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The economics of expansion?

Agent of Kharma

Join Date 02/2008

+31

The economics of expansion?

Has there been any study at all done on the COST of expansion (what it costs to slap down a planet, upgrade it, etc), vs. NOT expanding?

Every Sins game I've ever seen, or played, is what I will call a "mindless expansion." Now, I don't mean "mindless" in a strategical map sense. In other words, I DO see good players rush to conquer and fortify chokes, try to limit their exposure and fighting to a single front, etc. In other words, I see expansion combined with positional or map strategy, and I do this myself. The question I'm asking is, should there ever be an ECONOMIC consideration of the cost of expanding to some (or any) planet RIGHT NOW vs. NOT doing that, and instead pumping out more frigs, getting out some research, rushing, etc?

I myself have never given consideration to such a thing, and I'm not sure I've witnessed another player doing it. In other words, provided a planet was qualified to be expanded to within my overall map strategy, I've always automatically expanded to it, and it seems others do the same.

Now, it could be that that's simply the smart (or even only) thing to do in most circumstances. But has this been studied?

Example: Take your lone starting homeworld. You can start pumping frigs right away, and even "fleet up" to the next level and continue to do this. You can do this without going and taking another roid, and paying for extractors and upgrades there. Now, compare that with the costs of going out and getting a roid, then two roids. At what point do you "break even" with the costs you are outlaying? How much time does it take? How many frigs could you have gotten out had you not expanded? This is the kind of analysis I'm talking about.

By no means am I suggesting that one could, or should, win games by not expanding. I'm simply asking whether it would pay off to be judicious about expanding FROM AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE (I already know it pays off to expand based on overall map strategy, etc).

Any thoughts?

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bigger planets take longer to develop obviously, but have potentially greater rewards due to non negligible income from population. feel free to apply my analysis technique (crude as it is) to a more complicated situation, like developing a terran world for population income. you'll probably get a similar result but over a longer time frame. higher initial outlay and longer time to recoup investment but result will be a larger net gain once it goes positive. what i'd be most curious to find out is which is most efficient credit for credit in terms of building revenue.

OK, I did a similar analysis for a 90% Terran (w/3 mines).

premises:

1) the tax income at lvl 2 population (100) from the Terran is approximately 2.9 creds/sec. it takes many minutes to get to this level though.

2) the resource income of each rock is .47 resources/sec. the total income from this is 1.41 resources/sec. it takes 30 seconds and 250 credits to build each extractor.

3) the underdevelopment penalty will subtract 2.0 creds/sec for first 45 seconds, and .5 creds/sec for next 60 seconds while the upgrade builds. this total cost is 120 credits.

4) the cost of building the first infrastructure upgrade is 450 credits, 100 metal, 75 crystal; and 550 credits, 175 metal, 125 crystal for the second upgrade (to get out of negative income).

cost analysis:

your outlay in cost is 450+550+750+120= 1,870 credits

in addition you pay 100 metal and 75 crystal; plus 175 metal and 125 crystal. assume conversions rates of 1 resource = 5 credits (median black market price on quick buy button), this amounts to 2375 credit equivalent.

the total cost, all things considered, is 4245 credits.

Ignoring tax income again, and using only the resource income of 423, means 4245/423= 10.0+.5 or 10.5 minutes payback.
Adding income of 2.9/second from a population of 100, is 174/minute, meaning 4245/(423+174) = about 7.5 minutes payback.

Again, these rough calculations don't properly account for the lower income period while the population is growing.

Ofcourse, there are still 2 population upgrades available for a terran - and we've already calculated that the last one would pay for itself in about 15 minutes (but takes much longer to actually build out).

The benefit of having additional logistic slots available is of immeasureable value, and ultimately may be a bigger factor in deciding whether to colonize an additional planet.

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You should note that most terrans have only 2 resource roids.

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true, 2 is the most common number of resource rocks for Terran and Desert worlds. 3 occures pretty frequently as well though, this is the same case with colonizable asteroids. 2 is probably more common than 3 but 3 isn't rare.

SageWon, thanks for catching the small error in my analysis. i think it was a typo or an arithmetic error. either way, not a big deal.

what i'd really like to see for a Terran world is an analysis that plays out over the longer time frame and accounts for all 4 population upgrades. the real value of these worlds is when they reach full maturity and are generating about 9 creds/sec of population based tax income. thats like 4 or 5 trade ports worth of income, which is tremendous.

the issue with doing the benefit analysis on a longer period of population growth is that it would require intengral calculus to do it properly, as well as a function of growth(time) and a multiplicative constant representating income per population. it could be done if all the data was available but i dont have all of that data and its more math than i really want to do. my intuition seems to provide a close enough result that i'm willing to accept my ~20 minutes hypothesis without having rigorous quantitative analysis to back it up.

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Well, we already know that initial upgrades are cheaper, or have a better pay-off than the final upgrade. The third population upgrade costs less than the 4th upgrade, which also increases population by 90. So it will be a better deal as well, but I doubt better than the initial upgrades.

If we look at each of the Terran upgrades individually, they range from a pay-off of about 7.5 minutes to around 20 minutes, so as an average cost, it could be in the 15 minutes ball park. But each take longer to actually build-out than their effective payback, and they must occur sequentially, so the total time to reap the benefits is over an hour.

I would guess that the best income opportunity in the game is: the adjoining asteroid (~5.66 minute payback, plus constructor flight time, and time to build each extractor [@5:1 conversion ratio]).

Other than, ofcourse: grabbing neutral extractors. Which are free! (And pay more).

Regards, Obi 1

(PS. I figured that colonizing a 3 mine Asteroid at 25% allegiance would take about 20 minutes to pay for itself. Therefore about 30 minutes for a similar 2 mine roid.

PSS. Here is a link to an old spreadsheet regarding this information, that I believe Howdidudothat created).

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Population growth rate: most planets: 0.125 per second. Asteroids: .025 per second.

Population value: .025 income per person

Income multiplier: 100% on low income, 115% on medium income, 130% on high income.

Population: growth rate * time

Integration: Divide by 2 and multiply by X.

Allegience: That is its own equation, but allegience doesn't change very often.

Total Income equation (per time): .5 * GrowthRate * PopulationValue * IncomeMultiplier * Allegience * X^2.
Range: from 0 to time of max population.

So a terran homeworld going from 0 - 280 population takes 2240 seconds to max out, producing 7840 credits. A world stuck at 280 population produces 15680 credits in the same time frame, a difference of 7840 credits. Add 30% for max income games, and the difference swells to 10200 credits. Losing population can be a pretty expensive loss.

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PSS. Here is a link to an old spreadsheet regarding this information, that I believe Howdidudothat created).

Yeah, wowzers. I forgot about that sheet. Anyway, I will note that that spreadsheet doesn't account for tax penalties, so take the first upgrade for the riods and first two upgrades for planets with a grain of salt.

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