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 SOES #3: the Planet Primer (part 1) 
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In the 2 previous SOES posts, we’ve already discussed that AP is the most important factor in determining a strong ship. Now, we will discuss a few things about planets and planet building. This is pretty extensive topic, so there will be 2 separate posts.
If you missed my other 2 posts, they are listed here:

a) The only 2 stats that matter: http://galaxylegion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40154
b) The Fastest Way to increase AP (for free!): http://galaxylegion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=40206


1. If you don’t scan, you can’t find good planets.

Planet building through Talthing or using terraformers (via NPC) is a great way to build big planets. But for most ships, this isn’t enough to sustain AP growth. Most elite ships scan a ton to find new planets to colonize and invade to supplement their own planet building. To that end, there is a direct relationship between scanning and AP, as seen here:

Image

This graph shows my scan and AP data over the last 2 years. As I have scanned more, I have found and colonized/invaded more planets, which has increased my production.

As of this posting, I have played GL 1194 days and have scanned 24499 times, which is an average of 20.5 scans/day. While I do not scan everyday, this does give a good baseline for a 3 year ship. Ships that have scanned more than me over this time generally have better AP, while ships that have scanned less have worse AP.

(Aside: this is a good barometer to use when scoping out ships in PVP. If they’ve scanned more than you, they will generally have better AP.)


2. The more you increase your AP, more you can scan.

The biggest limiting factor in scanning is purging bad planets off your scan list. While some ships make purgers like it’s going out of fashion, I prefer to get the majority of my purgers though my AP pulls. The purger mission is very energy and EM intensive, and I’d rather save those for other tasks (like Legion Missions or NPCing).

But if you have low AP, you won’t get many purgers, which won’t allow you to scan, which won’t allow you to grow your AP quickly. So, ships with low AP have a more difficult catching up with ships with high AP because their potential to grow their production is significantly reduced.

The chart below shows how many purgers you can expect per week with the following AP/hr:

Image

(This assumes that you do collect AP w/o loss from capping, and that you do NOT receive any AP from your base. This also assumes that you get an average of 1 purger very 95,000 AP.)

At my current AP of 166063, I should expect to pull 294 purgers a week. That is enough to complete any of the Legion Mission scanning tasks, or just scan on my own. And 294 scans over a week is an average of 42 per day, a significant bump over my overall 20.5 scans per day.


3. As the price of planets increase, be more picky about the planets you take.

While there is some debate to this point, I still hold firm that ships should get pickier as they acquire more planets. Here is a recommended chart to what planets you should expect from new planets, based on the number of planets you currently own.

Image

Of course, if you want to grow your AP, but not at the expense of taking crap planets. That VL planet with Rich artifact may be great early on in your GL career, but you might not want to take that 3 years later.

I hope this helps enlighten some newer ships (or even some older ones) some of the techniques that elite players use to build and grow their ships.

As always, feedback and comments welcome. More on planets to come later.

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Thu May 22, 2014 6:50 pm
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For your AP/planet in a # planets owned range, it may help the newer players if you state what level of planet tech should they have by then to achieve those benchmarks.

For a player with just 51-100 planets owned, 100 AP/h on a planets actually seems pretty low. This corresponds to about 7500 AP/h for a rank 300, maybe the scaling shouldnt be as linear? On a VR planet, this only requires 2 hyperforges (36 space) to meet the requirements. On the other hand, if you are still on +6s, it would take 50 space to meet that same requirement. While L VR artifact planets are not exactly rare, theres a very high chance a person with just +6s will be unable to have all their AP planets above 100 AP/h, even though it *appears* to be a low benchmark. Then theres the other issue of less forum active players choosing to colonize VL A planets, or S ER planets; this issue kind of speaks for itself.

There are a significant portion of ships that arent as inclined to follow strategies to make themselves grow faster. It would be nice to be able to link this post to even those without forum accounts, where I believe it will be much more common to find rank 200 ships without being anywhere near to finishing hyperforges.

To sum this all up, I suggest adding 2 columns to the last table: One for suggested planet tech level and another for minimum planet size/richness pertaining to each row tier listed.



