Trade Log: Planetary Interaction Part 2: The Factory Planet

So, when I took over management of the planets I decommissioned two of his Hek based colonies. They were a flawed idea, but one of them is salvageable.

The reason I chose this planet, is simply because of the tax offered by the owning corporation. Really, if you have a planet in a hub system, keep the tax low. People will flock to your planet for factory purposes, and your profit will be huge: factory planets can host many capsuleers, since they don't compete for extraction.

It's a pretty much standard factory planet. P2 materials go in, P3 comes out. Have  look below. I've annotated the factories so it's easy to see how it's set up. Not that it's complicated...

Looks pretty right? It's current set up is wildly optimistic though.

It requires 120 Mechanical Parts, and 120 Consumer Electronics per hour to run full time. From this it can produce Robotics at a rate of 36 units/hour.

At conservative market values off 55,000 ISK, that would net about 1,980,000 ISK per hour in sales. This leads to 47 million/day, and  total of 1,425,600,000 ISK/month.

Not bad, huh?

Of course that's not the reality of the situation. Import and export taxes cut heavily into this, and if you're buying raw materials from the market, you'll be working with market forces... which usually are as fickle as the sea. Or so I've heard. The sea's the big open air water tank on planets right?

So you're probably wondering, why are we starting with the final product? Surely it'd be easier just to work out what we can harvest and produce from that right?

Well, if you're a miner, then yeah, you can do that. Life is simple. Go out, get rocks, sell rocks, and money is as good as the number of rocks you get.

Planetary interaction is a bit trickier than that. You could follow that plan with raw materials, buuut, you'll be better off hunting the low grade hoodlums in Hi-sec. Hek, you'd be better of mining.

Factories are the limiting factor in P.I. You can extract all the raw material in the world, but you'll only end up with warehouses full of junk whilst your factories chew through the material. Hence, we start with the final product, and work our way back.

In this case, the final product is Robotics. Why Robotics? Because everybody uses them, from POS fuel manufacturers to those dedicated Tech 2 production guys. Markets good, volume traded is high, and high volume usually means steady price... exactly what you need when you don't want to spend to much time messing with your mud ball.

We'll start by filling up this factory planet. Is that possible? Well, I don't know yet. We need to hit the spreadsheets.

Next time we'll look at the spreadsheet I created to wrap my head around the production line, and explain the step I went through. Then you can copy it and compete with me.

Why am I doing this again?

Trade Log: Planetary Interaction Part 1: Past experience

Planets...

Damn the things. Sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold. Dust and mud everywhere. Water leaking from the sky, that can carry acid. Earthquakes knocking down buildings. Bugs.

We work so hard to make ourselves capsuleers to get away from those dirty, insect infested balls of rock, and here's my Master telling me to start 'interacting' with them.

Two things before I continue:

• The experiment went 'okay'. I managed to get a decent return on my investment, but once volume went up on an item, competition swooped in. As much as I'd like to trade this way, I don't have time to keep tabs on the price fluctuations.

If you're a full time trader, I do recommend it. If you have a boss demanding you waste time with environmentally unregulated balls, it might not be for you. Personally, I'll do it in a limited sense, but only on one or two items. As long as I make enough for 10 assault frigates a month, I'll be happy.

• I'm still a slave. 

Behnid threatened me with freedom, but he was completely unaware of the tax benefits for being a slave in the Republic and Empire. I won't bore you with the details, but lets just say slaves aren't considered taxable in the Empire, and the Republic literally throws subsidies at you to get you to revolt. Good times.

Still, it can't be long before he's officially branded a traitor to the Empire. I may find myself in the hands of another owner, or even worse, in the heavily taxed bosom of Freedom. Don't worry, I have a plan.

Back to the mud balls though.

Before, my master engaged in Hi-sec Dirt-ball Interaction (P.I.). The profit wasn't amazing, but it was steady, and really, really, really easy money. Set up the planets, wait a week, empty what his colonial slaves had dug out of the ground, put it on market, and money happens.

The money was pretty low, and he eventually abandoned it in favour of... well, not doing it. Honestly there's not much point in maintaining harvesting planets once they're set up. They might not be the most efficient producers, but it takes about 30 mins/week to maintain, and one lazy afternoon of hauling.

He did this in Molden Heath, "modernising" production on planets there. Later, he created some factory planets in Hek, turning other peoples P.I. products into higher tier commodities. Doing this in the trade hub itself meant that finding materials was easy, and travel time between planets was very low.

On the downside, he was at the mercy of market forces, in the end, lost money on his investment. The factories went silent after a month, unused.

Well, until now...