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| Main » 2012 » May » 28 » OMath | Topic 2 | Saving resources for big projects
3:32 PM OMath | Topic 2 | Saving resources for big projects |
Previous topic: Mines and resources
Say you want to build something big (or anything, really, it doesn't matter much once you get to the later stages of the game). Chances are you won't have the necessary resources on hand.
A first strategy would be to simply wait until you have the resources you'll need have been accumulated by themselves (through production and/or raiding). That could be long, but hey, you need those resources, right?
Actually, there is another way to proceed: invest in mines. No, really: if you play smart, you can spend resources AND get your big project ready sooner.
It's not that surprising, when you think about it: improve your mines, and you'll gain resources faster. You do need to be careful, however, and play smart. And bring out your calculator, too.
Ok, we're going to use some fictional numbers (because 1- I'm too lazy to actually search for a real example; and 2- it'll make things easier for a simple example). Don't worry, I'll try and make them close to actual in-game values.
Situation: You have 600,000 metal, 380,000 crystal and 190,000 deuterium, and your hourly productions are 6,000, 4,000 and 2,000 (metal, crystal and deuterium, respectively). You wish, for some reason, to build a level 13 Shipyard. That costs 1,638,400 metal, 819,200 crystal and 409,600 deuterium.
If you choose to wait it out, accumulating those resources will take
- (1,638,400 - 600,000) / 6,000 = 173.07 hours for the metal
- (819,200 - 380,000) / 4,000 = 109.8 hours for the crystal
- (409,600 - 190,00) / 2,000 = 109.8 hours for the deuterium
(I'll use these colors to refer to each kind of resources in the remainder of this article.)
Obviously, the long part is waiting for the metal. If your metal mine was a level higher, however, it would produce 7,000 per hour and gaining that million units would only take 148.34 hours (about 6 days) instead of a week. Saving a day, awesome!
It's not that easy, however. Upgrading that mine isn't free, you know. That would cost about 90,000 + 22,000, which means that saving up your resources will now take 161.2 and 115.3 hours.
And there's more. Improving your mine takes time. By the time your upgrade is finished, you'll have accumulated some resources, so the amount you wish to save will have decreased. Is that a good thing? In this particular case, not necessarily.
The impact of improving production is directly proportional to the amount of resources you wish to save. Thus, the lesser that amount, the lesser that impact.
Back to our example. Say that improving that mine will take 11.2 hours. Before that time, the old production rate is still used, which translates into a gain of 67,200. Therefore, the total time before you have the metal you want when improving your metal mine is : 11.2 + (1,638,400 + 90,000 - 600,000 - 67,200) / 7,000 = 162.8.
Ok, that's a only difference of 0.6 hours, or 36 minutes, but still. If it had taken 2 days and a half to improve the mine, it would have done much more of a difference, and it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to improve the mine. But it's still worth it, so you should improve that mine (while it's still useful; the more you wait, the less effective this technique becomes).
Now, that's a lot of computing. Isn't there an easier way to know if it's to my advantage to improve mines while saving for big projects?
The answer is, sadly, no.
If the resource whose saving time you wish to reduce is metal or crystal and you already have enough of the other resources, you can use the following criteria:
Divide cost of upgrade by production gain (not the new production, only the amount by which the old production increases). If the result is greater than the time required to save for the project, do not improve. Otherwise, improve.
It's not 100% accurate (because it does not take other resources into account), but most of the time it works just fine. However, if the mine you think about improving is a Deuterium Synthesizer, or if you want the real impact, you'll have to use the long way (steps 1 through 5 apply to each of the three resources).
- Calculate the time required to gain the resources for you project without improving your mines.
- Calculate the resources you want: the ones for the project plus the ones to improve the mine.
- Add the resources you would gain in the time required to improve the mine to your current resources
- Substract the sum in step 3 from the sum in step 2, then divide by new (post-upgrade) hourly production
- Add the upgrade time to the result in step 4.
- Consider only the highest time obtained in step 1 and the highest time obtained in step 5. If the one from step 5 is smaller, improve the mine. Other wise, don't.
Next topic: Going faster
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Added by: Einswerz
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