What makes a good PI system

I came across some postings of you in the eve-online wormhole forums where you gave good advice to some people. You seem to have some expertise regarding PI in wormholes. I'd like to set up a pos in a wormhole system during the next week or two. Which class I will choose will be decided by other factors but I will definitely give PI a try. I just don't want to see myself setting up in a system that turns out to be bad for PI later on. Do you maybe a have an up to date link at hand that helps at rating a wormhole system regarind PI? Like a tier list of planets or which combinations are good. All I find is either very outdated or not giving advice on which planets/wh systems are good for PI. That would help me a lot.

This is from an Evemail I received recently, and it's a really good question. I've talked about the importance of a good PI system, but never really gone into detail on what a good PI system actually looks like. 

The quick answer

Look at a list of all the planets in your w-space system. Cross off all the gas planets, and all but the smallest of the barren planets. Cross off all the planets with a radius of more than 10,000 km. Do you still have five or more planets on the list? If so, you probably have a decent PI system.

Examples: 

Chaos has six planets. Three of those are gas planets. One of the remaining planets has a radius greater than 10,000 km. That means the system has only two truly productive planets, one of which is a barren planet.

Vanaheim has ten planets. Three of those are gas planets. One of the remaining planets has a radius greater than 10,000 km. There are two barren planets. That means the system has five useful planets.

The reason we put the cut-off at five planets is because that's the number of colonies you can support with your skills at IV. Having more useful planets gives you more options, but won't typically make you any more ISK. Having fewer planets than that means that some of your skills are going to waste, however.

The complete answer

The value of any PI system is ultimately what you can make in that system. That is a function of a) what resources the system has, and b) how easy it is to extract those resources, and c) the value of those resources, either on their own on in combination with each other.

What resources?

When looking at what resources a system has we generally disregard gas planets. Gas planets are the most common, and the abundance of those resources makes forces their value down. The exception would be if you need Reactive Gas for industrial work, as this can only be found on gas planets. If you are planning on simply hauling to market, I'd give it a miss.

Barren planets are nearly as common as gas planets, and they don't even have a unique resource. However, they are useful as factory planets (the highest tier factories can only be built of barren or temperate planets, and you would never waste a temperate planet by putting a factory on it), so one is okay.

The remaining planets are your bread and butter, with bonus points for temperate and lava planets, which each produce a unique resource.

How easy to extract?

The various planet types set the spectrum of resources available, but actually getting those resources is a function of density and planet size.

Planet size restricts extraction by increasing the cost of your links (the connections between each of your facilities). The more power grid you spend on links, the less you have to spend on extractor heads. Resource density determines how many extractor heads you will need to keep your factories fully supplied.

So, a planet with a desirable resource may fall short through a combination of being too big, or the resources being to diffuse. Equally, a planet that you might otherwise write off may be workable because of very high densities or extremely small planet size.

For example, I have one lava planet in Vanaheim. It has a decent planet size. Unfortunately, it has almost no Fensic Magma, the resource unique to lava planets. Instead, I have to harvest something else. This turned what could have been an amazing planet into a mediocre planet.

Conversely, I have a storm planet with a radius of 16,000 km. However, the resources are so dense that I am able to efficiently produce Coolant there, despite the planet size.

What is the value?

Once you have worked out what you could extract, you need to work out what you should extract, and possibly produce.

Websites like this or this can help you work through the possibilities, and once you've worked out what is possible, you need to actually check the markets.

When I worked through all this in Vanaheim, I found that any P2 product with a Jita buy order of more than 16k ISK per unit was 'good', while 17k or higher was 'amazing'. 14k ISK per unit was mediocre, and anything less than that was just bad.

For P3 production, 105k ISK per unit is a good target, and more is possible.

But is it worth it?

I lost two more Asteros over the weekend, both in the name of pushing the envelope.

One was a match-up that I've been avoiding for a long time: a T3 destroyer. They have high dps, a great tank, and apply damage well. But I also thought T1 destroyers would be suicide, but I've actually killed a fair few of them now. You can theorize all you want, you don't know until you try.

