Dipping my toe into PI

 On the OZ discord this week there has been some...lively debate around easy newbro income. One thing that sparked the most debate was a planetary interaction setup that yields about 2Bn a month in highsec across 3 characters on an account. The biggest controversy around this was the word "easy" that kept being inserted, as it requires max skills to pull off, along with ISK and significant in game knowledge. There was also discussion about using Pochven and a Deluge (t2 PI hauler) to haul the outputs to Jita to sell, which puts it way beyond the realm of new player. 

However, all this got me thinking. The claim is you bring in inputs once every 2 weeks, reset your factories and haul the outputs. I briefly tried PI when it first came out but I didn't particularly enjoy it so I dropped it and never came back. But if I can get a setup requiring such a small amount of interaction for a significant amount of income that's worth considering. Additionally, for Mobile Depots (my most produced item) 4 of the 7 input materials are PI. 3 of them I buy from buy orders but Guidance Systems the margins are so small in Jita I just buy from sell orders to make my depots. If I can use PI to bring the cost of those down then it will make my whole process more profitable.

So I am now researching what I need to know about PI, essentially from scratch. I think for a factory setup, i.e. one that does not extract materials from the planet but takes inputs and spits out outputs, I only need:

- Command Centre Upgrades - For increasing the amount of power the command centre generates, i.e. so I can place more factories

- Interplanetary Consolidation - each level gives and extra planet setup to play with

- Custom Code Expertise - to lower the tax paid on POCOs.

I think the most important one is command centre upgrades, which is unfortunately the longest train. It'll take me about 20 days to get this to V so I'm starting now. 

If I can make this work I will roll it out across my high sec characters. If not it'll be sent back to the "do not touch" pile. I'll update with my experiences once I understand it all better. 

UPDATE - I set up a single planet and the materials cost me 62 million, let's see what the outputs I'll end up with. Adam4EVE is saying it's basically not worth me doing this but if the setup seems good I'll buy from buy orders to bring down input costs and scale this up.