View source for A (Longer) Guide to Planetary interaction


== 1A
For ye Olde Guard ==
For those who had been working on PI prior to the recent update on (insert actual date of update) there is one change you will be aware of right away.  Click on one of your existing old style extractors, you will see that its been updated and had its functions simplified

Its all on one button  



As you can see in the following image,  that button will obliterate that specific installation and give you a bit of a cash refund. don't worry though, you will be loosing -er- spending  your money soon enough! (note this is mandatory if you wish to continue working with PI, the old versions of the Extractors no longer work!)





Press the button!


You also get back the power and CPU budget from the structures you must delete as shown 


 

From there you have to rebuild your extractor network with the new system, you will keep existing storage-processors along with whatever is in them for your use.�

1.B
From The Beginning 
Setting up your first planetary empire



The very basic part of  PI is the Command Center, there is one for each accessible planet type.




The current price for them is 81,000isk per and are only produced by npcs. the Volume is 1000m3, so your going to need something besides the newbie frigate to haul one to the planet of your choice. 

Next you need the following skill if you plan on building an Extraction network.



The base market value of this item is 250,000 ISK, and Is an NPC supplied good, It will take you around 8 min to train this skill (depending on your implants) to level 1 in order to allow you scan the planet for resources and run extractors. Technically can deploy a Command center without it. However, you will not be able to scan and run extractors, but you can still build and use processors. 

Once you have a Command center of your choice in your cargo hold, and at least level 1 in Remote Sensing, undock, select planet view.(I am  doing this in empire for this example)  



This brings up the planetary interface. (photo edited to fit in page)


select SCAN  and then the material you want to extract  Note the band on the second Image, you can grab the
                                                                                         small triangles to adjust the display to better visualize hot
                                                                                         spots 



Then decide what specific material to scan for (in this case Heavy Metals) 

Now select Build, and your Command Center for the planet you want to exploit.



Select the Command Center you want to deploy (A)and place it on the map, and where you want the command Center to be on the planet  (B)(the command center will remain Yellow/Orange ringed until you hit SUBMIT(C)) and then SUBMIT the build (C) 





The result is your nice, shiny new Command center


People who were working with PI prior to the change will notice the UPGRADE LEVEL: function of the Command Center. This allows you to upgrade your planets production network without tearing out the existing infrastructure.  For now though I am going to stick with the basic unit. 

With a level 1 Command center you cant build a Spaceport, however you can build other structures, the big limiting factor is, like ship fitting, the Available CPU and Power output of your command center. For now I am just putting down a Extractor (cost of 45000 ISK) and a Basic Industrial plant. after that you need to link them together.





Note that your links also have a power and CPU cost, basically consider them to be a automated transport  network or similar set up, 






Once you have the basic setup submitted, click on the Extractor control unit, this brings up a new interface, you have the option to turn on extractor heads, and to scan for specific resources. in fact you can, every time you reset, you can switch to a new resource to scan and extract. 


You can then deploy individual extractor heads (note that each one has its own power-cpu needs) with this setup they are limited to 4 extraction heads. The initial deployment is radial in nature, however you can move them around to cover the best hotspot.





You can also adjust Extraction Area Size,(Above) the larger the Extraction size, the longer you can let the program run unsupervised.(up to 14 days) HOWEVER you should adjust the fields if you do so, in this example you have two warning indicators, the red values under each Extraction heads value, AND the fact that in this case you have an animated "static" field on each extractor. Spreading out the field will usually result in a lot higher yield 


a few notes, at the minimum time cycle, (1 hour) you have 4 sub cycles, available, (15 min) as you make the program run longer it will eventually "flip" to 30 min sub cycles, then 1 hour, 2 hour, and finally a 4 hour sub cycle











For now I am going to stick with a 1 hour cycle, so Click on the Install program, then on the main panel hit Submit to get everything running 



Next select the Extractor control unit, then products.

Next select the product from the Extractor Control Unit


Then click on the Command center. you can either to create a path to the Command center with the 
[Create Route] button, or simply double click on the Command center to use its storage bay. Note that the storage bay is limited to 500m3 


So you bascialy want to convert the raw material into something a bit more usefull.

Select the Basic Industry plant, then Schematics,(the plant in the image below is already in production)



then look up the schematic that uses the materials you have previously sent to the Command Center.

In this case its "Toxic Metals", it takes 3000 units of Heavy metals to create 20 units of Toxic Metals, 
reducing 30m2 of raw materials down to a mere 7.6m3 of material. This is useful for two reasons, First it reduces your need for storage as you produce, and Second, it reduces your export costs. 






2
Beyond the basics.
2A Skillbooks for PI
Note:
For the rest of the guide I will be using a "full skills" PI character on Sisi.

If your serious about continuing on at this point, you will need to pick up the rest of the skills for PI



 And 



Will probably be the two you pick up first, and are, literally, the most straightforward of the skills involved with PI.

Command Center Upgrades allows you to  upgrade your command center to put out more Power and CPU, allowing you to build the Launch pad, more extractors, and more processors. Without it you can only build with the most basic Command center setup.

Interplanetary Consolidation Allows you to build on more planets. Without it you can only build on one planet.

However, the next two skills are not so straight forward. In part because they both do the exact same thing.


