)

I have chosen Eve Planetary Planner to give me candidate planets.

So off I went with a cheap ship with a couple of quick aligning mods, lost it (but got my pod away), realized I should not be scanning lowsec on my toon with implants, and continued my investigation on an unused alt.

What I found
The short answer is that I am not going to find what I want.  I can find good enough.

I looked at 30 Losec systems. In the regions I looked at, there are swathes of systems owned by corporations running 10% or even 15% taxes.  There are several corporations with a customs office or two offering 5%.  There is even a single temperate planet in the Devoid/Semou that has a 0.1% tax rate and a reasonable amount of Autotrophs.  It also might be bait - it is so much cheaper than any competition.  Not where I wanted to set up, I might revisit it later.

I also had a look at a nullsec system - first time there.  I was on an entirely disposable toon and ship.  As I had been told, the resources are much greater on the null sec worlds even on the borders; and I suspect would be even greater further in.

I did find a system (Sinq Laison/Basgerin) with several 3% tax and public access in.  This means that my Integrity Response Drones became 254K profit after 62K tax (instead of 110K profit after 206K tax).  24 of these per day means 6M profit / day just from a single P4 factory.  The hitch? 10M week (lets call it a 'safety levy') for the local 'security forces' (http://www.basgerin-pirate.com/).  From my limited dealings with them; they have often been out of system, are sufficiently competent to take down my Iteron, and are 'honorable' (as in didn't shoot me once I paid, and even allowed me to recover my cargo).

With a suitable tax rate, most extraction planets are also profitable under such a low tax rate.  Profit from extraction PI (regardless of how much on-planet refining) is Number of units * (Market price - Export tax).  For many extraction PI items that are easy to extract (i.e. high number of units) then Market price ~= export tax.  Those items that have a higher price have, in my limited experience, have a comparatively low number of units for extraction available.

I have found a currently recruiting alliance of industrialists (Free to Play); with sufficient 'muscle' to keep a small patch of Losec clear of established trouble (though not random roamers).  A few 2% Customs Offices for alliance members (even better than Basgerin), though not yet enough for my requirements.  There is the option of knocking down some Interbus Customs offices and putting up a couple more.


So far so good.

Hisec simple extraction PI

I am finally working out where I am putting at least some of my Losec PI installations; with the post of what and where later. 

As part of my building my P4 planet, I threw up some basic extraction planets without much investigation to see what I could achieve with them.

I have decided, in part, on some Losec systems, and as part of that I am dismantling my Hisec ones, taking anything that is profitable.  I have my P4 planet that is currently pulling 3.6M / day but is 'needy'.  I also have some initial planets simply extracting on a 'get back to it later' basis. 

One of my planets I now want to pull down has been extracting biofuels.  Biofuels have a 50 ISK/unit export tax on a 10% (eg any Hisec) customs house.  There are Dodixie buy orders for 51 ISK, and sell orders for 52 ISK.  I don't think I paid any attention when setting this up.

I am in the process of setting up on a world with a Losec 3% Player Corporation owned Customs office, having a mere 15 ISK/unit export tax; at the expense of safety and distance from Dodixie.

Ignoring transport costs, 900,000 units would need to be shifted to even justify building a lauchpad (it doesn't have one yet).  I have about 300,000 units sitting on the planet.  Emotionally I want to recover the investment already spent on this planet (a sunk cost fallacy),  and with effort might be able to recover something.  The reality is that I should write it off as a bad investment.

The same Biofuel factory from the new 3% planets would only cost 15 ISK/unit in tax remove from the planet; a much better proposition. 

Research Agents

I like the idea of passive income.  I am prepared to put a lot of work into not needing to do work.

While I was working on Planetary interaction, I was also training research, but in game and out of it.  Go learn some skills to Level 5, have standing, turn up at the agent.  Easy ISK.  Umm; not quite.

Background research

The usual suspects give information:

• http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Research_agent
• http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Research_agent
• http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Research_Agents
• https://www.google.com.au/search?q=eve+research+agents

And for me - some new suspects:

• http://eve-agents.com/
• http://eve.grismar.net/wikka.php?wakka=ResearchAgents
• http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/research_agents.php 
• http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/basic_research_and_development.php
• http://hussars-online.ru/eve/datacore.php

Note: A lot of older pages talk about lotteries for Blue Print Originals (BPO).  These no longer occur. 