Well, it turns out that it was even worse than I thought it would be. Despite my attempt to scram kite the Hecate - forcing him to chose between sharpshooter mode to get range, and defensive mode to tank my drones - it was a very short fight.

The other matchup was against a couple of Gnosi. I found two of them, apparently afk. One was just sitting there, next to a wreck, and the other was drifting off into space with it's afterburner running. I decided to try and take out the one by the wreck to see if I could kill it before the pilots returned from whatever it is they were doing.

I got him to half armor before he got back to the keyboard and counter-tackled me. I was tanking his damage and wearing him down, but then his friend returned, and that was that.

Still, these losses were probably more valuable than a string of small victories, because they've really forced me to look at the cost of losing. It's not so much the ISK - I can support this level of loss - but in terms of efficiency. My fit has ballooned in price, but not effectiveness. 

My earliest fits were roughly 70 million ISK, most of that the hull cost, but now my fits cost over 130 million ISK. Most of that extra cost is from the faction cap battery, the T2 rigs, and deadspace repairer (mostly the repairer). But am I getting value from this? In easy fights, whether ganking Ventures or fighting cruisers who's damage I can evade, the extra expenditure is unnecessary. In tough fights, the extra expenditure mostly doesn't seem like it's enough. But I need to win far more fights in order to remain 'ISK positive'.

In fact, looking at my killboard, I don't think I've used an Astero to kill anything as expensive as the Astero I'm currently flying. While my killboard is mostly green, I don't think I'm getting value for ISK with this approach.

So, despite having some more fitting posts already written, I think I'm likely to scale back my fit, at least for the time being. I've gone back to the GLPII, which brings me down to 145 dps, but lets me fit the T2 cap battery again. Next time I'm in high sec, I'll pick up a T2 armor repairer to replace the deadspace repairer, and I'll drop down to T1 rigs.

Total cost: 72 million ISK.

Astero v Vexor

I was looking through my killboard, trying to work out which fights I'd be writing about over the course of the week, when something struck me. My last 'combat' loss was from mid January; I lost a Gila during a Tusker fleet action.

Although I have lost three ships since then, one was due to getting a bad warp-in on a cyno and bouncing my bomber off a POS, one was a pve loss, and one was getting my hauler ganked on a fuel run.

So, if it's been a month an a half since my last combat loss, am I playing it too safe? I like to think I've been pushing the boundaries of what my Astero can do, but am I really going to try and say that I'm so good that I don't actually lose ships in combat for months at a time?

This concerned me. While I have no problem with opportunistic kills - see the number of Ventures that I have taken down recently - I'm not terribly interested in becoming that guy who only takes the easy fights, beating down on noobs or under shipped targets in order to pad my killboard.

So my goal was to find a fight that would really push me. A fight that I probably couldn't win, but that wasn't necessarily complete suicide.

My first attempt was a 2v1 with an Algos and a Maller camping a FW 'plex together. I figured that if I could take down the Algos fast enough, I'd be able to grind down the Maller afterwards. However, their buddy in a Dragoon joined them while we were maneuvering, and he pushed the fight right into the 'complete suicide' category, so I bailed.

But a few systems later I saw the Vexor, sitting at a 'plex.

Now, the Vexor, like any drone ship, is a real menace to frigates, because they will typically have a flight or two of light drones that have no problem applying dps to small targets. But if I could grind through his drones before exploding, then I could possibly turn things around. So I took the fight.

The fight started much as I anticipated. Landed on him at zero in the 'plex (the Vexor is a brawler), and dropped into a 3km orbit, opening fire with Conflag, and locking up his drones so that I could set my Acolytes on them. I dropped some synth Exile, knowing I'd need it, and focused on the drones.

I was two drones into his first flight when he started neuting me. Now, I've been neuted before, and I can handle it as long as I don't need to perma-run my repairer. Because he was applying damage so well, though, my repairer was working hard, and my cap dropped to zero pretty quick.

I made the decision to bail out. The longer I waited, the less ehp I would have, and I knew I'd take some damage on the way out because I'd no longer be under his guns. So I overheated my afterburner, and aligned to the sun.

Unfortunately, my afterburner kept switching off because I had no cap. So I alternated my prop mod with my repairer, trying to keep my hull intact long enough to clear his scram.

