Economic analysis - Is Advent crippled long-term?

I'm a very inexperienced player, with no online games and only a handful of vs. AI games done, but.. are refineries even worth it for non-Advent?

With a cost of 1500 creds 125 metal 175 crysal (= about 2400 creds = about 1000 metal/crystal) each.. and assuming they'll serve say 8 extractors.. it will take 30 minutes to see a return on your investment at all. That's a fairly long time, as in my experience I'll decisively win in 2 hours or so (again, caveat, I've only played against AI). Even with 10 extractors served it's not 5 minutes faster. And this doesn't count the resources spent on the tech (which, if you build enough refineries, should be negligible, but... if you build enough refineries, why didn't you just double your fleet size and steal someone else's homeworld).

I'd like to see the numbers for refineries all put together. It says that Advent have difficulty with trade, but it's difficult to find the direct comparison of resource income.

Boco, your numbers are right. I also have only been playing against the AI. Have you tried ggainst large numbers of hard AIs teamed against you? I suspect it matters a lot more on entrenched games. It'd also be good to have some MP folks comment...

It may be true that it's just too much of an investment!

Bobucles, those pages are saying that Advent has more trouble with trade (they're the only race that can't increase it with research) and with refinery income (Resource Focus is less robust than others' refineries). So it's a long-term thing. But there are lots of possible scenarios, all depending on how big the map is (and how much is uncolonizable), against how many players, how fast it moves versus how entrenched, etc. Did you have any particular scenarios or comparisons in mind?

Also note how Boco makes a good point that I hope others will join in, and talk about.

The nice thing about the Advent "refining" process is I can switch between Trade and Refining at a flip of a switch, depending on what I want/need.

Don't forget that Advent get to have +10% approval, meaning a 10% bonus to all resource gathering.

If i'm not wrong trade port income increase by 30% doesn't come until 6 civic research stations. I usually never build more than 3 with advent, so throw in an extra 3 trade ports, and unless it's a lottttttt of tradeports it wont be much of a difference.

Hmm, well, I still think Advent are crippled economically - but it's only gonna show if you have a long-term game against a very strong opponent. IOW in a game where every penny counts, Advent doesn't get as many pennies. In easier games vs. AIs, it doesn't show because they're just too easy.

Regicide, Allure is very high level. A person has probably effectively won by then, don't you think?

I still think you've got a good point, Boco ... if it takes half an hour for a refinery to break even, couldn't that money have been used a lot better elsewhere in the meantime, i.e., on ships to take planets from the enemy.

Now that I think about it, it would really help if those of you posting messages, would say if you're talking about e.g. easy AI games or tough MP games. You can do anything un-economical and do fine in an easy game.   

I kinda think that the advent is at a disadvantage right from the get go but it seems to even out for me later in a longer game. what I mean is that resources seem to take longer to gather than the other races and seem harder (i.e. take longer) to upgrade. pretty much what CommanderAdama said,

I'm with Boco XLVII on this one, refineries are not worth it for any one.

4 tact. slots and all those money and energy for the same reward as a new extrator

I'm thinking we're all right on this one ... the Advent may be disadvantaged long run, but you can make up for it, and ultimately it doesn't play a big deal, except in really unusual protracted games ...

But the insight that surprises me is how expensive refineries are on an absolute scale, like Boco said. And Homefleet, that's a revealing way of putting it ... if you build 1 refinery in a decent place (minor correction: a refinery uses 4 log. slots), it's about equal to having 1 more extractor.

Math: With 6.333 extractors in its domain, 1 refinery is exactly equal to 1 extractor: 1 refinery ship to 1 extractor gives .06 resources per second; .06 divided by the base extractor rate of 0.40/second is 15%; 1/15 = 6.333. This 6.333 is the same as 5 regular extractors and 1 neutral extractor being in the refinery's domain.

Of course refineries do have the advantage that they're not affected by allegiance, so on a big map, they're effectively better than that.

Still, these are good insights. I'll work them into the wiki page.

So instead of building a refinery, one should build six extractors? Cool! Or it would be cool, if one was not limited in the number of possible extractors by the number of available asteroids.
Since six extractors cost 1500 credits, the same as a refinery, the actual cost of the refinery is in it's 125 metal and 175 crystal. It is worth building when there's no more room for expanding.
And I still don't get where exactly is Advent given the short end of the stick here...

OK, 2 comments:

First, Advent and Vasari are both weaker than TEC economically. Until Vasari get RA, at which point they get free ships, so you can argue that ultimately, if the game goes on long enough, Advent appears to be the weakest.

BUT

The Allegiance upgrade of 10% is actually pretty huge. It doesn't seem like much in your capital, going from 100% to 110%, but if it takes a periphery world from 40-50% or 50-60%, that is a pretty huge econ boost, all for a technology that works in synergy with your culture centers.

AND

Endgame Advent fleets are the toughest, pound for pound, if they are properly built out using cap ship and support ship synergies.