This second part is just a personal question I have. Ive noticed youve done about 25k scans. I dont usually follow high ranks so I dont know, but is that a higher or lower value for someone of your rank? I ask this because I scan quite a lot myself, but most of my gains actually come from trading. I will typically only find something impressive (something that can make 500+AP/h) about 1 in every 500 planets scanned or so. And then only part of the time I can take it. If I extend this logic to you (which I know may be completely off, you may have fared better luck in scanning), that is only 50 planets in 25k *attempted scans that make 500+* (This is a huge assumption, because Im stating each attempted scan successfully reveals a planet). Lets say it averages to 750 AP/h for each (since some will be the truly amazing variety). This only adds up to 37.5k AP/h from good scans. The ordinary scans combined shouldn't be able to supply more than that top 50 found.

I will then make the assumption that at best only 75k AP/h of yours comes from scanning (37.5 x 2). Where does the remaining 90k come from? Are these mostly from NPCing, rifts and temporary buffs on your best planets?

I like how you broke down the scanning and colonizing plan for beginners, but it seems like the quality of scans have since diminished significantly. This seems to paint a pretty grim picture. It will take significant time for newer players to become competent if something very good only pops up once every 500 successful scans or so. For higher rankers, that means you can look forward to seeing something pretty every 2-3 weeks. For a newcomer, that means it will take a month or two to get the first 500, and many months later to get the second 500 due to requiring much better tech and purgers.

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Thu May 22, 2014 8:28 pm
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It kind of bums me out to see this not getting more responses, because scanning is such an important aspect of growing your ship. I mean, is it just that self-evident that people are nodding and moving on?

Quote:
For your AP/planet in a # planets owned range, it may help the newer players if you state what level of planet tech should they have by then to achieve those benchmarks.

[...]

To sum this all up, I suggest adding 2 columns to the last table: One for suggested planet tech level and another for minimum planet size/richness pertaining to each row tier listed.
Good observation and point!

Quote:
This second part is just a personal question I have. Ive noticed youve done about 25k scans. I dont usually follow high ranks so I dont know, but is that a higher or lower value for someone of your rank? I ask this because I scan quite a lot myself, but most of my gains actually come from trading. I will typically only find something impressive (something that can make 500+AP/h) about 1 in every 500 planets scanned or so. And then only part of the time I can take it. If I extend this logic to you (which I know may be completely off, you may have fared better luck in scanning), that is only 50 planets in 25k *attempted scans that make 500+* (This is a huge assumption, because Im stating each attempted scan successfully reveals a planet). Lets say it averages to 750 AP/h for each (since some will be the truly amazing variety). This only adds up to 37.5k AP/h from good scans. The ordinary scans combined shouldn't be able to supply more than that top 50 found.
You bring up another good observation. For the truly hyper-successful ships, scanning is only part of their AP generation. They also rely on race-related uplifts/artifacts, trading, NPCing, and being active and strategic enough with their invade timers to pick up nice planets that are alerted in legion.

But scanning is still very important. As your AP, scan, and attack grow, you will be able to scan more often, lock quality planets that have higher cloak, and invade them successfully. Scanning alone isn't going to make you a top AP-earner in the game, but it is a valuable aspect of it.

It is also just as important to consider how many mediocre/pure Production planets there are out there with Meta-Tuned Jammers, Hoveroids, Stabilizers, spires, etc. just waiting to be extracted that can improve your top-tier planets. That Massive, Ultra Rich Oceanic I just took may not be worth defending, but those Adaptive Spires are going to look niiiiiiiice on a better planet. Without scanning and stealing better stuff off of those lesser planets, you are slowing the growth of your best planets.


Mon May 26, 2014 4:11 am
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I've got 84 thousand some odd scans performed, much more than you show on your chart. I hardly ever get anything better than Very Large Rich. Every one of my really good planets, I've built (at great expense) or invaded from an alert - I gave up on scanning months ago.

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Mon May 26, 2014 4:30 am
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What frequency do you recommend scanning planets at?

In my case, I have enough purgers to wipe about half of my list (about 200 purgers). Would it be more efficient to use them now and scan or to wait a couple of months until I have more?


Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:39 pm
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Phyrearms wrote:
What frequency do you recommend scanning planets at?


I think this is something that different high rank players could debate.

