…and brown ones, glowing blue ones, grey ones, white, ones, and burning red ones.
This is the first in a series of posts in which I will be looking at Planetary Interaction.
Part One: The Basics
Interaction With Planets
Yes, the clue is in the name. Planetary interaction was introduced with the last expansion of EVE and allows players to exploit the various resources of every planet in EVE in order to make goods which have traitionally been provided by NPC vendors.
Nearly all the goods under the ‘Consumer Products’ category in the market, which up till now have been of little interest to anyone but POS owners and T2 manucfacturers are now manufacturable by players using planetary interaction.The components neccessary for the construction of POS towers and modules will also be manufacturable using these resources.
The aim of this is two-fold. Firstly, the planetary installations built and maintained by players will be the battlegrounds over which the players of DUST 514 will fight. Secondly, the products made by players on the surface of planets will eventually replace the same products currently provided by NPC vendors and add another level of depth to EVE’s economy.
What Skills Do I need?
There are 5 skills needed to make the best use of planetary interaction. Without any of these skills you can make use of one planet with a basic command center and can only scan and adjust your network from within the same system.
Interplanetary Consolidation increases the number of planets you can have a PCC on by one for every level trained. To be able to make every end product in the PI product tree, you need this trained to at least 4 (for five planets, see below).
Command Center Upgrades increases the level of the command centers you can place on each planet you control. If you don’t have this skill you’re restricted to Basic PCCs. The rest of the PCCs are detailed as follows:
| Type | Powergrid | CPU | CCU Lvl |
| Basic | 6000MW | 1675tf | 0 |
| Limited | 9000MW | 7075tf | I |
| Standard | 12000MW | 12136tf | II |
| Improved | 14000MW | 17215tf | III |
| Advanced | 17000MW | 21315tf | IV |
| Elite | 19000MW | 25415tf | V |
The top level of this skill will take approximately a month to train, so its worth fitting your planets out with Advanced PCCs until you do this. The only drawback to this is that upgrading the PCC on a planet requires you to first remove the old one, deleting the network. This also deletes any products you have in storage, so its a good ide to remove any commodities to orbit before upgrading. This is a major gripe that many players have with PI (see part 4)
Remote Sensing extends the range over which you can scan your planets. Everyone starts out being able to scan planets in the system they’re currently in, Remote sensing extends this by 1 light year for level 1 and 2 light years for every subsequent level. It also increases the accuracy of scans, how this is measured is something I’m not sure about. It may be to do with the resolution of the scans, allowing for finer gradiation between the different amounts of resources in the scan filter view.
Planetology requires Remote Sensing III and further increases the accuracy of planetary scans.
Advanced Planetology requires Planteology IV and Science IV and increases the resolution of planetary scans allowing for greater accuracy in pinpointing deposits.
As mentioned above, I’m not sure how the accuracy of scans is measured or quantified in game, or how drastically it affects the percieved location of deposits.
What can I make?
The end products manufacturable using planetary resources and facilities will mainly be of interest to T2 manufacturers and POS owners. Here’s a list of end products that will be marketable to the playerbase as a whole and what they will be used for (I’ll be explaining the various Planetary Interaction related abbreviations and jargon in a glossary at the end of this post):
- Broadcast Nodes (P4, POS component)
- Integrity Response Drones (P4, POS component)
- Nano-Factory (P4, POS component)
- Organic Mortar Applicators (P4, POS component)
- Recursive Computing Module (P4, POS component)
- Self-Harmonizing Power Core (P4, POS component)
- Sterile Conduits (P4, POS component)
- Wetware Mainframe (P4, POS component)
- Datachips (P3, NRP component)
- Gel Matrix Biopaste (P3, NRP component)
- Guidance Systems (P3, T2 component)
- Robotics (P3, POS fuel)
- Ukomi Superconductors (P3, T2 component)
- Construction Blocks (P2, T2 component)
- Consumer Electronics (P2, T2 component)
- Coolant (P2, POS fuel)
- Enriched Uranium (P2, POS fuel)
- Mechanical Parts (P2, POS fuel)
- Miniature Electronics (P2, T2 component)
- Nanites (P2, NRP component)
- Rocket Fuel (P2, T2 component)
- Superconductors (P2, T2 component)
- Transmitter (P2, T2 component)
- Oxygen (P1, POS fuel)
As you can see, there are quite a few things which can be made with the materials gained from planets. There are actually more than I have listed here but the remainder are intermediate commodities which are used in the manufacture of others and have no use beyond a planetary manufacturing process.
It is hard to predict which of these will garner the most profit, or result in the biggest savings for those who have to ship the required material into nul from low and high security space. Personally, I’m going to aim for making the Nanite Repair Paste components, but I’ll be covering that in a future post in this series.