It didn't work.

Afterthoughts

I hate losing ships, but it's typically the losses that teach you the most. This one was no exception. For reference, this is the Vexor I was fighting, as the pilot lost it shortly after our fight.

Let's start with the good stuff. I went into the fight with a plan, and it wasn't a bad plan, considering that this was a fight that most frigates would be advised to avoid in the first place. I did get under his guns, and I was killing his drones pretty fast.

And... that's about it. After that, it all went sideways. To be blunt, I let the neut, which I had not expected, completely throw me. While being decisive is good - getting out sooner rather than later - that doesn't mean that every decision you make is a good one.

Here, the main issue is that by focusing on the neut I completely missed the double webs! I was never going to get away from that Vexor with my prop mod being shut down constantly. I almost certainly would have lasted longer by staying in a tight orbit, or even better, tightening my orbit to compensate for the second web.

I should have managed my cap better, too. Seeing no active tank, I could have turned off my laser to save cap. While the laser eventually turned itself off, it should have been a choice I made, rather than something that happened because I had lost control of the fight.

I also stopped attacking his drones as I tried to escape. I was taking them down, so why not at least force him to keep launching new ones? Who knows, I might have killed enough to make a difference.

And finally, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T I USE THE ECM DRONES THAT I'VE BEEN LUGGING AROUND WITH ME FOR MONTHS?

Yeah, I'm pretty mad at myself for that one. Having decided to try and escape, why didn't I try to use the drones I carried specifically for that purpose?

The answer to that last question is very simply that I've not built up the habit of using them, so when the stress came, I didn't reach for the correct solution. When the stress hits, we fall back on our ingrained habits. That's why the military trains simple tasks over, and over, and over again. That's why you get the same safety lecture every time you get on an aircraft. Because that's the only way most of us can perform those tasks under stress.

And if I'm not going to remember to use ECM drones under stress, I might as well carry something more useful. The first thing I did after buying my new Astero was ditch the ECM in favour of Hornets. This gives me another set of durable drones, and a third damage type. So far, I've been very pleased with the change.

I also want to take another look at my fit. Everyone and their dog seems to fit a neut these days. While I'm better able to deal with it than most, if I intend to focus on above class targets, I need to see if I can handle it any better than I am now, short of a cap booster.

So there are two questions that this fight has me asking myself. First, can I get a similar level of tank and dps while fitting a nos? Second, are there changes I can make to my current fit that would make me more resistant to neuting without impacting my performance too severely? Expect posts on those questions at some point.

Oh, and for anyone still reading this far into the post, feel free to let me know if the 'wrap around text' beside the picture is a better or worse format than just having the picture and then the text underneath. I've also used a slightly different font alignment.

Astero v Omen

Looking, as ever, for above class kills that push the envelope a little, I was very intrigued by an Omen that appeared to be running a Guardian's Gala 'plex. Warping in on the 'plex at range (and under cloak, obviously), I could see the Omen hard at work.

However, it was a busy system with about a dozen people in local. If the Omen felt confident brazenly running the the 'plex, I had to assume that at least some of those people were allies. Taken to an extreme, the Omen could even be bait (although a Maller would have been a better choice for that).

I decided it was worth the risk, though. The Omen has very little chance of applying turret damage to me, and it the cap and fitting demands of those turrets mean that the Omen has little room for a robust tank.

Moving into position, I uncloaked and set to work. I was immediately counter-pointed, which started setting off alarm bells, and I began spamming my short range D-scan.

Seeing no immediate support, but knowing that time was precious, I decided to ignore his drones and go straight for the kill. Overheating my laser, I tore into him while orbiting under his guns; he may have had a point, but the Omen's notorious hunger for cap had him fitting a cap mod rather than a web, a decision that he was now paying for.

My repairer was easily tanking his drone damage, and my own drones were battling with his MAAR. As soon as he ran out of paste, the damage started stacking up fast, but long range D-scan was now showing activity.

Narrowing my D-scan down to just our cluster, things were still clear, so help was probably still 10-20 seconds out, depending on what they were flying. Time enough to destroy the Omen. Not time enough to try for the pod.