Based on my research I have the following guidelines, for a single research agent.  (Any errors are mine, please leave a comment)

• Train Science to level 5 (20K ISK)
• Choose a field, and find a suitable R&D agent
• Train the pre-requisite field to Level 5 (Electronics, Mechanic OR Engineering : 20K ISK); and
• Train to (at least) Level 1in that field/skill (10M ISK)
• Standing requirements are documented on the agent's info tab.  You need:
• Level 1 : -3 Corporation AND either -1 Faction or corporation standing
• Level 2 : -1 Corporation AND either 1 Faction or corporation standing
• Level 3 : 1 Corporation AND either 3 Faction or corporation standing
• Level 4 : 3 Corporation AND either 5 Faction or corporation standing
• When ready, go visit him and start a conversation. Tell him that you would like him to head up a research project for you.  (You did all the above didn't you?  You did read that you needed corporation standing?  No? Bother)
• He will now start working and you can see in the Agent Info or in the Journal, on the Research tab, how many RP (= Research Point) you have.

When choosing a field, choose a profitable but convenient one.  There is little point grinding standing or purchasing a 10M skillbook to get 1K per datacore.  This is where http://hussars-online.ru/eve/datacore.php came in handy.

Without even having required skills, I simply chose 4 for every skill (not too hard to get) and forced it to consider every agent.

I am not entirely sure I agree with the number of datacores/day numbers, but it still suggested the pick of the agents and research.

I could also use eve central - but there are a lot of data cores to compare.  The in game market works too, but I do a lot of research away from an eve session.

For the record; Nanite Engineering (369K), Plasma Physics (220K) and Graviton Physics (239K)seem to be the better earners at the time of writing this post, and avoid Electronic Sybsystems Engineering and Engineering Subsystems Engineering (at less than 15K each). Prices are Sinq Laison sell 22 Jun 2012.(note: in the time writing it; nanite engineering dropped and plasma physics rose in price to both about 280K)

Once you have chosen your field(s), confirm your agent's standing requirements.  They *should* be per the table above, but in game information trumps something some guy wrote on the web.

Your effective personal standings must be 3.0 or higher toward this agent's corporation in order to use this agent, as well as an effective personal standing of 5 or higher toward this agent, its faction, or its corporation in order to use this agent's services.

How many missions?

To get an L3 agent with 5 Faction standing and Connections 4, you only need raise your raw standing above 0 to get your corporation standing to 1 (i.e. if you have not upset them then a single mission gives you ~ 1.6 standing)

To get reputation for the L4 agents, I have been grinding L4 distribution missions as I had faction reputation over 5.  It took 25 L4 distribution missions with Social 4, Connections 4.  '3.00' standing was not enough to make the research agent appear in my agent finder as available but 3.03 was enough.  I assume I was just under with a rounded number on the display but the agent was 'strict' about being 3 or more.

Most research corps do not offer security missions.

Even then, to finally get access to the agent, I had to log out and back in again.

This did leave me with two storyline L4 security missions that I am not sure what to do with.  I'll be fine doing these solo with my Catalyst (destroyer) right? (that was sarcasm)

Return on Investment for first R&D agent

Time to grind 25 L4 distribution missions vs agent reward for those same missions.  Call this neutral.

There was some trivial time cost and time to learn per-requisite skill, as well as 10M Isk to learn Nanite engineering, plus most of a week training it.

With my chosen L4 agent, having 4 skill, I will get 6 datacores a week passive income, plus (I think) another 6 if I do a rather trivial daily mission.  I was surprised at a 10K Isk cost, but oh well.

Woohoo - first datacore

I've read (and have also seen) that the daily mission consists of either a trivial volume courier mission or a small amount of tritanium (9K? for L4).   Leave a fast ship and a load of tritanium in the base for when you feel like doing them; but I would not go far out of my way to get a mission.

Ignoring time (both grinding standing and training), and ingoring trivial costs, call the first research agent 10M.  Lets also call it 280K per 'best' datacore sold (my first one sold for more but let's not rely on that as prices have recently dropped in Jita).  35 Days for return of passive income, then very roughly 9M per month.  If you are around your research agent anyway, you may as well do their daily mission for extra income, but it's not worth going significantly out of your way to get.

Possible future plans for my R&D

I will probably learn  Research Project Management (40M ISK) up to level 4 for a total of 5 agents.  If so, I will also (most likely) learn plasma physics and graviton physics (10M each) for flexibility, having the some fields researched by more than one agent.  I will also need to grind one (or possibly 2) more corporations to 3 standing.

So, for the next 4 agents 60M at (roughly) 280K/datacore, 4 additonal datacores/day; break even is roughly 2 months, then an an additional 36M per month, giving me a total of 45M per month nearly passive income on one toon.

