What is the point of fast-buying 200 crystal?

from Sins Forums
You are losing out on at least 600 cash just for the crystals. Most likely you'll be paying more, since crystal starts at 400 and drops, unless other people are buying crystal, in which case the price skyrockets. So let's say 700, for two buys of Crystal at 350 each, since that's about what I got when I tested with TEC in single-player.

Okay, so you're down 700 cash, but at least you've got 200 crystal.

Now you build that population cap increase, which costs another 750 cash and 225 each of metal and crystal.

It's maybe 5 seconds into the game and you're already down 1450 cash, 225 metal, and 225 crystal.

What do you get out of this, exactly? Well, (again, testing with TEC) your population cap goes from 190 to 280. At the population growth of .1/sec, this takes 900 seconds to fill up, or 15 minutes. You begin at 11.x cash/sec and end up with 14.1 cash/sec. So you've got an increase of 3 cash/sec. 1450/3 = 483.3 seconds, or 8 minutes. It takes you over 20 minutes to break even.

How is this, in any way, worth it? You are losing out on resources that could've gone towards necessary planetary improvements for newly conquered planets, resources that could've gone towards ships to help you clear planets faster and kill the other player. The beginning of the game is a very important time, and you don't have resources to burn like you do later on, especially once you get your economy off the ground. Throwing away money to something that takes 20 minutes to break even, to even start being profitable, simply does not make strategical sense.
strategy
22,988 views 46 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Mind you, this was tested on an all-'fast' game.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I'll leave the details of actually spending that crystal to someone who's spent more time crunching the numbers than I have. To highlight an answer to the original question, the value of crystal at the beginning of the game should be pretty easy to see.

With the resources available to you right out of the gates, it would take ~8-9 minutes to accumulate 200 crystal (not to mention the fact that you have to actually build the extractor first) and crystal is most likely to be the limiting factor in any planetary upgrade, structure, or research that you'll want to do. Sure, you're down 700 credits but it will only take you a little over a minute at starting rates to get that back.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
What are you building, 5 seconds into the game, that you need 200 more crystals than you start with?

Obviously, I'm not contesting the idea of spending money to buy crystal if you have extra cash or metals laying around. I'm specifically contesting HunterX's idea that you need 200 crystal and a population cap upgrade right at the start of the game.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
If you buy 200 crystal at the start of the game, you can immediately queue up:
* Your population upgrade.
* Your capital ship factory.
* A colony frigate.

I believe that you end up using only 125 extra crystal (rather than 200), but that's not a denomination in which you can buy materials, so 200 it is. :)

Note that you can queue up all of these things before your crystal extractor comes online; at this point in the game, you're making 0 crystal/sec, and getting the capital ship and a colony frigate out is crucial to getting that first colony up and running.

The capital ship can pretty much solo-creep the first asteroid, and if the colony ship has been alive for long enough it'll have enough energy to jump to the asteroid and colonize it immediately.

I believe that you can pick 2 of the above 3 items if you only buy 100 crystal; and I believe that you can buy the capital ship factory with your starting crystal; but you need to buy some crystal to be able to afford the colony frigate before your crystal extractor comes online.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
You can buy 100 crystal and build a capital ship that has the ability to colonize.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Someone has yet to justify the benefits of buying a population cap ASAP to me.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
You can buy 100 crystal and build a capital ship that has the ability to colonize.
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Sure you could; and that's a perfectly viable plan. But if you want to build anything but a colony capship for your first capship, or if you want to buy a different ability for it at level 1, it's colony frigate buying time.

Also, a number of the competitive 1v1 players like having a colony frigate anyway if they're playing TEC or Advent so that they can capture neutral extractors.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
You can buy 100 crystal and build a capital ship that has the ability to colonize.
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congratulations of clules anwser of the day

i wana laught at your colonyship while my sova rape your early eco :D
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
In single-player you should do fast-reselling at twice the price, or at least in 1.02 you did.

Also, upgrading newly acquired asteroids is no problem even if you upgrade your homeworld...
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
You can buy 100 crystal and build a capital ship that has the ability to colonize.Sure you could; and that's a perfectly viable plan. But if you want to build anything but a colony capship for your first capship, or if you want to buy a different ability for it at level 1, it's colony frigate buying time.Also, a number of the competitive 1v1 players like having a colony frigate anyway if they're playing TEC or Advent so that they can capture neutral extractors.
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You can buy 100 crystal and build a capital ship that has the ability to colonize.congratulations of clules anwser of the dayi wana laught at your colonyship while my sova rape your early eco
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I said you *could*, not that you *should*. I always buy the 200 crystals myself *and* I usually get a colony capship as well. I can sometimes colonize two planets at once that way, which gives me a huge starting advantage.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
You dont "need" crystal or the population upgrade.
But they are effective.

Crystal is the "bottleneck" resource in the beginning. Everything but the light frigs needs large amounts (for the beginning of the game) of crystal and you start with only one mine. You want the population upgrade, so you need crystal if you want to expand normally too (cap factory etc).

Which brings us to the next point: population upgrade.
Yes it takes a while to pay off. In the beginning there are very few options to increase your income however.
Actually there are only two! The pop upgrade and expansion.
Expansion is limited by the speed at which you can creep planets and the antimatter of your colony frigates though.
Just as a comparison, a trade port needs about 15 minutes before it makes any profit (calculating with low resource costs and 2-4 jump long routes).

Spending the resources of the pop upgrade on anything else will not noticeably speed up your expansion. The pop upgrade itself however guarantees a big income boost.
Far until the midgame your homeworld will provide the majority of your credit income. Increasing that income by 25% is a huge advantage.

