Planetary Industry guideSame planet, five times the ISK per m³

Five tiers, one chain

Planetary Industry, PI for short, works in five tiers. Extractors on a planet pull raw resources (P0) out of the ground. Factories on the same planet turn them into processed materials (P1), then refined commodities (P2), and so on up to P4. Each step happens in a building you place in planet mode, and you can sell at any tier.

Item counts, volumes and tax bases are ESI type data; quantities and cycle times are CCP's static data. The tax base is what a customs office charges its rate on, per unit. A factory holds only one cycle of input, and anything routed to it beyond that is lost, so feed it from storage.

The first two steps each shrink the cargo to about a quarter, while the price per unit rises much faster.

Each bar is the median item of its tier at its 30-day average Jita price, to 3 October; under it, the cheapest and the dearest item per m³. P2 holds about five times the ISK per m³ of P1, and 18 times that of raw resources.

Past P2 the gain slows and the work grows. P3 is worth about twice P2 per m³, and P4 a fifth more than P3. Each planet type can make exactly one P3 from its own resources; for any other, you bring in P2 from other planets. Keeping one P3 factory busy takes two P2 factories for each of its inputs. A P4 needs products from two to five planet types and 198,000 to 432,000 units of P0. Only Barren and Temperate planets can build the High-Tech Production Plant that makes it.

So this guide stops at P2 for a first colony. It is the last tier one planet can make alone, and the step from P1 to P2 is the biggest jump in value per m³.

Alpha or Omega

PI needs Omega. An Alpha clone can't train any of the five planet skills: Command Center Upgrades, Interplanetary Consolidation, Remote Sensing, Planetology and Advanced Planetology are all outside the Alpha skill set. CCP's help pages say an Alpha can't export anything from a colony. EVE University goes further: since January 2022, Alphas can't do PI at all. Either way, nothing an Alpha makes on a planet reaches the market.

Some of the work is still open to an Alpha. The Epithal, the hauler built for PI, needs Spaceship Command III and Gallente Hauler I, both within the Alpha limits. Anyone can buy and sell PI goods, too. If you want an income that trains entirely on Alpha, the first skill plan in our exploration guide does.

Which planet makes what

Every planet has five resources, set by its type. Three of them exist on one type only: Autotrophs on Temperate, Felsic Magma on Lava and Reactive Gas on Gas planets. You buy the command center that matches the planet, so pick the planet first.

Resources and the P2 each type makes without imports come from the EVE University Wiki; bold resources exist on that type only. Command centers sold a day is the 30-day average in The Forge, to 3 October; they cost 86k to 97k ISK each. Planets in lower security systems are richer overall.

To scan a planet's resources you need Remote Sensing, and its level sets how far away you can scan: 1 light year at level I, 5 at level III. Scan before you buy the command center, because where the richest spots are decides where your extractors and factories go.

What a colony costs

A colony starts with a command center from the market. Upgrading it in place on the planet gives the CPU and power the other buildings use, and each level needs a level of Command Center Upgrades.

CPU and power are ESI type data. The upgrade cost is the total from a Basic command center, from CCP's static data. EVE University gives the same totals for levels 1 to 3 and level 5, but 4.21M for level 4, so check that price in game before you budget.

Everything else is built on the planet for a fixed price:

Prices are CCP's static data; CPU, power and storage are ESI. Links between buildings cost no ISK but take CPU and power, more the longer they are. The command center holds 500 m³ and can launch goods to orbit itself, but that costs more than a launchpad and can't import.

The P2 planet below needs a level 4 command center and 2.29M ISK of buildings: 6.0M to 6.6M ISK in all, depending on the level 4 price. The skill books for Command Center Upgrades, Interplanetary Consolidation and Remote Sensing cost about 1.4M ISK together in Jita.

Customs tax

Goods leave a planet through its customs office, which charges a rate on the tax base of each unit, from the first table. Exporting pays the full rate and importing half.

• Highsec: CONCORD takes 10% and the office's owner adds their own rate. Customs Code Expertise cuts CONCORD's share by 1 point a level. It needs Trade IV, which is above the Alpha cap, so it's Omega only.
• Lowsec, nullsec and wormholes: a player-owned office charges only its owner's rate, which Customs Code Expertise doesn't change. In sovereignty nullsec an Orbital Skyhook does the customs office's job.

Because the tax base is fixed per unit, processing before you export cuts the tax. 3,000 P0 carry a tax base of 15,000 ISK, and the 20 P1 made from them 8,000. At CONCORD's 10%, a P2 costs 720 ISK to export, about 5% to 10% of its Jita price. Owners can set any rate they like, and a customs office's description shows its total, so check it before you build.