Buy to haul courtesy of Eve-Central

Today, I needed ISK to do a couple of things in game.  So to make ISK quickly I am looking  to buy from sell orders, and sell to buy orders.  I could do better, but want quick turn around. 

For this, I like the tool that Eve Central has : http://eve-central.com/tradetool/

There are shortcomings with the data: always out of date (even if only by an hour); can potentially be 'poisoned'; is incomplete.  Does not protect you against players with insufficient funds to fulfill their buy orders (either accidentally or deliberately).

When it works it is nice.

When it doesn't work it still should be OK.

My advice, for what it is worth:

• Never buy what you can't afford to replace.
• Diversification lowers risk and potential profit.
• Don't set yourself up for a suicide gank (i.e. where it is profitable and easy to gank you).  I.e. I wont be carrying a billion isk of cargo in my Iterons.
• Ensure there are backup buy orders.  I ended up carrying a load of a rarely traded item, without checking and by the time I got there the buy order was gone and there was no backup buy or even sell orders.  Oh well there is always Jita.

How to use it?

Out of game, outside of tools you need to answer the following questions:

• What ISK and ships and toons are you willing to risk?  
• Do you have a bias for commodities, larger items, known cargo, new cargo?
• Where are you willing to fly?

Once you have done this, go to http://eve-central.com/tradetool/

Click on the 'Search & Display',

Confirm the systems (sometimes asking for for a choice of system)

Confirm your cargo size and other preferences.

Look at the numbers.  Do they make sense to you? If you trade enough unknown items you will end up with lemons.  It always helps to know the options.   If you don't know that the trading is like, the Type is a clickale link to known buy and sell orders.  First some quick statistics

 

 

For today, jump to the buy orders and see what and where the demand is.  You want to ensure you are not simply selling to that unusual order.

However this is the start of trading.  If you can make a profit buying from sell orders and selling to buys, imagine buy orders and sell orders for additional (but slower) profit.


For the record I prefer consistently selling commodities over big ticket items.  In the past (and other games) this has been to my advantage and at other times I have missed out on serious game currency (*cough wow trinkets cough*).  So I will usually avoid hauling items to take to a single unknown buyer.

PS.  I had offloaded 90% of those Large remote repair systems within 2 hours

My own tears posts

I don't initiate PVP. Several times I've been given PVP put upon me.  It's a risk of running around in losec with an untanked Iteron (and for the record - a couple of things to help you run away are fine, but if your Industrial is targeted, find a spot to try to run away to - even if its a jump gate 12k away)

I was doing some losec exploration for PI.  I finally twigged that I should *not* be using a real ship or a toon with implants for this implant after a near miss with after loosing my Atron and discussing how much my pod was worth while running to the nearest jump gate as fast as my scrambled pod could.


So, I was in my otherwise unused alt.

2012.06.22 07:41:00 Victim: Padecain Foo Corp: University of Caille Alliance: Unknown Faction: Unknown Destroyed: Atron System: Oinasiken Security: 0.2 Damage Taken: 798

Involved parties: Name: xxx (laid the final blow) Security: 0.80 Corp: xxx Alliance: None Faction: None Ship: Proteus Weapon: Heavy Ion Blaster II Damage Done: 798

This was my attempt at tears.  I am not sure if I successfully portrayed how devastated I was.

Congratulation
From: Padecain Foo
Sent: 2012.06.22 08:37
To: xxx, 

You managed to kill somone AFK in a newbie ship with no skills or implants to worry about.

Very well done.

I hope you enjoy your kill report trophy.

--------------------------------

Re: To ensure your complete satisfaction
From: Padecain Foo
Sent: 2012.06.22 09:23
To: xxx, 

>> To ensure your complete satisfaction
>> From: xxx
>> Sent: 2012.06.22 08:41
>> To: Padecain Foo, 

>> To ensure your complete satisfaction with our ship killing service, please provide some feedback concerning your experience. Please remember that your time is greatly appreciated and the destruction of your ships is important to us.

As you clearly appreciate it, I am happy to respond.

>> (a) What did you feel as you were liberated from your ship? Is there anything we could have done to improve your experience?

I don't know.  I was away from keyboard at the shops.  I did think I had set the dock in station command, but may have been mistaken.


>> (b) Was the destruction of your ship adequately orchestrated? Could the pyrotechnics have been enhanced?

I don't know, I was at the shops.   I recommend next time waiting till I bring my main with his Iteron full of cargo and paper thin walls rather than my newbie alt without any skills or cargo.


>> (c) Was your assailant polite and curteous at all times? Could you recommend a better approach to our clients?