The point is, the pop upgrade pays for itself in every game you play (if you dont leave early).


Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
The biggest advantage of event aking planets early on is to get their crystal. Unless you already have the resources to upgrade their population and build extractors it's silly to take them at all in the early game.

I think it's a mistake to get the free capital ship like that. If anything, you should get a free colony ship, a couple scouts, and some functioning extractors instead.

Then you would think twice about making moves like the home planet upgrade because you might get attacked by frigates and have no defense if you spend too much too soon. The biggest reason to do it at the beginning though as things stand is simply so you will not forget.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
11cred/sec is 660 credits a minute.
14cred/sec is 840 credits a minute.
.5 crystal/sec is 30 crystal a minute.(so 6.6~ minutes to get 200 crystal)

200 crystal costs 650 credits on market(this is adjusted now)

That's all I'm saying. You do the math. I'm sick and tired of explaining this to you guys, especially with all the experience I have maybe you should just trust the experienced players that ALL know this.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I use the extra crystal to buy that second civil research station so I can go right for the trade post tech and start earning some credits.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Or maybe we should just continue to ignore you as the troll you are. Sounds like a plan to me.

Anyone without a superiority complex want to explain the advantages/disadvantages of this in more detail? And if you do upgrade your home planet's infrastructure post-haste, do you also do the same on all new conquered territories?
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
I've already done it dozens of times in the other thread.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Dude don't upgrade the infrastructure if you dont want. I don't really care. And when I'm curb stomping your face, don't say "OMG HAX."
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
I've already done it dozens of times in the other thread.
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Yeah, your explanations have been real gems, Innociv:

THERE IS NO CHOICE.

You CANNOT CHOOSE to not buy 200 crystal, or at least 100, at the start.
It's OUT OF THE QUESTION. If you don't, you have lost.
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Excuse me for paying more interest in users who actually feel like discussing the issue. That okay with you? Okay, thanks.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
I'm sick and tired of explaining this to you guys, especially with all the experience I have maybe you should just trust the experienced players that ALL know this.
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Innociv, please stop trying to shut down discussions on this forum with your brand of aggressive elitism. You are not the arbiter of truth and justice on the forums, and acting like such is only going to get your points ignored.

(Yes, I know, I'm not the arbiter of truth and justice on the forums either, but you pushed my buttons enough for me to snap out a response. Congratulations; I will try to make sure it doesn't happen again.)
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
I said much more than that in that thread. The first post outlines why you needed to, and subsequent posts by myself and other players.

It's simple, without the crystal you're setting yourself minutes behind. Credit income is much faster than you need early on, while crystal income is much slower than you need.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Which brings us to the next point: population upgrade.Yes it takes a while to pay off. In the beginning there are very few options to increase your income however.Actually there are only two! The pop upgrade and expansion.Expansion is limited by the speed at which you can creep planets and the antimatter of your colony frigates though.
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Agreed, and furthermore: on really small maps (Point Blank, Close Encounters, etc.) expansion is also limited by lack of expansion opportunities. Close Encounters, for example, has only 9 planets: 2 Terran homewolds, 2 asteroids, 2 Ice planets, 2 asteroid fields, and a pirate base. Since the asteroid fields are uncolonizable, and going Civil 2 for an Ice planet is extremely risky on that small of a map against an aggressive opponent, that means that your only expansion may well be to your own asteroid.

. . . so when your expansion potential is limited to one extra (asteroid) colony, getting the population upgrade as soon as possible starts being the only thing you can do to get a credit edge on your opponent. (That, or taking the neutral extractors and selling any extra resources for credits.)
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
Your math is a little of, Jinnigan. To find your projected benefit from doing the initial population upgrade, assuming that you grow at .1 a second and your end income is three higher, you have to split up how much more money while your planet is growing and how much you're making after it's done, which you didn't do. More precisely:

Solve the equation 750 = integral from 15*60 to 0 of[ (15*60-x)*.1*1/30*dx]+3t for the variable t. What this variable is is the number of seconds past the fifteen minute mark that you need to wait to break even. This time should be noticeably smaller than your calculated time of 23 minutes, and since most sins game last at least that long, the pop upgrade should be a good investment.

Note that this does not factor in the other resources, so it's not too perfect a number. However, as others have mentioned, since crystal is your bottleneck resource at the beginning of the game, its probably safe to assume that the increased speed of your tech and expansion helps compensate for these lost resources.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
Your math is a little of, Jinnigan. To find your projected benefit from doing the initial population upgrade, assuming that you grow at .1 a second and your end income is three higher, you have to split up how much more money while your planet is growing and how much you're making after it's done, which you didn't do. More precisely:Solve the equation 750 = integral from 15*60 to 0 of[ (15*60-x)*.1*1/30*dx]+3t for the variable t. What this variable is is the number of seconds past the fifteen minute mark that you need to wait to break even. This time should be noticeably smaller than your calculated time of 23 minutes, and since most sins game last at least that long, the pop upgrade should be a good investment.Note that this does not factor in the other resources, so it's not too perfect a number. However, as others have mentioned, since crystal is your bottleneck resource at the beginning of the game, its probably safe to assume that the increased speed of your tech and expansion helps compensate for these lost resources.
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I was considering how to respond to this thread, this was the answer.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Right .. stuff I've already said. Why do people need others to do math for them anyways?

Google is a calculator too, you know.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
Well, instead of buying pop you could buy 3 light frigates. The planet upgrade will pay for itself in ten minutes, long before any real fighting occurs. Will your 3 light frigates do the same?