Resource Upgrade Techs - Do the math...

There is more testing that needs to be done. A quick first test showed that each level of resource technology will provide a 0.05 unit per second boost to each extractor, but I need to do a few more tests to be sure 0.05 is accurate.

I did not look far into it but it appears that extractors that do not orbit actual planets, (extractors orbiting asteroid colonies) did not recieve the tech bonus. Im going to do more testing on this to be sure.

Keep in mind the resource output of mines depend also on how far away they are from the home planet

That is true but this is early testing and I wanted to keep it simple. You will also most likely have culture to push those planets much closer to 100% production.

meh...

Eh?

After reading Anny's post I realized that the reason the asteroid colony I saw did not appear to be recieving the resource bonus could have been because it's distance from the homeworld. It was only one jump away though.

mica we went over this already... you cant readily see the effect, but its there.

All I can say is that it definatly *feels* increased after the research. You can start just that bit faster.

Im going to test to be sure anyway.

My idea behind these tests is to find out exactly when is ideal to research them. Given these results, you shouldt research them straight away. There is a point when the bonus will be noticable, and I am gouing to find it.

This is where the Vasari shine. Their upgrade is for both metal and crystal. Especially with the Slave Labor upgrade the buildings themsleves become much more affordable.

Since the gamma research looks to be quite different I have no idea how things will work out now.

In case you haven't heard the fleet logistics are now determined by research. Go desert planets!

ok, nobody at ALL has confirmed that avatar. dont get uppity so soon.

I'm already sure, having seen it happen before.

the answer is obvious, ASAP as long as its not interfering with your other research.

If you reasearch this tech in the beginning of the game with one planet, one crystal asteroid, and two metal asteroids, you ARE NOT progressing optimally. Anybody knows in an RTS, resource managment early game is very important. Thats like queueing up 10 frigs as soon as the game starts. The money you spent on the 4th and 5th frig has NOT EVEN STARTED to materialize, when you could have spent that money on something that WILL materialize before those frigs EVEN START production.

You sure talk alot Schod-the-rod, but you dont ever back it up with facts.

Go troll another thread.

On a lighter note I have done some more research with some interesting results. Will post them shortly.

just like assailants and gauss?

I have edited my OP to reflect my recent discoveries. My data has now been confirmed and is very accurate.

so now if you take that value and turn it into crystal, metal, and credits (assuming 100 creds= 75 metal= 50 crystal since that is about the usual values) how long would it take an empire with 5,6,7,8,9,10 crystal roids to pay itself off?

If you only had one crystal extractor (Vasari), it would take ~33 minutes for the first resource upgrade to generate the 100 crystal it took to research it. So obviously you would not want to research the tech untill you had the resource asteroids to back it up. It should also be noted that these upgrades are much more viable at high game speed.

I did think about boiling it all down to credits to get a larger picture, but the conversion ratio can be inaccurate...

The pictures(and captions) we have access to say otherwise.

the answer isnt obvious at all. From your experience u might have come to the conclusion that it makes sense to research them as soon as possible but thats still not very accurate or based with any "facts".
The question here is how long it takes for upgrades to pay off and even if they do in a decent time then the question still remains if the upgrades are worth the "disadvantage" of using very valuable resources in the beginning which could decide the outcome of a whole game (100 units of crystal for example have earlier a much bigger impact than later).
Especially in the beginning this can mean getting your 2nd cap ship a few minutes earlier.

There are a lot of factors you have to consider and thus its a VERY complicate matter and the answer is for sure not an easy one.

Like Micaletti pointed out resource management in a RTS is one of the most important things and knowing how long it takes for upgrades to pay off can have a huge impact on your build order/overall strategy.

@ Micaletti:

Thats really some interesting research. Already planned to do these calculations myself but didnt bother till now because i expect a lot of changes in the tech tree for the release so it doesnt make too much sense to do it now.
Still i appreciate the work u have done and would really like to see some more numbers.

Well said LinkesAuge, thank you

*suggest* otherwise, nothing at all has been confirmed.

your grasp of the blatantly obvious is amusing.

and I'm more than the expert at growth, so do not presume to lecture me about it.

like multi having to send half her fleet to help defend you.

you are forgetting the obvious fact:
vasari upgrades apply to BOTH crystal and metal.

as for optimizing the time of purchase? buying it earlier is MUCH better than buying it later as long as you do not obstruct your growth, something I *gasp* told you.

you gain that benefit during the time its not researched, the game will not wait for you to have just the right number of crystals before it starts.

mica you dont even seem to understand what you're analyzing. You're analysis is purely about the return rate: how long it takes for an empire of qualified size to return on its research investment. thats perfectly fine to research, but it has nothing to do "with the worth of the research" as its benefits are doublefold, if only developing later on.

wonder of wonders: If you only have one crystal asteriod: you're fached.

you guys are considering an optimization problem pertaining to return rate! thats almost completely unrelated to the effectiveness of the research. if you want to compare the effectiveness of the research compare it to what you would spend the money on otherwise.
telling me my investment will start making the profit after half an hour will only prompt me to research it sooner: so that I start reaping the benefit faster. What you seem to be ignoring is that the effect still occurs when you extend your empire! All other things equal, if I were to buy it with three planets (something I wouldnt do, because I'm still focused on expanding, but lets continue the hypothetical) I would continue reaping the benefit as i extended to 4, 5, 6, 7 planets. something you would not have if you just tried to start on the research when you had your full empire

GOD I wish that common logic was still "common", apparently not.

as for my experience with economic management: I get half hour long lectures from my father about ingress and egress of finance, worth of investment, return rates and the proper management of finance in a buisness every time I turn on the goddamn TV. If I were to tell you you could start making interest on your money this month at a rate of .01 per month, increasing by .005 every month after, or enter three months later at a .025 interest rate? obviously you want to invest sooner because your money begins to generate income from the very start, obviously you arent going to be putting it in the bank if you're trying to jumpstart your buisness though.

