Eve Online Planetary Interaction
Planetary interaction in EVE Online consists of buying a Command Center on the market,building it on a planet, and then building extractors and factories to mine resourcesfrom the planet and produce commodities with them. It was made fully available on 8 June 2010with the introduction of Command Centers to themarket. Read below for the PI guide.
Planetary import/export tax. Players doing Planetary Interaction can choose to export the materials they process to a Player-Owned Customs Office (POCO), but in doing so they will incur a planetary export tax. They can also import materials for use by factory planets, which will incur a planetary import tax.
Train Planetary Infrastructure Skills
The skills listed below affect your ability to interact with planets. Only one of these skills, Remote Sensing, is required in orderto do planetary interaction. The other skills, while optional, will greatly help toimprove your ability to mine resources from planets.
Command Center Upgrades - This skill gives you access to higher-qualitycommand centers, which affects how many things you can attach to it, which in turn affects how manyresources you can mine at a time.
Interplanetary Consolidation - Increases the number of planets you can colonizeat a time, up to a maximum of six.
Planetology/Advanced Planetology - These skills increase the accuracy of the heatmap displayed in yourscans for planetary resources. These two are the only planetary infrastructure skills that have prerequisites.To train Planetology, you need to train Remote Sensing to level III. Advanced Planetology requiresPlanetology IV.
Remote Sensing - This skill is required for planet scanning, and each level increasesyour scan range.
Find a Planet
Use thenearby planets by typesearch tool to find planets of a certain type near a specificsolar system. Or, while in-game, open the information windowfor a solar system and check the Orbital Bodies tab to find theplanet types there.
There are eight types of planets in EVE that you can interact with.To mine resources from a planet, you will needto purchase a Command Center on the marketthat corresponds to the type of planet that you want to mine from.Therefore, you should look around different solar systems at the types of planets that are there, to ensurethat you purchase the correct type of Command Center needed for that type of planet.
Keep in mind that if a planet already has other players' command centers on it (which you can see if youright-click in planet mode and choose Show Other Players' Networks,) you can still put your own command centerthere as long as there is room, but the other players will also be consuming the resources of the planet,and you might discover that the resources are diminished to such a degree that having a command center there is not worthwhile.
Planet Types
The types of planets in EVE are:
- Barren
- Gas
- Ice
- Lava
- Oceanic
- Plasma
- Shattered
- Storm
- Temperate
The planet type determines what resources are available there. Check the materials section below for a chartof which planet types have which resources.You can also find outwhich types of planets contain which types of resources by going to the Materials & Research section of the market, choosing Planetary Materials,then choosing Raw Materials. The information window for each material inthis list will show the type of command center required for extracting thatmaterial (for example: lava command center, barren command center, and so on.)
The security of a solar system does not restrict the types of planets that youcan find there. All types of planets can be found whether you are inhigh-sec, low-sec, wormhole space, and so on. However, some planet types aremuch more common than others, with gas and barren planets being the two mostcommon, and oceanic and plasma planets being the least common (not countingshattered planets, of which there areonly 10 in all of EVE).
Also, planets in low-sec, 0.0 space and wormhole space have a better yield ofraw materials per extractor than planets in high-sec.
The following table shows the approximate distribution of planet typesin EVE. The percent value indicates what percent of the planets in EVEare that type, so, for example, 30% of all planets in EVE are Gas planets,11% of all planets in EVE are Temperate, and so on.
Distribution of Planet Types
Type | Percent |
---|---|
Gas | 30% |
Barren | 29% |
Temperate | 11% |
Lava | 10% |
Storm | 8% |
Ice | 5% |
Oceanic | 5% |
Plasma | 2% |
Buy a Command Center
Once you have decided upon a planet to mine, buy the appropriate type of command center that correspondsto that type of planet (a Barren Command Center for a barren planet, a temperate command centerfor a temperate planet, and so on.)