Personally, I try to scan every 2 weeks. I purge down to about 500 planets total, and then scan until I find something juicy to invade. But once I find that one awesome planet, I stop. Why? Because if I keep on going and find a 2nd really good planet to invade, one of those 2 planets could get fluxed if the owner is paying attention.

Last night, I scanned about 200 planets and found a Massive 15x arti Gaia with an active owner. I immediately stopped scanning and fluxjacked the planet. Then I looked at all the other planets and found 2 more decent planets worth invading with inactive owners. That should keep me occupied for a few days.

The only exception I make is for the scanning task from Legion Missions (Xathe task 3, Ardyne task 3, Cerulean task 2, Mawks Showdown, task 1). For those, I scan until I finish the particular task. If I don't find a really good planet during that time, then I keep going until I find something or my buffs run out.

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Wed Jun 18, 2014 4:12 pm
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Personally, I think with as many LM that require scanning, if you can afford to wait. If you get a great planet during your scan, you win. If you get crap (and complete your mission), you get a decent artifact. Think of it as a consolation prize.


Wed Jun 18, 2014 4:59 pm
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ODragon wrote:
Personally, I think with as many LM that require scanning, if you can afford to wait. If you get a great planet during your scan, you win. If you get crap (and complete your mission), you get a decent artifact. Think of it as a consolation prize.


Agreed... unless you have excess purgers, the only times when you should be scanning is when there is a LM that requires it... i think they come often enough now ;)

I personally do a small run per week (using ~850 purgers or so), but I always keep purgers on reserve just in case ;)


Wed Jun 18, 2014 6:18 pm
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okay we have same ap per hour but you declare aprox. 250 purgers a week i can do that in 2 possibly 3 days with 166k ap per hour i scan roughly weekly to week and a half depending on mood and i range from 700 to 900 planet scan run.

now as for your sheet it is good to help new players who are wondering what to do so aplus 1 for the assistance and your time in doing it all for them.


Wed Jun 18, 2014 7:13 pm
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pokerman123 wrote:
okay we have same ap per hour but you declare aprox. 250 purgers a week i can do that in 2 possibly 3 days with 166k ap per hour i scan roughly weekly to week and a half depending on mood and i range from 700 to 900 planet scan run.

now as for your sheet it is good to help new players who are wondering what to do so aplus 1 for the assistance and your time in doing it all for them.


I have around 265k aph, and unless you're doing purger mission as well, ain't no way you get 250 purgers in 2-3 days, because i barely manage to get 250 over a 4-5 day period(without purger mission).


Wed Jun 18, 2014 7:29 pm
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At 171k AP/hr, I average 43 purgers a day (assuming 95k AP per individual artifact and no cap loss). That's roughly 300 a week using the purger mission or any AP from my legion's base.

I also tend NOT to use the purger mission much, as I'd rather same the EM for the Legion Missions.

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Wed Jun 18, 2014 8:45 pm
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I keep a reserve in case of multiple scan based LMs in a row, and then try to scan whenever I have a surplus above that reserve and my invasion is idling. I also don't scan below good, and I purge as I scan (scan 10, purge anything not worth keeping, scan 10 more).

The way I see it, the info is roughly:

Quote:
Average purgers/day = hourly AP * 24 / 95,750
average scans required for the tasks ~= 200 (more for blue gas, less for toxics or tinys)
days per task = 3
average scans/day for a task = 200/3 ~= 66
buffer recovery time (days) from a scan task = average scans required for the tasks / Average purgers/day

chance of scanning LM ~= ... roughly call it 5/24 (poor estimate, not all are independent, but good enough for determining a buffer size) ~= 21%
(chance of 2 in a row < 5%, chance of 3 in a row < 1%)


avg purgers/day for LM = chance of scanning LM * average scans/day for a task
= 21% * 66
~= 14

AP/hr needed to do all scanning LMs = 56K


Anything above that generates a surplus, up to you to determine how much of a buffer you want (I keep 1K purgers on hand to cover the small chance of multiple in a row), but I scan as often as I can, since AP production found is AP to be used, rather than waiting for a massive scan blitz.

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Thu Jun 19, 2014 12:35 am
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Im impressed that you made charts when ever i make visuals there just macaroni

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Fri Jun 20, 2014 4:30 am
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