Now, how about saving the money, not buying the population cap, and spending it on new planet's resource extractors/infrastructure upgrades sooner. I understand upgrading your home planet cap in a really small map, but it still seems like a waste. Or as TEC, how about building a civ research lab and researching the cheaper common buildings upgrade. Then you're saving credits on other expansion. Just throwin ideas up there. I don't agree with blindly following the trend in buying crystal off the bat just because people say it's better.

Truthfully, I do it because if I don't I'll probably forget to do it, and that's bad for my economy.

I mostly do the same for newly colonized worlds for much the same reasons. However, I don't usually buy resources to do it with newly colonized worlds, but I do get them upgraded to max as quick as I can.

I applaud you for it. You should test your theories. (I'm sincere, btw.)

It's called an investment, and investments always cost more upfront, just to get things on the roll. It's far better to spend some early on, build those extra buildings and/or expand early on, then to wait several minutes acquiring resources in order to slowly expand, thus falling behind on the power curve, and opening yourself to early rushes. Admittedly, if you are a good player, capable of keeping up with your growth, using the Empire Tree effectively, and paying attention to your economy, you can easily make up the difference of this early financial hit. But making the investment will work better for you in the long run if you really are that "good" player.

I think the title should be changed to "what is the point of upgrading pop at the start" because I think that's what the OP is trying to get at. Buying 200 crystal is a no brainer, if your build order is anything other than rushing with tier 0 light frigates you'll be short on crystal and have an abundance of credits if you don't buy crystal at the start.

If anyone could be bothered testing or doing the math of upgrading pop at the start versus using the money to buy civic labs and tech to trade earlier I would love to see the results because I've often wondered whether it's more beneficial for TEC to prioritize trade and only upgrade pop on bigger planets once there are no logistics slots left for trade ports.

Since no one else bothered, I did the math. It turns out that my first post wasn't entirely accurate, because you make the money back so fast that solving that first equation for t would give you an answer that's too large. The actual result is that once you buy the planet upgrade, you will make 750 extra credits in 670 seconds, so just over 11 minutes to pay off - which is no time at all in a sins game.

Handy equations:

If you want to check how long it will take to pay off the purchase amount if your purchase amount was P, where P<1350, simply plug in your P into t = sqrt(600*P). t is the time in seconds.

If you want to check how long it will take to pay off the purchase amount if your purchase amount is P, P>1350, then your equation is t = 900+(P-1350)/3.

A little semantical qualification. If you consider the price of the planet upgrade to be 1500 credits, (750 to buy crystal, 750 for the actual upgrade) then you make the money back in 950 seconds, or just under 16 minutes.

just under 16 mins sounds right, if the OP is right and it takes 8 mins to recover the money once it's fully populated then assuming linear pop growth you'd pretty much just double the 8 mins and take a bit of time off because you reach full pop after 15 mins.

That's thinking too much, honestly. The integral is so easy that it's not even calc I so much as it is geometry. The necessary realization is that, since the rate of population increase is linear, your integral will basically just be taking the area of a triangle, where the base is the time elapsed (x) and the side is how much extra money you'll be making per second once that time elapses (3x/900 = x/300). The area of this triangle, then, which is the amount of extra money you'll make, is x^2/600. Anyone can take the area of a triangle, I hope, from which the two above equations follow canonically.

Actually it takes longer. since the planet upgrade only provides $$, you have to monetize the entire cost of the upgrade 750 for upgrade + the cost of 225 Metal and 225 Crystal which means the true cost of upgrade is (buy off market price) 2100 credits.

i'd guess you are much better off holding off the upgrade and buying cheaper upgrades on first captured planet.

This is a stupid argument.

Just compare the investment of upgrading the main planet vs researching + building trade ports. The comparison isn't remotely close.

By the time you can even start researching trade ports, your capital will be at full pop, making something like 4 extra income, which is more (much more) than an individual trade port, for a FRACTION of the cost.

It's the best damn upgrade in the game.

As far as saying nobody's done the math, it's been done, but it's not even COMPARABLE to other upgrades.