Before the Incursion 1.1.1 release, there were multiple levels of command centersthat you could buy on the market. This has changed in Incursion 1.1.1: now, there is onlyone level of command center that can be purchased on the market for each planet type.Once installed on a planet, it starts out at the most basic level of CPU and power output,but you can upgrade it inplanet mode by choosing Upgrade and clicking on the bar with the green rectangles.You will be shown the upgrade cost and the CPU and power increase for the chosenupgrade level.
Build the Command Center
Put the command center into your ship's cargo hold and undock. You don't need to travel to a planetin order to build there; you just need to be in a ship, undocked,and in the same system as the one where you are building thecommand center. Once it's built, you can control your command center and other planetary structuresfromany solar system via the Science and Industry tab, even if you are docked in a station.
Right-clicking the planet itself or the planet icon in the overview willgive you the option to view the planet in planet mode. This will bring you to a view of the planet that you canrotate and zoom.
A special planetary interaction pane will appear on the left. The build tab gives you options to build a command center,extractors, and other structures, while the scan button allows you to survey the planet's resources.Clicking the Scan button will show a list of the types of resources that are there.
When you click on a particular resource, a heatmap will be displayed on the planet, showing you how dense or sparse the resources are. Warmer colors (white, red, orange, etc.) indicatedense resources, and colder colors (blue, green, etc.) indicate sparse resources. You can use the arrows to the left and right of thecolor bar to shrink or stretch the colors, allowing you to alter the colors to emphasize the denser pockets or sparser pockets if you wish.To get a good idea of where the hot spots on a planet are, start with the color bar stretched all the way to the right,then slowly compress it to the left until the first spots of white appear on the planet. These are the locations of thedensest resource deposits.
Use the heat map to choose a place to build your command center.Choose a location that allows you to extract from many rich depositswithout overloading your command center by making it have long linksto far away ECUs. If possible, put your command center on an area wherethe desired resources are sparse so you aren't blocking your extractorheads from a hot spot.
After selecting the command center from the build menu, click on the planet where you want to put the command center.You will be shown the cost, and can choose to cancel or build. Whenever you wish to build anything on a planet, you must clickBuild to confirm. Once you do, you will be charged construction fees and taxes at this time.
Set up an Extractor and Survey for Deposits
If you had set up extractors prior to the Incursion 1.1.1 patch, you willbe required to decommission your old extractors. The old extractors have beenmade obsolete and replaced with new Extractor Control Units.You will be reimbursed by the amountof ISK that you spent to set up the old extractors.
Once you have set up a command center, you can build extractor control units.These are purchased in planet mode, not on the market.Remember to position your ECU such that you minimize the drain on your command center'sCPU and power output. You will later be extending extractor heads from your ECU.Try to find a place for your ECU that is somewhere in betweenyour command center and your desired extractor head locations to keep your CPUand power costs down.
After you build an ECU, you can click the Survey option to begin setting up yourextraction program.This will open up the ECU survey window.
In the ECU survey window, first choose the type of resource that you want to extractby clicking on the appropriate icon on the right that corresponds to the typeof resource that you want to extract. The planet will show the heat mapfor the resource that you chose. If you need to adjust the heat map scale,click the Scan button in the upper-left of the screen and adjust it there.
After choosing the resource, click on one of the ten circles on the left side of thesurvey window. This will create an extractor head. You can create up to tenextractor heads per ECU, but you are also limited by your command center's CPU andpower output, so you might be limited to fewer than ten extractor heads dependingon your set up.
An extractor head is connected to the extractor and can beplaced anywhere within a fixed radius around the ECU.The circle for each extractor head will display the extraction quality index to theright of it. This is a percentage that represents the potential yieldat the extractor head's current locationlocation, where a higher percentage means a higher yield.
Placing an extractor head will also display a bar graph in the center of the screen.This bar graph represents how many units of the extracted resource will be extractedon each cycle. You can increase or decrease the total duration of your extractionprogramby adjusting the slider on the bottom left of the screen. The minimum extraction program duration is 1 hour, and the maximum is 14 days.