I don't know.  However the name of your channel below is a nice touch.

>> Thank you for participating in this survey.

Your very welcome.  I aim to please.


>> If you would like to talk with us, feel free to join the "1800 f**k you" channel at your convenience.

I tried to join your channel to offer my congratulations.  However the channel didn't exist.  Maybe your form mailer has an error.  Alternatively it might be worth ensuring the channel exists so that admiring fans can congratulate you.

Regards
Foo

>> xxx


P.s. In my opinion, if more players sent 'tear' emails like this, there would be less tear gathering.  It is also entirely possible that there would be more wardecs.

Planetary interaction P4

This post is part of a series on looking at PI; this post looking at my new P4 factory planet.  If you are after simple ISK; this is not the post you are looking for.

What I am documenting is what worked according to plan and the traps that I found (so far - there will most likely be more traps later).  This post assumes some knowledge of PI.  I am documenting what I found in my initial PI setup.

As I said in my previous post - I don't like crafting things for a loss.  A lot of players optimise for convenience; I try to optimise for profit.  I know time is money; but time spent now understanding now should pay for itself in the longer term.

I have spent time, enough to worry about.  Many hours building my spread, building then partially rebuilding my P4 planet and spreadsheet.  I am aiming for 100K/hour passive profit for my first P4 factory (or 17M/week), restocking my planet no more than once per week (Umm.  Such lofty and unrealisable goals).

Profit can be played with in different ways; so for the sake of this installation:

• All prices are Sing Liason (Dodixie) regional prices for reasonable quantities, ignoring very small orders.
• Input costs are based on region sell orders + import taxes
• Sale prices are based on 1/2 way between region buy and sell orders.
• Profit from the P4 installation is Sale Price - export tax of finished products - sale prices.

Other price considerations:

• I will transport these items 'for free'.
• I should do better than sell orders for input material; however I am allocating any addtional funds from this to trading not to manufacture.
• I hope to do better than 1/2 way between buy and sell orders, might do worse.  This seems a reasonable compomise.

What worked well.

I have chosen Integrity response drones, from my updated spreadsheet (now v0.2 - with plans to increment it with every post on PI).  Even with a highsec factory - I have found a fit that allows me a (small) profit to fulfill buy orders; and I can do sell orders about 10% higher than that

I am making Integrity Response Drones for 790K ISK each;  add 135K for (10%) export tax, for a sale price of 925K ISK.  They currently have a Dodixie buy price of 955K, and a Sell price of 1,085K (and are selling).  Providing I keep the planet fed and prices don't jump around too much, I am expecting about 31M Isk per week.

I have also restricted costs using buy orders, however only for a few jumps from my current PI system.

I have :

• 1 P4 High Tech Factory
• 4 P3 Advanced factories in pairs manufacturing 2 of the 3 required commodities required, importing the last.
• 16 P2 factories in sets of 4 manufacturing 4 of the 6 required commodities to feed my (2 sets of ) P3 factories

 I am importing rather than manufacturing:

• P3 planetary vehicles
• P2 polytextiles and transmitters

I also am running 2 launchpads and one storage facility, This is at the cost of a factory or 2, but gives the planet some time to work by itself.  The decision as to how much storage vs manufacturing, and what type is somewhat arbitrary.  Storage facilities are slightly larger and need far less CPU but need expedited transfers; lauchpads are the opposite.

The Customs office also (for hisec at least) works as convenient storage.  While you need to be in system and in space, you can access it for transferring to and from the planet even just outside the station in a frigate.

The opportunity for buy orders in a field that I understand the demand helps, as I have a personal instinctive dislike of buy orders before I know what I am going to do with the products.

What didn't work as well as I would have liked

I can not make everything needed; there simply isn't the CPU or power available even with Command Center Upgrades 4 (previously had 3).  I chose items to manufacture based on the greatest profit I could for each factory.  In the short term I am unlikely to spend the fortnight training to Level 5 required to get possibly 2 (possibly 3 more intermediate factories).  I would rather train up my two alts for PI in far less time.


Storage is a killer.  Restocking my P4 planet once per week is purely in my dreams.  Much more storage and I will miss out on profitability, as with 10% PI taxes it appears better to value add as many steps as possible on one planet.  Just over 3 days is do-able, but my setup will allow for just under 2.5 days; in practice I am looking at 1.5 days and less shuffling to the Storage Facility.

Hisec PI taxes are significant:  1.5 days for my factory has 7.4M Isk in taxes made up of 2.5 M Import tax and 4.9 Export tax.  For an expected sale price of 39M, PI taxes make up 19% or nearly double the so-called '10% PI tax.

