Raitaru.02

In my last post I mentioned I made a spreadsheet outlining the Minerals and P4 Ingredients I needed to gather to build my Raitaru (using the Blueprint Copies I had purchased).

I knew how and where I could gather the minerals, so it was just a case of working through mining them.

Gathering the 227 units of P4 goods however was more convoluted.

My next step was to go back to my spreadsheet and add a section identifying what ingredients were needed for these P4 goods. There are online tools which map all this out for you – but I wanted to ensure I had a proper understanding of things the first time around, so I worked it out for myself.

The ingredient list for each P4 good is listed on its information window, under the Planetary Production tab.

I dutifully listed these out. Each P4 ingredient needed either three types of P3 ingredient, or two types of P3 ingredient and one type of P1 ingredient.

I then repeated this process for the P3 ingredients, P2 and P1.

I linked each new section so it would automatically calculate how many units were required based on the higher tier ingredients.

The result showed my 227 units of P4 goods would require 61+ Million units of P0 goods.

 

Next, I incorporated a way to keep track of my progress. I did not worry about this for the P0 goods as these were always immediately converted into P1 goods. The P1 goods were more problematic. Some I would extract from a planet and store in my hanger for later use, others would be converted into P2 goods and then extracted.

 

To keep a running total, I took the amount that I needed of each P1 good and subtracted from it what I had stored. Wherever the P1 good was extracted as a P2 good, I used the stored total of that P2 good to calculate how many P1 ingredients were used and subtracted it from the amount remaining for me to gather.

In the end all P2 goods were extracted and stored, so the calculation of my progress for them was easy.

The calculation of the P3 and P4 goods were also easy. The P3 goods were all created on the one factory planet and fed from there into the creation of the P4 goods.

The only variation I had to accommodate was where the goods were being extracted on multiple planets. My stored total of Silicon might look like this:

= (1,000 + 1,500) + 2,000 + 5,000

That meant I had 9,500 Silicon –

2,500 units on Alt2, across two planets (1,000 on one, 1,500 on another)
2,000 units on Alt1, on one planet
5,000 units stored in the Corporate Hanger

If I collected some of these the calculation might change to –

= (0 + 1,500) + 0 + 8,000

Which meant I had 9,500 Silicon –

1,500 units on Alt2, across two planets (0 on one, 1,500 on another)
0 units on Alt1, on one planet
8,000 units stored in the Corporate Hanger

All my Calculations using multiple characters used the Alt1, Alt2, Corporate Hanger notation / format.

Last, I used a simple colour coding system to highlight when I had collected the perquisite number of each ingredient (green) or was actively extracting or processing an ingredient (yellow).

Now – I made several mistakes in my spreadsheet. Some I picked up early without impact, but some I missed until towards the end of this process. That resulted in delays and me having to go back and extract more P1 goods, such as Bacteria.

The first mistake was I did not add the extra P1 ingredients needed for three of the P4 goods. They were not that voluminous however, so it was more a mild inconvenience.

The second mistake was I wrote down the wrong number of goods stored once or twice, leaving me short when I went to process a higher tier good later.

The third mistake was I missed accounting for an ingredient or two when calculating the total number of P1s needed. An ingredient might be needed in four P2 goods, but I only added three of them.

If I consider all the calculations I typed in, I only got 1 in 100 wrong, but it was a bit aggravating.

None of these calculations were smart or tricky or even optimal. I followed what seemed like logical step after logical step, so built lots of simple calculations into an overall project plan. I remark on it here to highlight the sort of complexity that exists in EVE industry which might not be apparent to some.

The more complex decision making aspect was deciding where and how to do the extraction, which I will look at next.