If I had to take an educated guess at what point it is viable to start researching resource tech's, first I would have to decide how long I am willing to wait for the tech to pay for itself, and how much crystal and metal are worth in credits.

So for shits and giggles lets say:

A) I'm willing to wait 15 minutes at most for the tech to pay for itself.
50 crystal = 100 credits
C) 50 metal = 100 credits

The first Vasari tech costs 600 credits 50 metal and 100 crystal, or by my above conversion, 900 credits. If I want my upgrade to pay that off in 15 minutes or less I will need X resource extractors...

**Warning: if you dont care for math, skip to the last paragraph**

Assuming 100% allegiance on all extractors, the first upgrade nets 0.05 resources per second, per extractor. By my above conversion that translates to 0.1 credits per second per extractor.

900 credits / 0.1 credits per second = 9000 seconds or 2.5 hours for ONE extractor's bonus to pay for the total cost of the first upgrade.

I decided that an acceptable return on investment would be 15 minutes so...

15 minutes = 900 seconds / 9000 seconds for one extractor to pay it off = 0.1 (One extractor is a tenth of the extractors needed to meet the 15 minute quota)

So by these rough calculations, You should have AT LEAST 10 extractors before you research the first tech, and even then it will be 15 minutes before you get back what you spent, and start to profit from it. Remember 5% of 10 extractors is only 30 extra units of material per minute, or 1800 more per hour, so the increase in material is not drastic, even with 10 extractors. The tech is still very worth the investment in a 2 hour+ long multiplayer game.

Schod, everything you said in your last post, I coverd In my above post, and I didnt even read your thread until I was done posting it. You saw what research I was doing, and thought you were smart by pointing out the next step of the process. That was a given. It was stated by eet before your worthless wall of text. Anyhow, there is the data. I did the math and made a productive, informative post. You just talk and sling insults. I guess every forum has to have a local idiot...

i think its more that u dont understand that doing it any other way would make it far too complicate. You simply have to use a given set of values or else u will end up with VERY complicate calculations.







Schod u are totaly missing the point here. Micaletti is using EXAMPLES to give a roughly (somewhat realistic) estimination. Every game will be different and noone can say you how many planets u might have after 30 minutes but u can at least get an idea in which time frame its usefull to do these researches.

And sure someone who researches upgrades later will have problems with his economy later in the game IF he doesnt do anything else with his saved resources. BUT plz lets not forget we do this calculation to see if for example it makes sense not to research and instead build a 2nd cap ship.
Pls keep in mind this are just examples but absolutly valid ones and some that deserve a few thoughts about it.
You should never forget that more resources used for ships in the beginning instead of research can mean that u can dominate the game and force your enemy into defence.
But there are simply too many possibilities to consider everything so Micaletti does the only right thing and uses just the very basic data which usually doesnt change that much (in a 1v1 most of the time both players have around the same amounf of planets after a given time).




i would be cautious with such claims looking at your posts.




your example doesnt work here.

You go into the argument saying that u will DEFIANTLY get ur return later but in a game of Sins u simply dont know that.
What is if u get beaten after 30 minutes? Your research will have done nothing till that point, just for example.
Im still not sure about what you are arguing. Its simply some research here on the question when upgrades start to pay off.
Knowing this can help you in adjusting your playing style based on the situation.
So why come here and troll this thread with your very arrogant attitude and act like you were the first one ever to play a RTS (i for example played 10 years starcraft, by far the most competitive RTS out there).
Also looking at other threads this seems to be a pretty common way of you to "discuss". Just remember, with the influx of new players u should get used to different oppinions (and losing btw) so you better adjust the way you talk to ppl or else u wont have too much fun around here.

I have edited my OP to include further analysis. I have calculated the approximate optimal time to begin resource upgrade research.

In short, because the exact value of the research changes from game to game he's giving us the tools to easily and quickly gauge its usefulness on a per-game basis, rather than trying to come up with a comprehensive rule. Its a good idea, and an intelligent approach. I have never understood why certain personalities have issues with those (that is, when they aren't the ones who came up with them...).

Thanks for the analysis, Micaletti. These are the kinds of calculations I spend entirely too much time doing.

I may be missing something here, but it seems necessary to include alternative uses of the 600/50/100 cost of the resource tech. It is helpful to know that 10 extractors allows the tech to pay for itself in 15 minutes, but to be truly useful I would need to know what return I would get on *other* ways of using that 600/50/100.

I suppose that's a much more complicated question, because it would depend on the map and the situation. Can I get another metal extractor? Do I have to colonize another grav well first?

One question along these lines is: how many metal extractors must you have so that researching lvl 1 resource upgrade will recover its cost faster than building an equivalent value of additional metal extractors?

Perhaps that question is mostly moot, in that you can only build a relatively small number of extractors without massive expansion.

Thanks,
Keith