Starting PI

Hello capsuleers!,
I have recently made a new character and gotten back into EVE and I was wondering what is needed (Isk, skills, specific planet types, etc) to start up Planet Industry. I’ve herd its a good way of making ISK if it is done right. Thanks for replies in advance :smiley:!

First, you need to determine what type of PI you want to do, you have the options of:

  1. Factory PI, where you just setup factory planets and import a ton of low end materials that you bought on the market and then produce something higher tier.
  2. Extraction PI, where you extract the materials on your own and sell them on the market. (Note, shipping lots of low tier materials is bulky).
  3. Hybrid of both, where you extract materials AND process them.


Command Center Upgrades: This allows your colony to be upgraded to higher levels to have more PG and CPU to build more buildings.
Interplanetary Consolidation: Allows you to colonize more planets.
Remote Sensing: Allows you to scan planets farther away.


Probably less than 10 mil to easily get started, the Command Centers that you buy on the market are cheap, then when you deploy them, the buildings that you add have their own small costs.


A list of materials by tier:
An easy to use guide to show you what planets you need to construct a specific component:


Almost everyones setup is different, personally I tend to use my materials for T2 manufacturing, so I will run 5 planets per toon. On each of the 4 planets, I will extract 1 material and process it from a P0 to a P1 material (Much smaller to ship). Then I will export it through the launch pad, haul it out from the Customs Office, then import it to the 5th factory planet. There it combines the 4 P1 materials into 2 types of P2 materials, and finally combines those into a single P3 material.

What to make:

Components used in fuel blocks are always in high demand, Robotics specifically are usually always a good goto, but do your market research to see whats the most valuable!


  • Some materials are more abundant on different planet types.
  • Felsic Magma can only be found on Lava planets!
  • Plasma planets are quite rare, but are usually a good source of Precious Metals.
  • Watch out for high taxes on customs offices, usually you want to aim for taxes that are at most 15% (If its your factory planet, this will be doubled as you have to import AND export).
  • The radius of a planet affects how long your links are, the bigger the planet is, the longer the links are, and the more resources they use!
  • HS has the lowest resource density, lowsec is a bit better, but nullsec and WH space are RICH in materials.

Thanks for the reply, I’ll hold this off for later because it is an omega thing :parrotbeer:

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hi @Anjet_onguard

looks like PI is different for everyone
i do PI totaly different from what @Netan_MalDoran has written bit it contains a lot of info you should know and use

i do PI on all chars … i have maxed out all this chars … so 6 planets and max upgrade
my setup is:
i extract 2 meterials on each planet and make P1 and P2 on the planet … then haul it to the factory planet to make P3 … this is going to the market
guess it needs a bit more micromanagement … you need the same numbers in P0 of both materials and it can change a lot so it needs management …

for me it works out really good

you really ned this link:


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