Looking back at the amount of time, money and minerals I spent on planetary research I don't see much return after the Gravshell Construction level. If you figure in 50 Kurenite and 200 million credits it would take forever for one planet to offset that cost at 10 units per hour. Include all the research points (about 900,000,000) to research gravshell for no reason and it really looks like a waste

Then if you figure the cap on how much resources you can store, you are double screwed. You are producing more often than you can cash in and wasting that production at least once a day.

In the end it almost seems like you would be loosing money by increasing your production because the measely 2 units an hour increase don't make up for the enormous costs.

I know people have talked about adding "storage buildings" to increase capacity but that is just another cost to factor in for something that wasn't worth it in the first place.

I just wanted to see if anyone who is better at math than I am could figure out how much you loose or if it was possible to break even.

I would say either a tier bonus or a artifact dropped from a mission would be a way to get around the cost of the building. Personally, I would want Tier so it couldn't be stolen if I lost my planet.

I do understand what you are saying though. I am only at +6 and the cost/time to move on vs. what I get back by the very small increase, I believe it will be a while before I actually go for +7 or higher. It makes more sense to spend that money on decent-level resource planets than to spend that on a +1 to +3 you get by upgrading all of your planets.

As an upgrade from +8, I agree it's kind of weak on good, average sized planets. But for new planets, and for upgrading massive or colossal planets, it seems worth it to me. I have +10 mining and research, working on artifacts now. I don't plan on going back and upgrading my +8 planets except for my Dyson and my exotics. The +10 structures will be for new planets only.

+10's also has a virtue on really small planets also, it's the most efficient use of the space available.

Well 10 units/hour is just the base value. A planet that's been under your control for 5+ days has that 100% development bonus that doubles the output all on it's own. So assuming you're placing these structures on planets that don't have an availability factor for some reason, you're really getting an extra 4 units/hour.

As for math, it's nearly impossible to figure out how long it takes to break even since only Dan knows how the random number goddess decides what mineral each unit ends up being. The simple fact that I'm still getting a hefty amount of worthless Dynite at rank 107 would suggest that even with the point I made above, you're completely right in saying it's probably not worth it.

Despite that, I'll still try to give a best-case scenario, where you are somehow able to stop yourself from getting anything but Kurenite. At the above mentioned +4/hour minimum, you are getting an extra 4,807,043 credits an hour. which, actually, would only take 42 hours (rounded up since it takes a full hour to get each chunk of units)

But that was just best case. Worst case would be getting nothing but exotic matter, but I think we can safely rule that scenario out. Which brings us to the intermediate case of getting equal amounts of all mineral types (including exotic matter). The average credit value of each unit of mineral production, assuming equal distribution and based on the money recieved when a single unit of each type is sold, is 172,706/Unit. At 4 units/hour, that comes to 690,824 and breaks even in 290 hours. (12 days, 2 hours).

On a Rich world, the +4/hour I used for this calculation becomes +8/hour, and cuts the times listed in half. (21 Hours for best-case & 6 Days 1 Hour for middle-ground)
On a Mega Rich (+200% avail bonus), the +4/hour is instead a +12/hour, and reduces the times to 14 Hours in best-case/4 Days, 1 Hour for middle-ground.

That enough math for you?

If you reach cap too fast, yes you loose money. otherwise, I've calculated that the worst case scenario for me currently is a cost return of 14 days for an average mining planet (what's average to me can be good for others tho).

14 days return for invasion (so double colonization) cost + Stellar converters installation + some other lil goodies.

For a very good planet, payback is about 7 days for me.

Now I'm gonna make some calculation with different technologies buildings and come back with some comparisons.

So at My lvl, I made calculations considering that 100 MP = 2M creds ... Colonization costs at like 150M, Invasion costs at 300M.

I calculated with the assumption I install mining buildings only and eventually chassis as well.

On a VL rich mining planet:

colonizing
with Gravitons => Payback in 7.5 Days
With Stellar converters => Payback in 17 Days

Invading
Gravitons => Payback 10.4 Days
Stellar => Payback 19.5 Days

on each case, the Stellar buildings will be more profitable than Gravitons after ... 101.5 Days ... That's more than 3 months.


On a VL 4x Mega rich mining planet:

Colonizing
Gravitons => Payback 3.75 Days
Stellar => Payback 8.5 Days

Invading
Gravitons => Payback 5.2 Days
Stellar => Payback 9.7 Days

each case, the stellar buildings will be more profitable than gravitons after ... 50.8 Days ... 1 Month and a half.


This lil study doesn't take into account space you want to use for cloak / def etc.

So you don't loose money, BUT the advantage is very little compared to previous tech.


In a way I agree with Kaos in the fact that the economy is very hard for high lvl ships (I also think the deck size / dmg system is not so cool, but that's another issue). Either way, we are spending time researching high tech and paying for it, and the efficiency ratio is not so worth it compared to previous tech. Which means, the more you progress, the less advance you have on the ones following you.

Those factors don't account for artifacts and research, where even though the monetary cost would be unrecoverable, to me that is worth it.