AND


Realize that without those two skills your still getting a fairly accurate view of the map, its still not "Accurate"

Some "hotspots" on the map will not properly show up,(Showing up as more pink than white for example while others are "overestimated" for a literal example here is a "Minimal skill" view  and a 5/5 skill view of Illuin II, both using the same scan settings. 




Note that there seems to be more hotspots on that map than on the first map, and that the position and shape of the hotspots has changed, shows that you can be a bit more spread out on extraction head placement for example or that the south-eastern field might be a good place to set up if people are already on the western field. 

That said, the real question on a lot of peoples minds is just how much of an improvement are the Planetology skills. Personally I would say "Not a lot" early on given how extractors work and how easy it is to "max out" Processors. However the accuracy helps you a bit more once you get a larger Command center and planets network up and running, and can benefit from better placement of a 10 head extractor. Basically you are getting a better return on investment from leveling up the Command center until you get to the point where your running a maxed out extractor and have to split the load between 2 or more Extractor Control units.

If your doing PI as a income skill one character, I personally would recommend maxing out Command Center upgrades and Planetary consolidation to the levels your comfortable with running them before getting the two "Planetology" skills, and then leveling those to at least 4-3 or so, and then leveling them up as you have skill training time to spare. 

As for Remote sensing, Its kind of the oddball skill of the lot, its the one that gets you in the door of planetary interaction when you want to mine materials, and you need at level III to learn Planetology, you can use it to look at planets that are not in your solar system and. . . not much else to be perfectly honest. For the most part you will probably set up your planets and stay there unless something forces you off your planet.




2B
Infrastructure:

Lets take a basic setup like this


a New to PI setup of 3 extractor heads, 2 processors and the CC



Basically this shows  that my "24 hour" cycles has some interesting bumps in the production curve, while I don't have the math to show what's going on behind the scenes, basically the idea is that you have all kinds of things going on in the background that's keeping you from having a simple linear production output, (pollution, resource exhaustion, Ted getting back from his "coffee" break and so on) 

By the way you may have noticed that I have a route going from the ECU to the Command Center (CC) then routs going from the CC to the Processors. that's because, with this being the most basic facility possible, I am using the tiny storage bay in the CC for storage, basically taking the raw materials from the extractor and sending them to the processors. 

Unfortunately there's never anything in storage(left image) when you start off. So what you do is Select Routs (right Image, the 3 arrows I boxed) select the Incoming goods (in this case Carbon Compounds) then the [CREATE ROUTE] button on the bottom and go from there.

        

Now as to why I have 2 processors and only 3 extractors running, its because in part of this 



One processor can "use" 6000 units of materials per hour, 144,000 units per 24 hours. that means that 45238 units of raw mats end up in storage, (the processors can "stockpile" 3000 units each) or 452m^3 (out of an available 500m3) from just three heads, a 4th extraction head would have had me dumping raw materials and finished product on the ground, while adding a storage facility would have simply delayed the inevitable, although it is nice to know you have stockpiled raw mats for your processors to burn through on those days that you just cant get to your extractors in time.  

 

The same planet after three extractor cycles (15 min each) Basically what's happened in each step is 

1) That the top processor gets less than 3000 units in one delivery cycle, thus the processor cant run yet,
 the next cycle 
2) The Top processor gets a second delivery(slightly less than the first time) and now has enough to run, the excess lands in its buffer
 the third cycle
3) the top processor is still in its first run, its buffer is now full, and the lower processor gets the overflow. (note that the processor cycle at this production level takes 30 min to run though 3000 units of raw material) 

Fast forwarding 21 cycles and the network looks something like this. 



Time to upgrade!



Simply select the command center, click on the upgrade button, 



You will be billed 580,000 ISK, but your Power grid goes up by 3000 mw and your CPU will grow by 5382 tf. (hit Submit to confirm the change)

Personally, at this point I prefer to upgrade the network with a Spaceport, its ISK cost is 900,000 ISK, And needs 700mw and 3600 tf.  But you get 10,000 m3 storage, the ability to use the spaceport and custom office as opposed to space launches. Compared to the Storage faculty which has 5k storage space, costs 250k, and has a power use of 700mw and CPU usage of 500 tf. 

 

Now Im going to shut down production to upgrade my processors on this extraction.



Note that the follow up cycle gets a new curve to it and reduced output. this is in part due to the impact of  depletion/pollutions on the field I was using.



However for now I am able (with the upgrade) to add 3 more extractor fields, now I will be having more materials flowing from the Extractor to the Spaceport. 

I also needed to upgrade the rout to the spaceport to handle the load. (simply Click on the Upgrade button then hit upgrade)



Continuing the upgrade on the same planet: 

From II to level III will cost 930,000 ISK, and net you an additional 3000MW and 5079 tf cpu
From III to level IV will cost 1,200,000 ISK, and net you an additional 3000MW and 5079 tf cpu
From IV to level V will cost 1.500.000 ISK and net you an Additional 2000MW and 4100 tf cpu.
From V to level VI will cost 2,100,000 ISK and net you an Additional 2000MW and 4100 tf cpu

At that level you will have a network that more or less looks like this.(Depending on the density of resources you are able to access)

--[[Contributor_name:Steve Thomas|Steve Thomas]] 05:07, 13 January 2011 (UTC)