Planetary Colonialisation and Production

The Birth of an EVE Colony – Colonialisation, Construction and Production

You can buy the structures for general extracting and processing activities directly on the market. The ones you‘ve loaded in your cargohold, will be highlighted when you click on the Build menu and expand a category: Command Center, Extractor, Processor etc. First of all, you need to put a Command Center on the planet, as all other structures depend upon it to keep them running. From the Basic (Temperate, Oceanic etc) Command Center upward, they have higher powergrid and cpu supplies accordingly.

The Command Center is the main structure, upon which all the other structures – and the links or routes from one to another – depend for power to keep running. This means that the logistics are a key factor, in the choice of a suitable location for your command center, because you can only put up 1 per planet (and per skill level). - Note that the links/routes are powered by the command center, so the longer the links/routes between structures, the more power they‘ll need to keep working.

It‘s thus recommandable to put the command center as close to 1 or more of the deposit types, you plan to extract from the planet, as the Extractor and Industry Facility, should be located as close to the core of a concentration of deposits as possible. Note however, that it‘s not necessary to link the command center with any structures, to power themk, so you can go ahead to put Extractors and Industry Facilities on the planet, before you link them to the Center.

• Once you‘ve stationed your Command Center close to a location with a high potential yield of a deposit type, click on the „Submit“ button to activate your settings.
• Now you can start setting up the Extractor, the Processor, Storage Facilities and a Launch Pad (the last one being optional, see Export & Import).
• As soon as the Extractor‘s in place, you need to „Survey“ the grounds for the deposit type.
• Next you choose the total extracting time in accordance with the yield/cycle or total yield. You have to choose whether you want to extract much material as fast as you can or lower yield/cycle over an extended time (depending on how close an eye you will be keeping on the processes).
• After you‘ve submitted the extracting rate, you can create a new link from the Extractor to the Basic Industry Facility, you‘ve stationed on the planet.
• Before you can create a route between the two, you need to click on the Industry Facility to access its menu and apply Schematics for its processing. Depending on the incoming deposit from the Extractor, you can use the pull-down menu to select an appropriate process for it.

• Once you‘ve selected the Schematics for your Industry Facility, submit your settings, then create a new route (for the link) from the Extractor to the Processor.
• Depending on the command center‘s power supplies and the present deposits, you can add Extractors to harvest the same deposit or a different deposit at a nearby location.
• For more complicated processing you may be able to gain the materials for it, if you are able to extract 2 or more types of different deposits. That means: Linking together 2 Basic Industry Facilities and routing their output materials to 1 Advanced Industry Facility in order to process them into a higher end material (for use, sale or even further processing, possibly on a 2nd planet), is possible.
• If no further processing of the materials, you‘ve gained is possible on the planet, you can route or link and execute transfer the final material/product to the command center itself, a Storage Facility or a Launch Pad.

Once you‘ve reached this far in your settlement and production activities, it‘s time to consider how to Move the goods from – and to – your colony. But before we go into the details on transportation, first a few words on 2 means of colonial expansion.

Advanced Construction and Production

If your vision for the colony‘s future – it‘s constructions and production chains – turns out to be too complicated for a Basic or Standard Command Center to supply with sufficient energy, your next step would inevitably be: Bigger and better Command Centers with higher powergrid and CPU output. So in order to establish colonies with an advanced or elite capacity for production, you need to acquire and train the Command Center Upgrades skill. With the skill and the money to buy more complex structures, nothing should stand in the way of your colony from becoming a highly developed one and the envy of your rivals.

In need of more energy? - The Planetary structures and links/routes require energy. With that in mind, you may want to try reorganising the routes to your processor to save energy, say: If you've deployed several extractors for a single resource type or need to cover large distances from one or several extractors to feed its designated processor. By linking several extractors in a string, you can transit route the resources through a working extractor and onward to the next, till you reach the processor itself.

Depending on the yield of the extractors, you might however need to upgrade the most immediate link (or links) leading to the processor, as the flow of the resources increases in proportion to its accumulated units, the closer you get to the final one leading to the processor. - The drawback being thus: Link upgrades require more energy, so you may have to shift the structures and links around, till you've decided on the most profitable setup for your production chains.

Planetarisation

One planet may not be enough, once you come to realise that the processes, you‘ve based on it are somewhat lacking in materials to complete the production chain. If you wish to keep all parts of the production in hand personally – or on behalf of a player corporation – you may be forced to extend your colonialisation to include 2 or more planets at a time, moving materials from one to another, before you can finally bring all the materials together for final processing of a high end material or product of its own. As this may be the most lucrative result, you can gain from your colonies, you‘ll be interested in the theory (skill) of Interplanetary Consolidation as well as its practice – the colonialisation of multiple planets for ever more financial gain.