Lets All Eat PI
stargrace 
Yesterday PI (planetary interaction) went live in full with command centers being added to the market. I posted over on NomadicGamer about it, but thought I’d go into a bit more detail here on MmoQuests. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about it and wanted to clarify a few things.
- There is no limit to the number of people who can harvest (extract) from a planet. The only limit is the resources found upon it. There are thousands of planets in EVE and you will have no problems trying to find one to extract from. Even if there are multiple people on a planet chances are you’re on one side and they’re on another, or that you’re extracting different resources. There’s no ‘mad rush’ to grab land so to speak. No one claims an entire planet (at least in highsec which is where I am).
- You (and anyone else) can only have at max – 6 – planets that you are extracting from at any one time. You can place one command center per training level, and everyone starts with 1 already allowed. So if your skill for command centers is V that’s 6.
- There are tutorials for PI, and it is incredibly cheap to get started. Don’t be afraid of trying it out because you don’t have the cash. Lower ranked command stations are only a few thousand ISK, and unless you’re putting a launch pad (one of the ways to ship items back to space) on your colony, the costs are fairly low, and very reasonable.
- The point to PI is to create things that NPCs sold previously. There are lists and charts of all of this over on the EVE wiki, and I highly suggest people check them out and decide what they want to make before doing it. The market is of course not exactly stable right now, but give it some time and things will calm.
I’ve been having a lot of fun setting up my stations. So far I’ve got three planets set up, each with 1 command center, 2 extractors, 3 processing plants (two basic and one advanced) and one storage facility. You can chose which site you want to extract from, each has a different timer. Mine are currently set to three days while I figure out the basics and make sure I’m doing it all correctly. The command center you use will decide how much CPU you have to spend on other buildings. I’ve currently got mine trained to III (all my PI skills are at III on both accounts actually) which seems to be just enough for what I want to do. I haven’t extracted enough resources and processed them to need to shuttle them into space yet, but I’m sure I will by the time my three days are up.
In the mean time I’m back to training my ‘regular’ skills. The Orca is on hold while I save up for wurmhole mining /extracting, and I’m still working on my industrial skills on the main account. I’m inching my way towards research project management so that I can work with multiple R&D agents, and all in all, things are going well. Even though EVE is clearly a PVP game, I’ve done very little (ie: none) of it and have had an incredible time just playing my way. I like the fact that the game really does offer something to everyone, as long as you don’t mind trying to figure out what it is you want to do, without having your hand held.
Fly safe!