1:I dont CC, and I actively shot down Ideas that I believe will give CCers to much of an upperhand. Infact, if this were to go through it would help CCers by huge amounts.
2:The 18 comes from Qcubed's idea of a 10% chance on the first artifact shipment received each day.(all of this is actually based off of his idea) AKA every day you have a 10% chance of getting one of the artifacts listed, ignoring the artifacts actual % amounts.
So assuming were following the rest of Qcubed's idea of having this go on for 6 months, or around 180 days. The person would get 180 chances of getting one of these artifacts.
So (180 chances)*(.1 AKA 10%)=18.

So actually im not pulling 18 out of thin air, it is a solid number along with everything else in my argument. Please read the whole thread and check math yourself before declaring someone wrong.

I was rethinking and tho the idea is a good sound one I might have to change my thought good for marketing but one of the reasons i like this game is that with no cost people can get far.

well it should give MORE than $20 in GP if it's a good Idea, you want both CCers and NON CCers to buy it. 6 months might be too long for $20, maybe it should only be four months, or maybe you should pay $40.

Don't dismiss the idea out of hand.

as for the equation, lets go for the average GP cost of all items >0 and multiply that against 18. it's a poor approximation as you will have missed days when people did not get a chance, and because a 10% chance DOES NOT mean you will get 1 arty every 10 days.

I gotta get on a phone call so I don;t have time to mock that up, but you get the Idea.

keep in mind Dan only sees $14 out of every $20 spent because of Facebook's fees

Well here is the thing: memberships = constant income stream. It needs to provide some other sort of reward because I will never buy 99% of the items because quite frankly the cost/benefit of say a planet building isn't worth it, or other one-off items. I will pay for an item that grows with rank (what radiant cannon *should* be doing...), but that's about it.

as good as it sounds, i will not pay money for this game.
the mineral stroage tower, the artifact warehouse, the research data archive, all very good ideas but with a catch i cannot stand.
they all go on a planet that can be taken away at any time.

i hate to rag on a few, but we do have some paying babies on here the have cried like little girls when their paid for planets got taken.
now do this program you have come up with and increase dans nightmare 1000 fold when these paying gold members start loseing stuff to non paying players.

Nice. Screw the guys who have been laid off and cant afford this game even more. I like it, makes it more elite.