This means, it pays for itself SO QUICKLY that it's just a must have no matter what.

Easier than maths: testing. I set up a two player game where one player upgrades the planet and the other does nothing. The upgrade pays for itself in under 13 minutes. Coincidentally(?) it also maxes out it's income in under 13 minutes. These are under standard game options, both players are TEC.





Gah, this is what I get for being too lazy to install PSP on my new PC, and use MSPaint instead. Sorry the numbers are cut off on the credits available pic. You'll just have to take my word for it, until I can be arsed setting it up again.

actually, I doubt your test accounts for the 500 metal/crystal that was expended by the upgrader. So the payback is much slower (but still overall a good buy).

The upgraded is not only sacrificing 750 credits but also 225 metal and 225 crystal. When you include the metal cost, the real cost of the upgrade is about 2050 credits (at current market buy value) before it pays versus doing nothing.

on a small map or a map such as a 3v3 where enemy locations are known and only a few jumps away, the upgrade is probably very bad for the cost vs spending that material on weapons. Otherwise, it is a good buy.

But still, all in all, you guys are talking about minutes to make back what was used. These games last hours, which means the cost of making the investment will be long since paid off and made back hundreds of times over.

So, as I said before, investments always cost more upfront, but it'll get things rolling. Properly made investments will pay big, allowing you to make further developments and growth programs, further increasing your rate of resource gathering.

And even on a small map, brindle, they may be only a few jumps away, but it still takes time to make all those jumps (and fight through whatever militia or pirate is in the way). Time to gather resources. Time to build. Time to kill the enemies ships, with reinforcements only a jump or two away, while the enemy needs to jump three, four, or more times. On small maps, a turtler can get ahead in the early growth stages. Then, when they are ready, they break out of their shell and expand with full, trained fleets, as opposed to the enemies broken and rebuild fleets. Remember, cap ships only gain experience if they are in the grav well where the kill is made.

The turtler, of course, needs to make sure they don't take too long, since they need planets to develop. Expansionists are weak if they deal with enemies, but against turtlers, they will out develop them in time. So, all in all, it's all about timing. Timing is everything, even in a long, slow paced game like SoaSE.

The first time I ran it I made the upgrader buy 200 crystal off the market, but then realised that wasn't the point of the test. The point was to show how soon an investment in population paid off. I think it's already been established that crystal is your bottle-neck early on (and for me usually late on too), so buying 200 crystal at the start is pretty much a given. It's whether you use that crystal to upgrade your planet or get more ships quicker (or research to trade?). From this, I think I'm gonna stick with the planet upgrade. As Solaron says, SoaSE games are not measured in minutes.

In SP, pre-1.03, I buy 300 crystal at the start, and don't start the population upgrade on the home planet for about 15-30 minutes. I lose out on ~3600-7200 credits from the upgrade being delayed.

In exchange, I spend the 750 credits, 225 metal and 225 crystal on research facilities, ships, and initial planet upgrades, because I colonize faster than I could have had I bought the upgrade. I expand to chokepoints, and sometimes to choke off a neighbor AI. I expand so that I'm not wasting resources putting up defenses on interior worlds. And most importantly, I expand so that my metal/crystal income is higher than if I'd played it a little safer with max credit income.

Is strategic map control, resource dominance, and chokepoint efficiency worth 7200 credits?

How much of a jumpstart on research, ships, and colonization do you get for 750/225/225?

I can only answer that for myself: 7.5 minutes jumpstart on expansion is often a BFD.

At a rate of: .5 metal and .5 crystal / second from the homeworld, 225 means 450 seconds, or 7.5 minutes.

If I take planets 7.5 minutes ahead of an "upgrade-thy-homeplanet-first" player (though this timing cannot be translated 1:1, lets just assume 7.5 as a rough estimate), my resource income will expand that much more quickly. As an example, when I take my first asteroid and complete the first upgrade and extractors, I'll generate 225/225 over 7.5 minutes, plus a little cash. When I have 10 planets 7.5 minutes "early", I have successfully justified leaving the planet upgrade alone by a huge margin, without considering the strategic benefits.