The process for most of these products is fairly simple:
- Extract the required resource
- Process it into a usable commodity (Basic Factory producing P1 product)
- Put the correct commodities through an Advanced Factory to get P2 product
- Put the correct commodities through another Advanced Factory to get a P3 product
- Put the correct commodities through a High Tech Factory to get a P4 product
It looks fairly simple, but as with all things EVE there are hidden depths and complexities which I will go into in the next post in this series.
All these planets, How do I pick the one’s I want?
Different planets produce different resources. I have found that it is possible to be able to make every end product (P1 to P4) with only 5 planets. This does not inculde a manufacturing base, which is a planet which you have no extractors on (more on that next post.) The five planets which are required to build a manufacturing system which can be quickly refactored to produce whatever you want are as follows:
- Temperate: Required for Autotorphs as this is the only planet they are available on
- Lava: Required for Felsic Magama, again this is the only planet that produces it
- Oceanic: Possible to use an Ice planet instead, but and Oceanic has a greater abundance of the duplicate resources.
- Gas
- Plasma
I’ll go through what I’m currently extracting from these planets in a later post along with the most efficient layouts for your networks.
Its worth remembering that you can only build High Tech Facilities on Temperate or Barren worlds. This is the main reason I would reccommend having a 6th planet of either of these types (requiring Interplanetary Consolidation V) where you do all your manufacturing. This also prevents your major manufacturing operations using up the CPU and power of your extraction centers.
Its worth scouting about the various planets in the constellation that you plan to operate in, looking at the placement of resource hotspots and their distance from each other in order to minimize link length.
This is so confusing is there a guide to help me out?
Yes, there are many. Here are just a few that I have found useful:
- EVE Uni’s Planetary Interaction Wiki resources
By far the most comprehensive and detailed guide to getting up and running on planets including videos and step by step guides. - Korai Iarok’s Material Diagrams PDF (Right-click, Save-as)
A breakdown of which materials are needed for which end products in PDF form for ease of printing. - Official CCP Planetary Interaction Tutorial Video
- EVE Files Planetary Interaction Search Results
Its worth having a look through these, its a varied mix of stuff with a few gems standing out. - EVE Online Science and Industry Forums
The mixed bag of mixed bags, hidden among the usual forum antics are a few incredibly useful threads and tools, but you’ll have to go hunting for them. Keep an especial eye out for spreadsheets.
All these abbreviations are giving me a headache.
Not to worry I’m going to help you out right here. I’ll be using these abbreviations and acronyms in the upcoming posts in this series so read them well.
- AIF – Advanced Industrial Facility. Used to manufacture P2 and P3 products from other materials (P1 or P2).
- BIF – Basic industrial Facility. Processes RM into P1 products.
- CO – Customs Office. An orbital facility which goods are exported to and imported from. Linked to a planetside LP.
- HIF – Hi-Tech Industrial Facility. Manufactures P4 Products from lower level materials. Can only be placed on Temperate and Barren Planets.
- LP – Launch Pad. A planetary installation which allows you to get the stuff you make into space. Also is an economical alternative to SF.
- NRP – Nanite Repair Paste. Goo that pilots can use to repair modules damaged by overheating whilst in space. Cannot be manufactured directly on a planets surface but the components needed can.
- P1,2,3,4 – The various levels of processed goods made on planets. 1 being the lowest, 4 the highest.
- PCC – Planetary Command Center. The hub that powers all your PI antics. You need one of these on each planet you want to exploit.
- PI – Planetary Interaction. You know, the bit of EVE that lets you muck about on planets.
- POS – Player Owned Structure/Starbase. A structure in space that is owned by players or their corporations and alliances. Ranges from the towers and bubbles in orbit around moons to Outposts and sovreignty structures (SBUs, TCUs, and IHs).
- RM – Raw Materials. The stuff you get from the ground/atmosphere. Requires processing in a BIF to be of any use.
- SF – Storage Facility. Not reccommended for use unless you need to separate some of a particular resource for two different purposes.
- T2 – Tech 2. Equipment and ships of a higher level of technical advancement than Tech 1. Anything you see on the market with a little orange triangle in the corner of its icon or ‘II’ after its name.
- CCU – Command Center Upgrades. A skill which increases the level of PCC you can place on a planet.
- More as I come across them.
In the next post I will be presenting some general tips which I have found useful in my foray into PI, and in part 3 I’ll be breaking down in some detail what I am actually doing and how I am doing it. In the final post of this four part series I’ll be looking at some of the things I’ve found good about PI and some of the things I’ve found to be not so good.
Stay tuned over the next week or so, there will be flowcharts and diagrams and screeshots! Oh My!
M out
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