Second, Refineries, even with the 1.03 economy, are not bad if you stick them in the right place. Every now and then I will see a crossroads where a refinery can get 9-12 extractors. I have also noticed that the refinery production rate increases with technology. And as you have said, on a big map, extractors in a gravwell with low allegiance are very subpar. If people are playing long games where their empires start to spread out, they should keep an eye out for these good spots where there is a planet at a crossroads.

Of course, with minerals so cheap, there is no reason to not just make trade posts for flexibility. But I think with the 1.04 patch, we should again see the value of a well placed refinery, especially for long games.

Regicide, building a refinery is the same as building *one* extractor (at 100% allegiance), *if* the refinery has 6.3 extractors to service in its domain. More realistically, one would put a refinery at a place with, say, 9 extractors. Then each refinery is like "building" ~1.5 extractors. If you roughly consider metal and crystal to be worth 3x credits (e.g. 100 metal = 300 credits), then TEC refineries cost 2400 credits. So a well-placed TEC refinery costs about 10 times as much as an extractor (250 credits), but only has the output of 1.5 extractors. I'm not sure just what point you were making. Boco's point is that refineries aren't worth it; it's better to spend money on ships to take more planets and extractors, than to spend it on refineries.

As for Advent getting the short end of the stick, please look at the last few lines of the wiki Refinery page, and read up from there to see how the conclusion was reached. (No reason for me to repeat it all.) Let me know if you think Resource Focus is better than refineries, and why.

Cykur, I've heard others say endgame Advent fleets are the best; I've been spending more time experimenting than playing tough games, so I'll take that as a given. I guess the bottom line point is just that Advent is a bit economically weaker for a long time (all through the mid game), and their earlier fleets are weaker too, I've also heard ... I'd say that in the theoretical example of entirely evenly matched tough players in a long-term brawl, they would always lose due to economics. It will have taken them some time to get to Allure, as well as to max Resource Focus (if they're even going to try), during which time an evenly-matched player should have already been beating them down with their better ships and mid-game economy, swinging the pendulum irreversibly... these other races would've eaten away at them, as they fought with weaker ships and paid for their high tech that has lower payoff (as least for refineries, and lack of trade research). Allure is definitely nice if you have lots of fringe worlds (the +10% is an absolute 10%; it's not 10% relative to a given planet), but Advent won't have many fringe worlds left - in this *theoretically* evenly-matched game.


But of course, the real world is never so theoretically evenly matched... if the Advent player is better than the other player, the other player will lose. No question. Still, Advent is a bit weaker through much of the game. I'm thinking "crippled" is too strong a word.

As for refineries, don't you think 30 minutes is a bit long for them to break even? I just started typing something about "In fairness, on a huge map, you might be approaching an average allegiance of 50% ... which would effectively make the refinery twice as productive and pay off sooner" ... but in thinking about it more, the cost of the refinery doesn't go down while allegiance is ... it still takes 30 minutes to pay off its fixed cost, anyway you slice it. And maybe that expense could be better spent conquering more worlds - which also has the advantage of taking money away from the enemy?

One could say I'm arguing fine points that only matter in a fairly evenly matched (i.e., tough) game. But then, that's when things really matter ... easy games don't count.  

I said pretty much the same thing in this topic with a little more math to back it up.. basically, you have 4 logistics slots and you want to use them to best effect, so you COULD build a refinery and have it pay off in 30 minutes, OR you could build a trade outpost and have it pay off in 12.

You still might have some weird situation where you want to use refineries (the market has been heavily used so resources are worth a lot to sell, you have like 15 extractors within the refinery's range somehow, you want the game to last another hour for some reason, you want to use up logistics slots on a planet you can't build a trade outpost and don't want a frigate factory or media hub)... but the cost is significant so you shouldn't just say "oh I could build some refineries" without thinking if a trade post or media hub would be worth more.

EDIT: Hmm... the market has been heavily used so resources are worth a lot to sell. I've been using a figure around 200/300 to do the math, whichever makes rounder numbers, and I ended up with refineries costing twice as much but producing around the same, so they pay off twice as slow but once they're in the black they're just as good. In a game where everyone's been using the market and the prices are doubled, say in the 500 or 600 range, and you know those prices will stay that high, refineries pay off just as fast as trade ports and then become MORE profitable. So I don't know what's changed in any patches or what will change in future ones, but if the market, once high, stays high, refineries are good investments again. So they're riskier, and you still need to think of good places to use them before you even bother researching them, but they can probably be used in weird games.

Yeah, I have posted several times over the last couple weeks that refineries are not as bad as people make them out to be. When well placed, they are actually more profitable than tradeports. And they are especially valuable if someone is playing an epic sized single player game that takes hours. I almost never build them for multiplayer, the games are too short.

That said, you have to understand where to put the refinery...if it isn't carefully placed, it is a waste of credits and slots.

Edited due to erors in my data Where is the delete button? Why do these forums suck so much?