I took my win and warped out. 'gf's were exchanged in local.


Afterthoughts

This was a nice example of a fight where things go smoothly. It was the classic 'get under the guns' approach that is the stuff of a frigate pilot's dreams. The Omen was well fit, and well flown, but my ability to start the fight at zero countered his mwd and the damage that I would otherwise have taken on the way in.

The cloaked approach also denied him any advanced warning, so any call out on comms was only going out after the fight was well and truly started. Even a frigate takes a good 30 seconds to undock and warp across the system, and that assumes the pilot is sitting at the keyboard ready to go. Every little delay added up until support could not arrive until too late.

Astero v Enyo

I wasn't actually looking for the Enyo. Taking on an assault frigate is pretty tough for other frigates - you can't easily evade their damage, and their unsubtle approach to dps and tanking makes them punch far above their weight. There is a reason that I flew a Vengeance for so long.

Rather, I was looking for an Algos, and I was reasonably confident that he was running a signature, so I had dropped some probes to scan it down. Doing so, I took the acceleration gate (but cloaked up again mid warp), and was surprised to find myself about 20km from the Enyo that I had also seen on D-scan (but had ignored due to being cloaked). Having come this far, however, I decided I might as well give it a try, and I moved into position.

Now, my low-end laptop means that I have to run Eve on the lowest graphics settings, so I'm not one for picking out weapons by using the 'look at' command. Given the distance he was keeping from the rats, though, I assumed that he was running railguns. Accordingly, I de-cloaked and dropped into a 3km orbit while activating my scram.

I had IN Multifrequency loaded, and I overheated my guns while setting my Acolytes on him. This was a tough call, because neither Acolytes nor Hobgoblins are a great drone to use on Gallente T2, but I figured that the Acolytes, on balance, would probably do more damage than the Hobgoblins, with the slightly lower resists making up for the slightly lower base damage.

He returned fire, and gosh, did it hurt. This was the first time in a while that my tank got a real work-out. In hindsight, what I should have taken from that was that he was running blasters rather than railguns. But things happen fast enough in frigate fights that you don't always have the time to process new information properly, so I simply chalked it up to the Enyo's tracking bonus. I overheated my repairer and popped some synth Exile. This was going to be close.

In the end, I had the better damage application, and towards the end of the fight some of the rats got close enough that they may actually have applied some relevant damage as well. He exploded, and so did his pod.

Whew!


Afterthoughts

After looking at his killmail, I can see that we both messed up our ammo choice. He had massive 282 turret dps after overheating, but his optimal was only 1.7 km because of the short range ammo he was using. That failure to apply his damage cost him the fight.

For my part, I should have moved into a wider orbit and loaded Scorch. That would have turned this fight into a cakewalk, as blasters just can't hit out to 8km effectively, irrespective of ammunition choice (although the Enyo will make a better show of it than most).

And I totally forgot about his drone. I should have cleared it, which would have wiped out the 20 or so dps that he could have effectively applied regardless of range or orbit.

With the fight done, I refit and dropped combat probes. I found the Algos sitting at a completed FW site. With the site captured, the beacon had despawned, and the pilot must have thought it was safe to grab a sandwich or something. That did not end well for him.

The value of intel

So I was bouncing around Placid - which is an ironic name for a FW region - when I spotted a Merlin at a large FW 'plex. 

These 'plexes don't have acceleration gates, although they do have a massive decloaking radius around the beacon. However, if the geometry favours you, you can warp in at range, and work out where to warp in from to land right on top of the ship in the 'plex. Which is what I did here.

I land on the Merlin, who seems half asleep, and because I've dropped cloak mid warp, I'm able to point him right away. I launch my drones and... nothing. He warps out.

'Warpstabs :(', I type in local.

'Yes! :))', is the reply.

Now, I could have refitted to double scrams, but he was alert now, and frankly, the kill did not seem worth my time. So I move on.

But it turns out that another pilot in the system I just left, one Alice P Liddell, was also in an Astero. And Alice also believes that carrying a second scram is a good use of her cargo capacity. So when she learned from local chat that the Merlin on D-scan was warp stabbed, she made good use of that second scram to make sure that when she jumped in on him, he didn't get away!

