1. How Do You Want To Plan?
▣ EXPLAIN EVERY DETAIL
What this step decides: which direction the maths runs.
Plan from my planets
You give the tool a set of planets. It works out the most of something those planets can make. The unknown is the output.
given: planets, characters, densities → solve for: output
Plan from a quota
You give it an amount and a deadline. It works out how many planets that needs. The unknown is the input.
given: 1,000 units over 30 days → solve for: colonies
Same physics, run backwards. A weekly rate is the common unit:
units per week = quantity ÷ days × 7
1,000 ÷ 30 × 7 = 233 per week
Why the quota path skips two steps. Operation size and goal are answers in that direction, not questions. Asking how many characters you have, then telling you how many you need, would be circular.
Two ways in. Pick whichever matches what you already know.
Density is the biggest lever here and the one thing you cannot know before you scan. The answer is given as a range for exactly that reason — a single number would be false precision.ⓘThis path assumes average planets of the right type. It tells you how many planets of which types you need, not which specific planets to use — it has not been given any, and naming one would be a guess.
2. Your Operation Size
▣ EXPLAIN EVERY DETAIL
What this step decides: your hard ceiling. Everything downstream is capped by it.
Colony slots
One character runs at most 6 planets, with Interplanetary Consolidation V. One colony per character per planet — a second character can use the same planet, the same character cannot.
total slots = sum of each character’s planet count
28 characters × 6 = 168 slots
The tool sums your actual per-character numbers rather than multiplying by the maximum. A main with 6 and two alts with 1 each is 8 slots, not 18.
Extraction cycle length
An extractor’s output decays over the program. A short program keeps you near peak yield; a long one trades yield for not logging in.
6h → 100% of peak
24h → 81.5%
168h (weekly) → 34.0%
336h (14d, the cap) → 21.9%
Those come from CCP’s published decay curve, not an estimate. A 6-hour program on one extractor yields 290,112 units total.
The trade in plain terms: weekly resets give you about a third of what six-hourly resets would. That can still be the right answer if the alternative is not playing.
How many characters you run, and how many planets each one works.ⓘEach character can hold up to 6 colonies with Interplanetary Consolidation V, but they do not all have to run 6 — set each one to what you actually use. The total across all characters is the hard ceiling on everything this planner builds for you.
CmdCtrLv value in any copied template, but you will then need to remove facilities to fit.How long each extractor runs before you reset it. Shorter = far more output, more clicking.ⓘExtractor output decays over the life of a program — this uses CCP's own published decay curve from their developer documentation, not an estimate. A 6-hour program yields roughly 3x the daily rate of a 7-day one. Pick the cadence you will realistically keep up with; the live readout below shows exactly what each choice costs you.
| Program length | h | 6h |
3. Your Systems
▣ EXPLAIN EVERY DETAIL
What this step decides: what your planets can physically produce.
Where the data comes from
Planet names and types load from ESI, CCP’s own API. Those are facts about the universe and are not guessed.
Resource density is not published anywhere. It only exists in your client’s scan view, so you type it. If you leave it blank the tool substitutes an average and says so on every row that used one — it never presents a substituted number as if it were scanned.
What a density is worth
One extraction colony — one extractor feeding 8 basic facilities — produces:
20 P1 per cycle × 48 cycles/day × 8 facilities × 7 days
= 53,760 P1 per week at 100% density
Density scales that linearly. At 65%:
53,760 × 0.65 = 34,944 P1 per week
And each P1 costs 150 units of raw P0, because a basic facility turns 3,000 P0 into 20 P1:
3,000 ÷ 20 = 150 P0 per P1
Why planet type matters
Each type carries a fixed set of P0. A Lava planet has no Aqueous Liquids at any density. The tool refuses plans that need a resource the planet does not have, rather than quietly assuming.
Storage caps what you can hold between visits: 12,000 m³, and P0 is 0.005 m³ each, so 2,400,000 units.
Type a system name and pick it from the list. Planets load automatically; you set the density sliders.ⓘThe system list and each system's planets come straight from EVE's own servers (ESI), so names and planet types are always correct. What ESI does not publish is resource density — that only exists in your in-game planet scan, so you must set those sliders yourself. Wormhole (J-space) systems often need the planets entered manually too. The screenshot reader is a convenience for entering densities, not a data source.
4. Costs & Sourcing
▣ EXPLAIN EVERY DETAIL
What this step decides: the difference between gross and what you keep. Most PI calculators skip this entirely.
Customs tax — the one everyone gets wrong
EVE does not tax the market value. It taxes a fixed base cost per tier, set by CCP and unmoved by price swings:
R0 5 ISK
P1 400 ISK
P2 7,200 ISK
P3 60,000 ISK
P4 1,200,000 ISK
export fee = base × tax rate
import fee = base × tax rate × 0.5
So a Broadcast Node at a 10% POCO costs 120,000 ISK to export — not 10% of its ~1.9M price. Charging on market value would overstate that by nearly 60%.
1,200,000 × 0.10 = 120,000 correct
1,900,000 × 0.10 = 190,000 wrong
Source: EVE University’s Colony management page. Cross-checked against two player reports — one Biomass at 10% costs 40 ISK, and 70 Coolant at 12% cost 60,480 ISK. Both are in the test suite.