You will notice as you adjust your extraction program duration that there are sometimesspikes in the bar chart. These 'nuggets' are temporary hot spots that typically disappear after a few cycles.
You will also notice that there tends to be a significant drop-off of resources if youuse a long duration for your extraction program. This is to be expected, because youare continually depleting a resource without letting it regenerate. Coffee shop tycoon cheats.
A longer program duration will increase the extraction radius of all of your extractor heads.If you place two extraction heads too close to each other, you will see static displayedaround them, and a red negative percent will appear below each affected extractor headin the survey window. This happens because the overlapping extraction range of the two extractor heads will causethe two of them to compete with each other and both suffer reduced efficiency as a result.Keep your extractor heads out of each other's way to avoid this problem.
When positioning your extractor heads and choosing your program duration, keep an eye on thebottom right of the survey window to see how many units per hour (on average) and how many total unitsyou will get with your program.
Once you are satisfied with your extraction program, choose Install Program, and then clicksubmit on the upper left of the screen to finalize the changes.
Set up an Industry Facility to Manufacture Products
Setting up an industry facility will allow you to manufacturegoods that you can then sell on the market. As with all other PI structures,the industry facilities consume CPU and power.
When it comes to manufacturing products, different types of planets have different raw materials,and with those materials, many different commodities can be produced.See below for a list of the raw materials that can be found on planets, alongwith all of the materials and commodities that you can produce with them.
Once you have built an industrial facility, you must create a link from the extractor to the facility, decide how much ofthe extractor's resources to route to the facility, and create the route.
There are multiple levels of industry facility, with the most basic being used to process the raw materials you extract,and the most advanced being used to turn specialized commodities into advanced ones. Each type of industry facilityalready has all of the schematics built in; they are not purchased on the market.
Once you have an extractor extracting raw materials from the planet, click on the industrial facility and choose a schematicfrom the drop down that uses that type of raw material. Once you have done that, you can create a route to the industry facilityfrom your extractor. You will not be able to route the raw materials to the facility until after you have chosen a schematic for the facility.Similarly, if you build a more advanced industry facility, you must choose the schematic of the commodity that you wantto produce there before you can route the materials to that facility.
Set up a Storage Facility
Depending on your extraction and manufacturing set up,you might benefit from additional storage space on the planet. Build a storage facilityon the planet and create a link to it from the structures whose products you need to store, then create a route tohave those resources sent to the storage facility.
Moving Things Around
Once you have established links between your structures, you can click on your products and choose Create Routeto make your products be automatically sent to your desired destination. The routed products will be transferredas soon as they have been extracted or manufactured, as long as there is room in the destination.Routing products is the way to have your extractors and other structuresautomatically send your materials to your industrial facilities,command center, launch pad, and so on.
As mentioned earlier, if you wish to route materials to an industry facility, you must first select the schematicof the material or commodity that you wish to produce there. You can only route materials and commodities to an industry facility if that facility's schematic uses those materials and commodities. So, for example, if you tryto route construction blocks to an industry facility that is using a water schematic, you will not be be allowedto create that route.
As with everything else that you can build on a planet, you must click the Build button before your route is actuallycreated.
If you want to move items from one place to another immediately, rather than waiting on automatic routing, select Expedite Transfer. Choose the product or products that you want to move, and then confirm.There is a cooldown period after any expedited transfer, so you must wait for that cool down period to endbefore doing another expedited transfer.
Launch your Items into Space
When you are ready to send your items to your ship, first transfer them to your command center, thenchoose Launch. Move the desired items into the payload, and pay the required ISK to launch the items.The more items you wish to launch, the more it will cost. This is a one-way launch. See below forhow to retrieve launched items. Note that items launched this way will only bein space for a limited time, so be sure to retrieve them in a timely manner.
