Planet Upgrades - Crunching the numbers?

I read about ship upgrades, but I'd like to know if anyone has a conception of the data for when to upgrade planet populations. Each planet type benefits differently due to population limits, but I believe the upgrade cost per level is the same for all planets. I'd like to know about how much each planet generates in taxes at each population level; for instance, terran planets are the best "deal" for pop upgrades. On other planets, it may be more efficient to only do one upgrade to eliminate the penalty, then build trade posts, at least in terms of the time to recover the investment. What do you find most efficient to build a strong economy?

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I've done some of this, but not all of what you're asking. I'll pm you the copy/paste of an old thread.

Long story short, they're all worth it; it's just a matter of timing. Generally, don't build trade posts until there are no new planets to populate, and only research population beyond underdevelopment when you're being bottlenecked by credits. This most often occurs about 30 minutes into a game for me, but there are a lot of variables.

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OK. I did some in-game testing (1-player mode, nothing to stop me, can speed up the game). All values are for a planet with 100% allegience; the game was on "normal" economic setting; these values are for a planet that has reached its max. pop. for the specified level. Note that the net income is not always what is expected when a planet is underdeveloped; the penalty is actually greater than the number listed in the upgrades section; for Ice/Volcanic planets, at LVL 0 the disparity is about -0.5 and at LVL 1 it is about -0.2 (there is rounding of course). I think in actuality the penalty for these two types is -3.5 for LVL 0 and -1.5 for LVL 1.

Cost to upgrade is always the same:
1 = 450/150/75
2 = 550/175/125
3 = 650/200/175
4 = 750/225/225

Chart of findings:

Planet Type LVL POP Penalty Net Income/s
Terran 0 10 -2.0 -2.0
Terran 1 30 -0.5 0.3
Terran 2 100 0.0 2.9
Terran 3 190 0.0 5.5
Terran 4 280 0.0 8.1

Desert 0 10 -2.0 -2.0
Desert 1 30 -0.5 0.3
Desert 2 100 0.0 2.9
Desert 3 190 0.0 5.5

Ice 0 10 -3.0 -3.2
Ice 1 30 -1.3 -0.6
Ice 2 70 0.0 2.0
Ice 3 160 0.0 4.6

Volcanic 0 10 -3.0 -3.2
Volcanic 1 30 -1.3 -0.6
Volcanic 2 70 0.0 2.0

Asteroid 0 10 -2.0 -2.0
Asteroid 1 20 0.0 0.6

I will interpret these findings later tonight when I have some time to go through the numbers.

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