building lists and economic thoughts

[huckleberry]

Since this is a newer game there aren’t a whole lot of tables comparing buildings, so I thought I would take a crack at it. Warning- despite posting in this forum group in no way do I consider myself a pro, so use at your own risk. I am guessing others have done a similar exercise and my apologies if this has been posted before.

building	cp to build	cost $	maint $	pop limit	cp limit	mine	TP	RP	entertain	EP	Defense	Subsidy $/CP	est. profit  after maint	turns to pay off
hab 1	10	200	10	1								66.67	4	50
hab2	20	400	20	2								66.67	8	50
hab3	40	800	30	3								66.67	12	66.67
hab4	80	1200	40	4								50	16	75
spice den1	20	200	5					1	5			33.33	-5	never
spice den 2	30	400	15					1	10			44.44	-15	never
spice den 3	40	1000	25					2	15			83.33	-25	never
spice hall	50	1250	40					2	20	1		41.67	-40	never
exchange 1	20	250	25				2	1				80	5	50
exchange 2	25	600	50				5	2				66.67	25	24
exchange 3	50	1000	70				6	3	5			84.44	20	50
exchange 4	75	1900	110				8	4	10			26.67	10	190
factory 1	25	200	10		2							26.67	10	20
factory 2	50	400	20		3		1					26.67	25	16
factory 3	75	600	35		4		2					26.67	35	17.1
factory 4	95	1000	40		4		3					35	45	22.2
factory 5	115	1600	50		5		4					46.4	60	26.67
mine 1	15	300	5			1						66.67	16	18.75
mine 2	20	600	10			2						100	32	18.75
mine 3	35	900	15			3	1					85.7	63	14.3
mine 4	50	1500	25			4	1	1				100	74	20.3
mine 5	100	3000	40			5	2	1				100	95	31.6
palace 1	20	300	15	1				1		1	7	50	-1	never
palace 2	25	450	30	1				1	5	2	7	60	-16	never
palace 3	50	600	40	1				2	5	3	7	40	-26	Rnever
space port 1			10	1	1			1					14
space port 2			20	2	2	1		1					39
space port 3			15	3	3	1		1	5				68
space port 4			40	3	3	1		2	5				53
orbit mine 1	30	900	15			2	1					100	42	21.4
orbit mine 2	60	1800	20			3	1					100	58	31.3
orbit mine 3	90	2500	30			4	2					92.6	84	29.8

I calculated Revenue based on following per unit: Pop-$14, mine - $21, cp -$10, and tp -$15. I know all of these assumptions have flaws (pop impacts moral not people available, Cp have to be idle etc.) but it was to give a base line and not care about faction or planet capabilities.

[huckleberry]

To compare the different type of buildings I had to estimate the cost of providing one more unit of a resource. The easy ones are things like population, CP or mining where a low level building could be added to just provide that resource. Things like rp, tp and EP were a bit more of a judgment call by balancing the low level buildings that provide multiple resources. Quality consumed was excluded, most of the time I am trying to calculate if it is worth improvign to save space or to build two cheaper low level buildings.


With these costs I estimated the cost compared to actual, so a negative number is good thing since it shows you have to pay less for similar benefits from a “generic” building.


 

My Observations –
1. Best Subsidy value is from low level factories and the spice den1

2. Mines that start providing TP are the best income machines and have the fastest ROI, but idle factories are very good too.

3. Exchanges are more research facilities than income generators. Exchange lvl 2 and 3 are more cost effective to build and run than lvl 4. Unfortunately you only can build one, you have to be creative to specialize a planet as a research lab

4. Spice dens seem to become more expensive as you upgrade, if you have extra quality it may be advantageous to build multiple lvl 1 structures for the extra research instead of a lvl2 or 3.

5. If you build higher level habitats, factories or mines in most cases you pay more in CP and initial cost compared to multiple low level buildings but save quality and sometimes save on maintenance costs.

6. EP are the hardest resource to get, number of colonies is more important than improvements. This seems kind of ironic to me, I would think a large empire would be harder to run political events and get everyone to cooperate. The primary EP generating building is the palace, but you can only have one. This building ends up being a jack of all trades that has average costs, but some complain the upgrades aren't great and it cannot be demolished if space is needed.

7. Overall the building tree seems well designed. While there are some advantages for researching and building high tech structures, if quality was not a constraint there is no “must have” upgrade. Additionally advance structures tend to provide multiple resources and potentially unused resources, making them more expensive than other lower tech alternatives.

[Cory Trese]

Great observations.

There are more upgrades to come, the entire Orbital section is just getting started.

Balance of Quality Points (many low level vs. single high level) is very intentional, of course.

[beuns]

huckleberry : great post ! Exalt