One planet, 240 P2 a day

EVE University calls one planet making one P2 the most common setup for passive PI income. It uses a level 4 command center, two extractors, four Basic and two Advanced Industry Facilities, two storage facilities and a launchpad. Each extractor feeds two Basic facilities, and each Advanced facility makes 5 P2 an hour: 240 a day. For that, each extractor has to deliver 12,000 units an hour.

At full speed: 240 units a day of the best P2 each planet type makes alone, at its 30-day average Jita price to 3 October. The hatched bars are what the 3,840 P1 made on the way would fetch instead. Both are before customs tax and market fees.

The step from P1 to P2 doesn't always pay. On the P2s above it adds 14% to 33% to the value of the P1. On others it adds next to nothing or loses: Mechanical Parts and Water-Cooled CPU are worth 1% to 2% more than their P1, Genetically Enhanced Livestock 18% less and Polytextiles 15% less. Even then, the P2 is a quarter of the cargo.

Worked through for Coolant on a Gas planet, the P2 that trades most in Jita at 1.06 million units a day:

• Output: 7,200 Coolant in 30 days at full speed.
• Customs tax: 172,800 ISK a day at a highsec office whose owner charges nothing.
• Net: 2.43M ISK a day before market fees, or 72.8M in 30 days.
• Setup: 6.0M to 6.6M ISK, paid back in under three days.

Five such planets, the most plan 1 below allows, make up to 364M ISK in 30 days.

Full speed is a ceiling. EVE University expects 4 heads on a 1-day program to be enough in nullsec, and highsec planets are poorer. If the extractors fall short, the factories wait and output drops with them. The longer you set a program, the less it extracts an hour, and restarting the programs when they end is most of the work PI asks of you.

Getting it to Jita

The Epithal is the hauler built for PI. Its 45,000 m³ hold takes only planetary commodities and grows 10% per level of Gallente Hauler, to 49,500 m³ at level I. A second 6,000 m³ hold carries six command centers. It costs about 2.45M ISK in Jita, where 117 sell a day.

Thirty days of Coolant from five planets is 27,000 m³, one trip. The same planets selling their P1 instead would ship 109,440 m³, three trips at Gallente Hauler I.

Your colonies can't be attacked, but your goods can once they leave the planet. The customs office is a single place anyone can warp to, and if it is destroyed, everything stored in it goes with it. That month of Coolant is worth about 390M ISK at Jita prices, so haul it in smaller loads.

Skill plan

Three blocks, in order. Copy one, then in game use "import from clipboard" in the Skill Queue window. Each line is one level, and prerequisites always come first.

Science 1
Science 2
Science 3
Remote Sensing 1
Command Center Upgrades 1
Command Center Upgrades 2
Command Center Upgrades 3
Command Center Upgrades 4
Interplanetary Consolidation 1
Interplanetary Consolidation 2
Interplanetary Consolidation 3
Interplanetary Consolidation 4

Spaceship Command 1
Spaceship Command 2
Spaceship Command 3
Gallente Hauler 1

Remote Sensing 2
Remote Sensing 3
Science 4
Planetology 1
Planetology 2
Planetology 3
Command Center Upgrades 5
Interplanetary Consolidation 5

Times assume a fresh character with no implants and 20/20 attributes: 1,800 SP an hour on Omega, half that on Alpha. Plan 1 gives five planets, level 4 command centers and Remote Sensing I. Plan 2 trains on Alpha too. Plan 3 adds a sixth planet, level 5 command centers, scans out to 5 light years and Planetology III for sharper scans; Command Center Upgrades V and Interplanetary Consolidation V take about 468 hours each.

Can an Alpha clone do Planetary Industry?

Not for income. Alphas can't train the planet skills, and CCP says an Alpha can't export anything from a colony. An Alpha can fly the Epithal and buy and sell PI goods.

How often do I have to log in?

When an extractor program ends, which you set from 1 hour to 14 days. EVE University's P2 planet uses 1-day programs; longer ones last longer but extract less an hour.

Can I do PI in Jita?

No. Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and 14 other systems can't be colonized, and neither can shattered planets.

Can someone destroy my colony?

No, the buildings on a planet can't be attacked. A customs office can be destroyed, and the goods stored in it are lost with it.

Should I make P3 or P4?

Not at first. Full-speed P3 needs more factories than one planet can feed, a P4 needs products from two to five planet types, and both mean importing through a launchpad and paying import tax. Get one P2 planet running, then add more.

Highsec or lowsec?

Planets in lower security systems are richer, and outside highsec there is no CONCORD tax, only the owner's. The risk is getting your goods out.

🤖 This content was produced using the Claude (Anthropic) AI assistant.