The Lazy Wormhole PI Guide

Due to having little time for space combat, I have recently concentrated on money-making opportunities, specifically those that do not involve spending a lot of time online. One of the obvious options is planetary interaction (PI).

Now, there are many PI guides out there but most of them are either introductory or focused on maximising output and profit. I had tried the maximum output approach in the past and burned out rather quickly because it involves splitting extraction and refining and this requires a lot of hauling.

This time, I decided to try a lazy approach, minimising my interaction with planets.

This means refining on the spot and limits you to P2 products. While this means that you lose some efficiency, it allows you to leave the planets unattended for a longer time. It also requires that you operate in 0.0 space, preferably wornholes as they get the best output regardless of class while the productivity of k-space nullsec plants varies depending on security status.

The required skills are:

• Command Center Upgrades V - to put all those facilities online
• Interplanetary Consolidation - as high as possible because why bother with PI at all otherwise, but you can add extra planets later
• Planetology IV - I've heard V is even better for finding hotspots but IV is a prerequisite for the next skill
• Advanced Planetology IV - to optimise your extractors' placement
• Racial Industrial IV - to use your race's largest hauler and minimise trips
• Hull Upgrades II - to use Expanded Cargoholds II; you can rig your hauler with another character

Remote Sensing is irrelevant in w-space where all your planets will be in a single system.
If you are committed to your corporation, you can train these skills on an alt (or multiple ones) on the same account or a separate one. Like, the one where your T3 booster sits.

First of all, you need a w-space base of operations. Join a wormhole corp or, if you have a few alts or friends, set up a tower in an empty system yourself. Ideally, it will be a C1/C2 system with a hisec static connection, making hauling very easy. A C1/C2 with a C1/C2 static will also work, and will probably have less traffic.

Next, survey your planets and figure out what to produce there.
Here are your options by planet type, with lowest Jita sell prices based on eve-central data:


Note that planets do not always have good supply of certain resources, limiting your options.

Now, put your command centers in your cargohold, preferably while staying under POS shields, and start deploying your colonies. Apart from a fully upgraded command center, you will need:

• a launchpad
• two extractors (one for each raw material)
• six basic industrial facilities (for 47-hour cycles, significantly longer cycles require less processing power)
• three advanced industrial facilities (one per two basic ones)

Put them down close to each other to save on link costs and make sure everything is connected to the launchpad. Now, install the necessary schematics at AIFs and BIFs and launch the extractors. Make sure to route everything through the launchpad which serves as a buffer. Arrange extractor heads so that you get roughly equal numbers of both of your raw mats, otehrwise you risk clogging your buffer with bulky P0.

Your setup should look like this.

Such a setup will produce about 250-350 units of P2 per cycle, depending on raw material abundance, yielding you 1.25-1.75 million ISK per day if you go with the most popular commodities. This means 225-315 million ISK before tax per month for a character running all six planets. Not much money but not much effort either since all you do is log on every other day and restart extractors. Plus, this is meant to be done with multiple PI alts.

Hauling frequency will depend on your output. Having an Orca makes life much easier but with a static hisec hole I think regular industrials should be fine.

 Have I missed something here? Please tell me if so.