Alternatively, you can build a launch pad on your planet, which can both send and receive goods.To send materials down to a planet, you must warp to the planet's Customs Office, which is a structure that orbitsthe planet. When you are near the Customs Office, it can be used much like a cargo container:open it, and move items into it from your cargo hold. Once that is done, you can right-click on the CustomsOffice and open the customs interface to have your materials sent down to your launch pad. You will alsointerface with the Customs Office if you have launched items from your launch pad.
Retrieving Launched Items
Once launched, you can retrieve your items by going to your journal and choosing the planetary interaction tab.There will be a bookmark there for each of the launches that you have done.Right-click on the bookmark and warp to that location to rendezvous with the cargo rocket. It will appearmuch like a cargo canister in space. You can simply move the items out of it into your cargo, as with any otherspace-bound cargo container. You cannot send this cargo container back to your planet, as it disappears once youhave emptied it. Note that cargo rockets are only in space for a limited time, and will eventually crash intothe planet and be lost if you do not retrieve the contents in a timely manner. The countdown to re-entry isdisplayed in the launches tab of your journal.
Monitoring your Planetary Activity
If you are docked in a station, you can use the Science and Industry tab to check on the status of your planetaryset ups. While docked, you can build new planetary interaction nodes, decommission them, create routes, schedule launches,and so on. You can't, however, build a command center on a planet if you are docked in a station; you have to buythe command center from the market, and be undocked in the system that has that planet.
Raw Materials and Processed Materials
The following is a list of the raw materialsthat you can find on the planets of EVE. These resources appear in varying concentrationson different planet types. Also indicated are the processed materials that can be produced from eachraw material (there is only one processed material per raw material).In parentheses are the types of planets on which the raw materials can be found.Below this is a chart that displays which planet types have which raw materials.
Material | Gas | Barren | Temperate | Lava | Storm | Ice | Oceanic | Plasma |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Aqueous Liquids (Water) | ||||||||
Autotrophs (Industrial Fibers) | ||||||||
Base Metals (Reactive Metals) | ||||||||
Carbon Compounds (Biofuels) | ||||||||
Complex Organisms (Proteins) | ||||||||
Felsic Magma (Silicon) | ||||||||
Heavy Metals (Toxic Metals) | ||||||||
Ionic Solutions (Electrolytes) | ||||||||
Micro Organisms (Bacteria) | ||||||||
Noble Gas (Oxygen) | ||||||||
Noble Metals (Precious Metals) | ||||||||
Non-CS Crystals (Chiral Structures) | ||||||||
Planktic Colonies (Biomass) | ||||||||
Reactive Gas (Oxidizing Compound) | ||||||||
Suspended Plasma (Plasmoids) |
Refined Commodities
The following is a list of the commodities that you can produce with the processed materialslisted above. Each refined commodity requires two types of processed material.
Planet Types where you can Manufacture the Refined Commodities
For most of the refined commodities, there is at least one planet type thathas all of the materials that are required to produce them. In other words,in most cases you will not need to import materials from several types ofplanets in order to produce refined commodities.
Below, I have listed the types of planets that have all of the required materialsfor each of the refined commodities. I have noted the cases where you willneed to import materials from multiple planet types.
Specialized Commodities
The following is a list of specialized commodities and their pre-requisites.
Specialized Commodities that can be formed with materials from a single planet
The following specialized commodities can be produced on a single planet type, withouthaving to import materials from other planets.
