Point is that Nanofactories are much more compressed than coolant. Because lot of Nullsec/wh people do PI and need to transport PI to tradehub, transporting is quite issue and more compressed (higher tier) products are much easier to transport than low tier products.

I posted this in my other thread but I think it deserves its own.

Are nanofactories actually worth less than coolant even though coolant takes a ton less upkeep?

Calculations:

Nanofactories - 760,000isk * 24 hours * 30 days * 3 factory planets = 1.64 billion.

I use 2 accounts to run this so 1.64 billion/2 accounts = 820 million per account

---

Coolant (on a single planet)

4 basic p0->p1 factories requiring 12,000 p0 each (24,000 p0 total) per hour (easy in a wormhole) which feed into 2 advanced p1-p2 factories. This (should?) run for 24/7, producing 10 units of coolant per hour.

Calculations:

Coolant - 9,500isk * 10 units per hour * 24 hours * 30 days * 5 p0-p2 planets * 3 characters = 1.03 billion per account

Or is my math wrong somewhere?

I posted this in my other thread but I think it deserves its own.

Are nanofactories actually worth less than coolant even though coolant takes a ton less upkeep?

Calculations:

Nanofactories - 760,000isk * 24 hours * 30 days * 3 factory planets = 1.64 billion.

I use 2 accounts to run this so 1.64 billion/2 accounts = 820 million per account

---

Coolant (on a single planet)

4 basic p0->p1 factories requiring 12,000 p0 each (24,000 p0 total) per hour (easy in a wormhole) which feed into 2 advanced p1-p2 factories. This (should?) run for 24/7, producing 10 units of coolant per hour.

Calculations:

Coolant - 9,500isk * 10 units per hour * 24 hours * 30 days * 5 p0-p2 planets * 3 characters = 1.03 billion per account

Or is my math wrong somewhere?

Point is that Nanofactories are much more compressed than coolant. Because lot of Nullsec/wh people do PI and need to transport PI to tradehub, transporting is quite issue and more compressed (higher tier) products are much easier to transport than low tier products.

There are 2 reasons why the OP is getting those numbers.


In general it is true that doing almost any P1 or P2 will give a bigger profit than doing P4. For example:
* you need 15 Planets for 2 Hi-Tech(Self-Harmonizing Power Core) facilities
* 12 of these buildings are for extraction and R0 -> P1 conversion
* 3 are for P2 -> P4

Well your math is pretty inaccurate just based on how you're comparing the P4 manufacturing to the P2. You're comparing 3 planets manufacturing P4 vs 15 planets...

Here is the easy way to figure it out.
1 planet can that supports a full P4 factory setup (20 adv factories, 1 high-tech, 3 storage) will yield 22 P4 per day (22 hours) Importing P1 materials.

Edit* Just realized you're importing P0.
So you're looking at 3 factories for each coolant, total of 7 factories manufacturing

@Styth spiting his math is ok. I believe he has the P4 production already set up and running for some time. Which is probably 12 extraction planets + 3 P4 planets. He just didn't mention them. And pls include ECUs and 10 extraction heads in your calculations. No one is importing R0.

Now based on his calculations and omitting any TAX, I would say he lives in a Wormhole and is using ECUs to extract all raw resources.

I must add that at some point I also did P2 in WH and with my max skills I could have 3x P2 factories on a single planet.

About 5000 Nano-Factories are traded daily in Jita. 1.000 of them is used to make Capital ship equipment. Now at this point I'm puzzled as to why the demand would have any big impact on the phenomena the OP described. The same components to build Coolant are also used to Build Nano-Factories.

The problem is that there is significant over supply in most items.

Most people people including yourself are ignoring basic profitability issues such are supply, that is why I created the PI Profitability spreadsheet. I failed to educated the market but a lot of people use it to make bucket loads of ISK.

Look at columns M and N and produce the items with most profit.

That all depends on where you are doing the PI. I will not say your math is wrong, but you are missing an important factor. 820 mil of Nanofactories is only a small fraction m3 wise that the coolant will be. If you are running factory planets 1 jump from Jita then hauling is not a big deal. But if you are deep in null sec isk/m3 is far more important than maximizing your isk.hour output.

Sure based on your math, you can make 18% more isk in the same amount of time, but if coolant requires 5 hauling loads to every one load of nanofactories is the extra logistics needed really worth the small increase in profits? If you calculate your isk per load hauled to market the nanofactories come out way ahead. Many P4 are made in deep null or W-space for this very reason. Maximizing isk/load is far more important.

OP, with more attention you can be making more P1 or more P2. But those resources are even more valuable when processed to P4. So PI is all about the balancing act between attention, and income. Do you want to maximize income, with the income being more active, or do you want passive income?

Well from my calculations the P4 is not more valuable than P2, or in this case, coolant.