Pre 1.03, resources meant cash. Now cash means resources, so this strategy is weakened. However, I hope you can see that the math of the investment in planet upgrades is not a "simple investment you must make", but a trade off. Trading credits for resources on the macro scale. Trading credits for strategic advantage on the macro scale.

I don't know how you guys play, but my general strategic principle is to have my fleets always working, my empire always expanding, my fleet-cap saturated. By skipping the planet upgrade I find that I can generally keep expanding without pause, whereas when I take upgrades too early I have run into situations where I must wait. In the end, that is all that matters, so: if you can expand without waiting around for resources, AND do the upgrade, good for you.

Some maps will favor one strategy over the other as well. If you know that you'll be ganked by 6 AI locked against you, you know that at some point you'll have to put up fences and expand more slowly. Anticipate that point and do the upgrade to suit the map, IMO.

My favorite part is that you get 200 crystal fast.

Crystal is good.

I like crystal and you should too!

Smacksim: I've been doing the upgrade first build, but I've never noticed being delayed on colonising. I usually onto take a couple extra planets before attacking the opponent (in 1v1); is this where we differ? I tend to get the colony capital ship, immediately send it to a neighbouring asteroid, kill siege frigate->colonise->kill other frigate, and can upgrade the pop on the new planet as soon as it's done. Then move on to next asteroid (if possible, other planet if not) and repeat. At the same time I'm building Assailants / LRMs or Disciples. I don' think I could colonise any faster than this... I'm guessing your fleet gets formed a lot quicker? I'm getting my first ships about the same time I colonise the first asteroid, and from there build them semi-constantly up to the first cap.

I don't know Sideshow. I'll have to start a new game to check, but I'm able to use up my metal/crystal supply pretty quickly. It would be one thing if a "non-upgrader" was just sitting on extra crystal and metal, but if it is used for research/ships/fleet/upgrading new planets, there is a time advantage of some kind.

I've been experimenting with taking Ice / Volcanic early, and filling out most of my first fleet cap with light frigates, second fleet cap with LRM/assailant/illuminator (or more capships). Light Frigates are a little lame, but do speed up planet aquisition. I'll send the frigates ahead of the colony capship to take asteroids (because they are significantly faster), so the cap arrives, gets the kill exp and colonizes en route to the next planet.

Again though, taking resource planets makes less sense in 1.03. Much less sense. Might as well take all terran/desert/roid and buy the resources. But I think this will change in 1.04. The black market, that is.

Yes, i think some of the confusion on this tread is over that point. The point is not to argue if the upgrade pays for itself. Certainly it does, and it does so at a decent rate. My guess is that in most games, the upgrade should be done. But, the point of the original poster on the thread was could those same resources be used in other ways that may (or may not) get you more bang for the buck.

If money/resources etc were unlimited, then you should always upgrade, but they are not. If you just look at the pure cost (money and resources) of the upgrade, you can do the comparison to other things that cost about the same. For instance, one homeworld upgrade is about equal to two upgrades of astoids. Sure, you will have to wait 6-8 minutes to capture two astroids, but then the resources are working 2x as effective since 2 places were upgraded for the same cost. Saying one upgrades their first astroids anyway isn't relevant - because that has nothing to do with how to best use the 750 credits/225 metal/225 crystal.

The actual planetary growth rate is 0.125 population/second (the population will cap after 12 minutes).

With an approximate value of 3 credits per mineral/crystal, the upgrade will have a ROI of 17m40s (and 11m40s thereafter, which means you'll have doubled your initial investment after 29m20s).
At 3.5 credits per mineral/crystal it's 18m55s (and 12m55s thereafter, 200% at 31m50s).

This thread was originally asking whether it was worth buying 200 crystal. The thread then pretty convincingly established that it was. The OP clarified his post to say that it was buying 200 crystal AND upgrading pop. Hence the test.

Fixed the image in the test post, I found the replay (was looking in single player replays before :/).