Shipping
Charged on real cargo volume, not per unit:
P0 0.005 P1 0.19 P2 0.75 P3 3 P4 50 m³
freight = m³ × your ISK-per-m³ rate
This is where setups that look profitable stop being profitable. It also applies to bought inputs: a fuel block run moves hundreds of m³ of ice, and pretending that ships free is how a plan lies to you.
Sourcing
Extract everything — no purchase cost, but extraction eats colony slots.
Buy some — frees those slots for factories.
Buy all — every slot is a factory. Highest output, highest cost, margin lives entirely in the spread.
net = gross − customs − sales tax − broker − freight − purchases − fees
With every cost set to zero, net equals gross exactly. That identity is asserted in the tests, so a rounding error cannot creep in unnoticed.
Your costs and taxes, and whether you extract your inputs or buy them.ⓘEvery slider here feeds straight into the profit maths. Hover the ⓘ beside each slider label for what it means and typical real-world values. Changing anything clears stale results so you never see numbers computed under different assumptions.
What happens in this section? (30 seconds)
In one line: you tell it what you want, it works out the best way to get it, and then it gives you a to-do list for every character.
- Pick what you want. Three choices:
- Most profit — you do not mind what you make, you want the most ISK.
- A specific product — you know what you want to build. Name up to ten.
- Fewest logins — you want planets you can leave alone. Tell it how often you actually log in.
- Press Calculate. It checks live Jita prices and works out every option your planets can actually make. This takes a few seconds.
- Look at the list. Options are ranked by what you would clear per week after tax, customs and shipping. The best one is marked. Each row says what limited it — running out of a resource, or running out of colony slots.
- Pick one and press Confirm.
What you get: a plan, character by character and planet by planet. For each one it says what to build, what it produces per week, and gives you a template you can paste straight into the game. Tick each planet off as you set it up and the row folds away, so you can always see what is left.
You still place the buildings in game — this works out what to build and where, not the clicking.
5. SMART Goals — Real Plans
▣ EXPLAIN EVERY DETAIL
What this step decides: what “best” means, then produces the plan.
How the allocator works
For a target, it walks the recipe chain to find what a unit needs, then places colonies to satisfy it:
chain demand → place colonies → check it fits → raise the target → repeat
It searches upward for the largest output your slots allow. A factory colony’s throughput:
24 advanced factories × 840/wk = 20,160 P2 or P3 per week
16 high-tech factories × 168/wk = 2,688 P4 per week
The seven rules it cannot break
A separate judge checks every plan: one colony per character per planet; 6 planets per character; 5 extractors per colony; the resource must exist on that planet type; P4 assembly only on Barren or Temperate; facility caps; and conservation — nothing consumed that was not produced or bought.
The allocator cannot mark its own homework. If a plan breaks a rule you never see it, because an illegal plan is worse than no plan — you would go and build it.
The three goals
Most profit ranks all 83 PI commodities plus 7 composites by net ISK per week, at live Jita prices.
Specific product maximises what you named, up to ten at once.
Fewest logins sizes programs to your interval and reports the yield given up — 81% at daily, 34% at weekly.
What limits a result
Every result says what stopped it going higher: a resource running out, or slots running out. That distinction tells you what to fix — a resource means find different planets, slots means you need more characters.
168 slots = 144 extraction + 17 P2 + 5 P3 + 2 P4
The parts always sum to the whole. If they ever did not, the plan would be describing something it did not build.
Pick what you are optimising for, then calculate.ⓘPrices are pulled live from Jita at the moment you calculate — nothing is cached between runs. Results are ranked by net ISK per week after customs tax, shipping, sales tax and any input costs, and include the value of surplus raw materials you would sell alongside the finished product.
Pooled model. Factory colonies are shared across your whole operation rather than each character running a self-contained chain — so only a couple of P4 plants serve everyone, freeing the rest of your slots for extraction. This yields more, but assumes you haul P2/P3 between characters to the shared factory planets. A per-character self-contained build needs no logistics and produces less.
Market Reference101 items · live Jita prices
Everything the planner prices, with live Jita price trends. Hover one to highlight every planet in your plan that touches it. The first five columns are the PI chain itself (P0 to P4). Built from PI are products the planner can plan for you — fuel blocks, nanite paste and deployables. Bought inputs are the non-PI materials those need; your planets do not make them, so the planner prices them as a cost and charges freight on them, never treating them as free.ⓘEach entry shows its 24H / 7D / 30D Jita price movement and per-unit volume. Volume key: ✓ means that item’s volume was individually confirmed against EVE’s own SDE data; * means it uses its tier’s confirmed value — every tier was verified on 2–8 separate items — but that individual commodity was not separately checked. Every composite and bought input was individually confirmed, because a wrong volume there is charged as freight on every run.
Price HistoryLive Jita data · all 83 commodities
Daily Jita highs and lows straight from public ESI market history. All 83 commodities are plotted at once, which is a lot of lines — use the legend to narrow it down.
The live Jita order book for one commodity, drawn as cumulative supply and demand. Where the two curves stop is the spread — the wider it is, the more a bulk sale moves the price against you.
PI TemplatesOne-click copy for every layout
Every template the tool can generate. Copy one, then in EVE open the planet, click Import and paste. Extractor heads still have to be placed by hand afterwards — that is normal EVE behaviour, not a gap in the template.
System StatusEVE, ESI, and this tool
Live status from EVE's own public status endpoint. If the tool is misbehaving, check here first — it is usually ESI having a moment rather than anything you did.