Specialized Commodities that can be formed with materials from at least two planet types
Specialized Commodities that can be formed with materials from at least three planet types
Advanced Commodities
Advanced Commodities that can be formed with materials from at least two planet types
Advanced Commodities that can be formed with materials from at least three planet types
Advanced Commodities that can be formed with materials from at least five planet types
Summary of Raw Materials Required for each Advanced Commodity
Broadcast Node- 24000 Carbon Compounds
- 24000 Noble Metals
- 48000 Reactive Gas
- 48000 Felsic Magma
- 24000 Planktic Colonies
- 24000 Noble Gas
- 48000 Autotrophs
- 24000 Non-CS Crystals
- 24000 Suspended Plasma
- 24000 Reactive Gas
- 48000 Noble Gas
- 48000 Carbon Compounds
- 48000 Noble Metals
- 48000 Suspended Plasma
- 24000 Aqueous Liquids
- 24000 Autotrophs
- 24000 Micro Organisms
- 48000 Planktic Colonies
- 48000 Non-CS Crystals
- 24000 Base Metals
- 24000 Felsic Magma
- 24000 Micro Organisms
- 24000 Complex Organisms
- 24000 Carbon Compounds
- 24000 Autotrophs
- 24000 Ionic Solutions
- 24000 Noble Gas
- 24000 Suspended Plasma
- 24000 Aqueous Liquids
- 6000 Base Metals
- 24000 Reactive Gas
- 24000 Noble Gas
- 24000 Ionic Solutions
- 24000 Aqueous Solutions
- 24000 Noble Metals
- 24000 Base Metals
- 24000 Non-CS Crystals
- 24000 Heavy Metals
- 6000 Micro Organisms
- 24000 Planktic Colonies
- 24000 Noble Gas
- 48000 Micro Organisms
- 48000 Aqueous Liquids
- 48000 Base Metals
- 24000 Non-CS Crystals
- 24000 Suspended Plasma
- 24000 Carbon Compounds
- 24000 Noble Metals
- 48000 Reactive Gas
- 48000 Felsic Magma
- 24000 Ionic Solutions
- 24000 Suspended Plasma
- 48000 Autotrophs
- 24000 Noble Metals
- 24000 Heavy Metals
- 24000 Planktic Colonies
- 24000 Complex Organisms
- 6000 Aqueous Liquids
- 24000 Base Metals
- 24000 Heavy Metals
- 24000 Non-CS Crystals
- 24000 Felsic Magma
- 24000 Carbon Compounds
- 24000 Complex Organisms
- 24000 Micro Organisms
- 24000 Planktic Colonies
- 72000 Base Metals
- 72000 Aqueous Liquids
- 48000 Ionic Solutions
- 24000 Non-CS Crystals
- 48000 Heavy Metals
- 72000 Micro Organisms
- 24000 Carbon Compounds
- 48000 Complex Organisms
- 24000 Noble Gas
Producing Advanced Commodities
When turning your raw materials into processed materials and commodities, it works as follows:
3000 units of a raw material creates 20 units of a processed material (also known as a basic commodity).
40 units of each of the required types of processed materials create five units of a refined commodity.
10 units of each of the required types of refined commodities create 3 units of a specialized commodity.
6 units of each of the required types of refined commodity, or 40 units of each of the required types of basic commodity, are combined to create one unit of advanced commodity.
In short, to make a single unit of advanced commodity, you need 6 of each refined commodity,which requires20 of each refined commodity, which requires 160 of each processed material,which requires 24000 of each raw material.
Planet Shortcuts
Below is some advice for getting the raw materials that you need without havingto hunt down a rare planet type.
The most rare planets in EVE are Storm, Ice, Oceanic, and Plasma. Fortunately, the onlyraw material exclusive to a rare planet type is Planktic Colonies (Ice/Oceanic).For the other materials:
- All of the raw materials found on Plasma planets can be found onBarren or Lava planets.
- With the exception of Planktic Colonies, all of the raw materials found onOceanic planets can be found on Temperate planets.
- With the exception of Planktic Colonies, all of the raw materials found onIce planets can be found on Barren or Lava planets.
- All of the raw materials found on Storm planets can be found onGas or Lava planets.
However, some of the raw materials might be much more plentiful on the rare planettypes.
Security and Planetary Interaction
How does security affect planetary interaction? Other players can't attack or destroy your command centers(although they might be able to via DUST 514,) but planets are likely to havemultiple command centers belonging to other players, all of whom are drawing resources fromthe planet along with you. This can affect what resources are left for you to take.
In null-sec, you can only use your command center while your alliance has sovereigntyin that system.You will not be able to use your command center if an alliance other than yourown gains sovereignty in that system.