And because the Merlin had not had a session change, I get in on the killmail too. I like to think that, despite being in a different system, I still contributed.

The pod, of course, belonged to her alone.

Astero v Drake

I'd been travelling over the past week, so I'd had little to no Eve time. But my Friday night static connection had brought me to Lonetrek, which had been very good to me last Saturday morning, so things were looking promising. After taking down a couple of Ventures and a Merlin, I called it a night.

The next morning, my first potential target was a Drake on D-scan. Not at any obvious belt, I checked my scanner and narrowed him down to an Outgrowth Rogue Drone Hive. I know nothing about this kind of 'plex (or pve in general, to be honest), so I warped in at 20km, in case there was an acceleration gate that would uncloak me.

There was.

Acceleration gates are a tricky thing. I have dim memories that once upon a time you could activate them without breaking cloak if you got the approach right, but that seems to have changed during my time away, as I've not been able to duplicate that effect since my return.

Instead, I drop cloak and wait for a few seconds before activating the acceleration gate. I can't help being visible on D-scan, but I can make sure that my re-cloaking delay has ended before I appear on the next grid, so at least he won't see me when I land. Note: this doesn't work in FW plexes because the beacon uncloaks you.

If he's watching short range D-scan I'm blown, but if he's watching long range D-scan, I'll be gone again before he can narrow down the distance. And it's not as if Asteros are an uncommon pve vessel. With positive sec status, I'm doing everything I can to make it easy for my targets to stay complacent.

I land in the first room, and it's empty. I make my way to the next gate, and repeat the process. This time I land in a room with two gates, and a number of wrecks. However, there is also a Drone Commandeered Battleship, which is clearly some kind of boss that he'll be back for. I move off the warp in, and wait.

Sure enough, within a few minutes the Drake lands, piloted by a 2013 character. No noob, then. With the real possibility of a maxed out tank, I decide to let him engage the DCB before making my move.

His approach is 'interesting'. At first I thought he was afterburner fit, but after mentally readjusting for the size of his ship, I realized that he had an mwd. He was pulsing this, and heading straight towards the DGB. I followed at a respectful distance.

Now, this certainly cut down the time spent in transit (the DCB was over 60km from the warp in point), but it also meant that he was presenting a very large target with no transversal to what I assumed was a tough boss-rat. Presumably, he knew that his tank could take it, but it did mean that his tank was working a lot harder than it needed to be. Which was great news for me.

And, of course, it meant that he was not aligned to warp out.

When he got the distance down to about 40km, I decided to make my move. Uncloaking, I slipped into a moderate orbit - I wanted to keep my speed up to help tank his missiles - and pointed him. I was delighted to see that his tank was hovering at max regen (25-30%), meaning I ought to be able to tip him over the edge quite easily.

I began by clearing his drones, as my fight with the Gnosis had taught me the folly of trying to skip this step. Acolytes are perfect for this, and I swept his Hornets aside easily.

My opponent was busy too, however, and hit me with a neut. That took me by surprise, because the last time I flew a Drake it had no utility high slot. However, I can tank a neut fairly well as long as my repairer is not having to run constantly, and with no web or drones he was not applying damage well enough to put me under too much pressure.

Between my dps and the DCB, which was still landing solid hits, the Drake did not last long. My research has also told me that you don't take the massive sec status hit for podding someone you have a 'limited engagement' with. In other words, if he shoots back, I can pod him, even in low sec. So I did.


Afterthoughts

Looking at this fight, I can't help but think back to Punisher 18.5. I took on and killed a Drake in my little Punisher as one of my above class kills in applying for membership with the Tuskers. History doesn't necessarily repeat, but it certainly rhymes.

Good times.

I'm glad that I'm constantly pushing the boundaries in my little Astero. Taking the little ship up against the big ship is what I enjoy most about Eve, and fights like this, where you are trying to out think as well as out fight you opponent give me the greatest satisfaction.

My current balance of gank:tank seems about right, although more of either is always a good thing. As ever, though, my fits are in a state of ongoing refinement, and I'm sure I'll end up tweaking it again sooner or later.