Layout matters as there are few visual clues to what each part of your factory is.  Next time I set up a factory, I will more clearly 'chain' individual components.

I have noticed that my buying is putting upward pressure on the prices of input materials, but selling is not (yet) significantly influencing the sell prices.

Summary

Hisec P4 factory producing Integrity Response Drones, cherry picking the most profitable items to manufacture.  Have to restock every 1.5 to 2.5 days; with 21 Industry buildings, 2 lauchpads and a storage building.  Expected profit 31M Isk/week.  This is OK ISK earner, but not a setup I would recommend to newbies uncomfortable with inventory management.

My plan from here is to look at a Losec extractor planet, with a player build Customs office with a lower tax rate.

Planetary Interaction - spreadsheet v0.1

This is a follow on from a previous post : Planetary Interaction Hisec. The spreadsheet referred to in here is a google docs spreadsheet here.

Making some ISK with PI is easy.

• Extract some raw materials (P0); 
• Convert to P1 (one level of processing) and possibly P2 (two levels of processing); 
• Make sure what you are making sells for more than taxes
• Profit.

Conventional wisdom also seems to be make whatever P2 you can on a single planet.  This is simple and will work.  I don't like this conventional wisdom - in part from what I learned with WoW glyphs.

WoW glyphs, like PI, are a multi step process, even if glyphs are somewhat simpler. Raw material -> Intermediate Item 1 -> Intermediate Item 2 -> Final product.  In WoW gatherering and processing are two distinct skill sets and there are reasons not to take both.

There is a lot of WoW glyph trade in Raw Materials, some Intermediate Item 2 and consumers use a Final Product.  There are periods that it is more profitable to take raw materials and stop producing at Intermediate Item 2.  There are times and items that crafters would make more profit my skipping steps (either buy purchasing the intermediate item or not doing the final product).

With that in mind, being an Eve newbie; I am looking for the profitable parts of PI; wanting to skip the non-profitable sections.  If complexity stresses you - stay with the P0-P2.  To get an 'ideal' PI setup - also be prepared to trash a couple of installations.  The first one or two you set up will most likely not be done properly.

So, armed with with the in game PI information and a tool Eve Planetary Planner, I created this spreadsheet, and went of to discover what I could.  Some notes of warning:

• I am a newbie.  I have already discovered one nearly disastrous bug that got the manufacturing costs of P3 incredibly wrong (now fixed)
• The prices are currently Dodixie as at  8 June 2012 but subject to change.  The spreadsheet will specify where my prices are set.
• These are my calcs to make my life easier - provided as is where is.  There will be mistakes.  Please feel free to point out corrections; or improvements.

My spread sheet by default suggests where you should import an item and where you should manufacture; taking only indirect notice of resources.  The market tells me how hard it is to get a raw resource with higher prices.

The spreadsheet currently gives me these pearls of wisdom about Sing Liason's (Dodixie) PI market as at as at 9 June 2012.  Note this is a spot market; with old data, on an 'Alpha' spreadsheet.  It is to provoke a different way of thinking about PI and should not be taken as investment advice (though some of you will anyway.)

Hisec PI tax has a huge influence on the profitability.  The first thing I looked for was what can I profitably import, process and export - and for extraction - what is profitable to sell raw.  I most likely won't do this, but it forms a baseline for multiple step processing.

P0 (raw)

• The P0 items in demand (suggests hardest to find) in Hisec items are Complex Organisms; Autotrophs; Reactive Gas
• The least in demand P0 items are Micro Organisms, Noble Gas; to the point of ISK loss by fulfilling buy orders

P1 (1 level of processing)

• You can make a profit importing Micro Organisms and Noble Gas and processing it once and re-exporting it.
• If you need it for local use, it is worth considering buying Base Metals and Felsic Magma to turn into Reactive Metals and Silicon

P2

• Most items are profitable to make for local consumption; 
• Construction Blocks and Polyamarids seem to be the best for importing P1,  manufacturing then exporting.

P3

• Again most items are profitable to import and consume in P4 factories.
• Data chips and Robotics are the standouts for importing P2, manufacturing. then exporting.

P4

• I had assumed that being the end of the line it would be profitable to make most things here in one step and sell to buy orders.  That assumption appears to be wrong.
• For a 1 step import and manufacture;  sell to buy order, the only profitable item seems to be nano-factories.
• Don't make wetware mainframes
• For the rest, the should make a 1 step profit to sell orders; but so would station trading.

For me, this is only interim investigation. PI is something that I want to get set up and stable.  My crystal ball sees more PI posts in the future.