Hi,

Agree with the point raised, purely based on cost/production benefit analysis, the upgrades are not really worth it. But let me suggest another dimension, the increased productivity per unit will allow for a re-organization of the planetary production and other facilities, and that may be advantageous.

Love to hear your comments,

Cheers,

This is very true but personally, even if it gave me a +3 on every planet, that probably isn't worth the cost on research time. I'm better off researching weapons/defense and getting planetary upgrades (Planetary Data Optimizers, Toxic Mine things, terraformers, quasi-spacial expanders, etc). These upgrades to the planets do way more for me than I would get from getting my planets +1 or +2 compared to where they are now. In addition, things like Interrogation Centers (+2 Research), Drannik Databank (+3 Research) are better than buildings anyway. Pimping out planets with artifact buildings (even the ones from artifact shipments) are a better deal than researching buildings after a certain point.

Thank you all for reminding me on why I'm no longer researching buildings!

well mining buildings are the only ones with a chance at directly paying for themselves and the actual efficiency of +10 over +8 buildings is pretty negligible anyways. They might only be 10% more efficient in the same amount of space, and for that 10% mining bonus to amount to the hundred billion credits it would take to upgrade all your buildings might take longer than anyone predicts. The disappointing part might be all the RP it takes. Then again, researching other things is just going to raise your upkeep, making it hard to ever have credits for building upgrades. 10% to AP and RP is still sort of tempting. I've played longer than 3 months and it taking 3 months to pay for itself wouldn't be the end of the world. Levelling enough within those 3 months might even shorten the time it takes.

question is simple put that way:

would you buy a structure that has Size 1 / +2 mining (or artifact or research) for 150M creds and 30 Kurenite (so overall 200M creds let's say).

that's what represents the bonus from + 8 to + 10 buildings.

A 10 resource mining structure costs 200,000,000 credits and 50 kurenite (75 million credits worth). = 275,000,000 credits

So just for averages lets say its on a rich planet and produces 17 minerals an hour. That is 408 minerals a day.

Lets say those 408 minerals is worth about 1 million credits. (A rough average but a fair one)

That means it takes 275 days for that one building to pay for itself, not 19 days.

That isn't including the cost of colonizing the planet, the cost of research, the things those funds were diverted from that could have had better result. The high level structures are a waste.

+10 isn't in the wiki so I can't really answer your question. However, the below graph doesn't really support what you are saying:


I'm not sure the wiki is right as it seems like from the pattern, Gravitonic should be size 19, +8 (or size 17, +7). Without more data, I can't really confirm or deny what you say.

Not sure what is in the Wiki but this is copied directly from the game

Name - Resource - Cost - Kurenite Needed - Size
Stellar Converter - Mining +10 - 200,000,000 - 50 17
Matrioshka Brain - Research +10 - 200,000,000 - 50 - 17
Stellar Replicator - Artifact +10 - 200,000,000 - 50 - 17
-
Gravitonic Teleporter - Mining +8 - 50,000,000 - 20 - 16
Gravshell Brain - Research +8 - 50,000,000 - 20 - 16
Gravitonic Revealer -Artifact +8 - 50,000,000 - 20 - 16

Is there no +7?

Yeah, the math I did earlier was extremely high in assuming all minerals have equal chance, so this time I'll try doing the math without actually figuring out a person's current cred/shipment.

Gravitonic costs a grand total of 80m credits when you factor in the cost of the Kurenite. Which means that the Stellar Converter costs only 3.4 times more.

If we assume that X is the average credit value of the minerals produced by the Gravitonic Teleporter, then 1.25X is the average credit value of the Stellar Converter (since 10 is 25% more than 8). No matter what the production bonuses are, 100%, 350%, etc. you will ALWAYS be getting 25% more minerals per hour from a Stellar Converter. Since you're getting minerals 125% faster, logically you should be getting credits 125% faster as well.

3.4 / 1.25 = 2.72. This means that whatever it took to pay off your Gravitonic Teleporter, it only takes 2.72 times as long to pay off a Stellar Converter.

...

Its not about the difference between two levels, its about the cost of the higher levels and how they aren't worth it.

Your original post asked for the math, so I did my best to give it. My interpretation of said math suggests that despite the fact I had initially thought as you did that the costs surpassed the benefits, it actually is quite affordable. In fact, I have absolutely no doubt that I will be upgrading my planets to stellar converters as soon as I manage to get at them (only recently got the gravity teleporters)

I am slightly perplexed by the fact that you consider 408 minerals to be worth only 1 million credits. Since a single Kurenite sells for 1.2mil, that means your odds of getting kurenite is less than 1 in 400. I'm only at rank 108 and can consistently count on multiple Kurenite from a shipment of that size. Does the mineral quality deteriorate when someone reaches your rank? Or is the random number goddess going full-on tsundere on you?

Past the numbers there is the ability to while costly help get better defenses on the planet. So I might be pushing over 20 production and focusing more well having it produce. But when I can do 2 building and hit 20 base and then have plenty of room to make is hard to deal with (from cloaking, poplation, ect...) it could be worth the price.

But only my best planets would get the biggest and best building to do that. As they are worth spending the extra just to have them stay on my list just that much longer.