I have not yet done the calculations for a P1->P2 factory planet though.

Hey Styth I wanted to thank you again for helping. Your information in the other thread was incredibly valuable.

Sorry I didn't mention the fact that I do live in a wormhole and I am doing zero importing of goods from the market. Everything is being extracted and produced from within the wormhole. In the wormhole 3 planets producing P4 from P1 require at least 24 Planets extracting R0 and producing P1. Actually with my skills it will probably take about 25-27 planets. This requires 2 accounts with CCU and IPC IV, which is why I divided the end profit by 2 to get my per account profit.

The 15 planet setup is extracting two different types of R0 from the planet and producing the P2 on site (which I thought would be incredibly more inefficient than using dedicated extractor planets and dedicated factory planets for P4s). And using a reasonable 10 units an hour (which actually would only require CCU III) I calculated my end profit.

I had a question though. You state 22 nanofactories per hour since it takes 2 hours for the P1 to be processed into P4. But isn't that only for the first day? If I keep a factory planet consistently supplied, wouldn't a factory planet consistently produce 24 P4s after the first day?

Just who are these people buying nanofactories with demand so low, or is the low price attractive enough for mass producers of pos towers etc mean they themselves don't need to make it?

Ahaz Darkfall - not only should you factor in extra hauling, but also the turnover the products spend on the market. If P2 products sell faster, but require more baby sitting, wouldn't it not be a benefit to have mutliple lines in different systems of that highly sought P2 product compared to a slower turn over p4 item, that you may be ending up spending more isk (and time, regardless of hauling time unless you're really moving things around!) to get to market in the first place.

Ohh sorry.

I posted this in my other thread but I think it deserves its own.

Are nanofactories actually worth less than coolant even though coolant takes a ton less upkeep?

Calculations:

Nanofactories - 760,000isk * 24 hours * 30 days * 3 factory planets = 1.64 billion.

I use 2 accounts to run this so 1.64 billion/2 accounts = 820 million per account

---

Coolant (on a single planet)

4 basic p0->p1 factories requiring 12,000 p0 each (24,000 p0 total) per hour (easy in a wormhole) which feed into 2 advanced p1-p2 factories. This (should?) run for 24/7, producing 10 units of coolant per hour.

Calculations:

Coolant - 9,500isk * 10 units per hour * 24 hours * 30 days * 5 p0-p2 planets * 3 characters = 1.03 billion per account

Or is my math wrong somewhere?

Where you went wrong is 3 characters can run 15 factory planets (P2 to P4). (Actually 18 planets if you max out).

Interesting optimization problem.
Running 2 P2 production facilities per planet as you do, with 5 planets giving you 10 units P2 each. That's 50 units P2 per hour.
The nanofactory P4 production chain takes the equivalent of 80 P2 and 40 P1 units per hour.

Have you looked at squeezing out the max efficiency for each option? I believe your P4 chain will either leave you with more planets to play with, or more powergrid, depending on how you set it up. Which means you can also look into running a concurrent P3 process in addition to your P4. I assume you already maxed out your P2 options with the 5 factory planets setup.

edit: Anyway, with between 30 and 36 planets to work with, assuming 2 accounts, you can always look into one of the more resource-intensive P4 chains like wetwares, these kinds of chains sell for almost twice as much as a nanofactory unit and require only roughly 50% more P1 and P2.

Total cost: 704,960 isk buying all mats.
Jita sell: 747,500 isk
Total cost: 309,760 isk buying industrial fibers and Proteins and extracting the rest (Saving 11,381,239 isk / large control tower).

Coolant: 9,500 isk, 1.5m3
nano-factory: 747,500 isk, 100m3

66 coolant is equal to 1 nano-factory in m3 volume. This comes to a profit of 627,000 isk by volume of coolant vs 747,500 isk of nano-factories, giving you 120,500 isk based on the m3 amounts.

You are correct, there is just the first 2 hours are lost from the P2 -P4 factories waiting for their initial mats. You can compensate for this by using 2 launch pads for your P1 mats so it would run on a 2 day cycle (46 total hours), feeding in the initial P2 and P3 mats that will be used, or as you mentioned by continually keeping the launch pads filled with P1 materials. Generally this is a pain in the ass though in my opinion as you are then partially filling launch pads and having to calculate how much material to import of each type to keep your numbers exact. I'll generally try to get materials in between 24 - 26 hours or later rather then having to deal with the hassle of filling a launch pad with partial stacks.

It is often mentioned that increased workload will give more profit, but with PI I was always getting 20% more profit for 50% more work. Only with doing "Single Planet Productions" like P2 I could sustain the 1:1 ratio of profit vs work. And this did scale well with any additional account.

Thank you for the detailed explanation do you think it would be a good thing for ccp to allow P1-P4 items to be refined down to one level, offsetting a skill reduced Waste amount, as exists in T1 production.