At 300 planets, colonize cost is 27b credits. So the question comes up in planning in advance...

Assuming I get mining or RP planets just for income, how do I determine when to stop getting "income planets" and get "AP only" ? A typical upgraded planet is 530m/day (mining) or 420m/day (RP) estimated in credits. Let's just call it 500m/day. As you have to consider future income vs. future colonize cost of the planet, there are some variables.

Example: I have 200 planets. I can get 100 more AP planets, or I can get 1 income planet (mining, 16x toxic or whatever) now and then 100 AP planets. What did it cost me (extra) ? Turns out it costs the 301th planet cost: 27,270,901,000 credits. Now, 27b / 500m ~ 54 days, and most people aren't going to go from 200 -> 300 planets in that time, therefore it seems the mining planet was worth it.

Now, the pattern seems clear; assuming I have "enough" research done that I am just collecting income, and any non-AP planet is for income, then if I have N non-AP planets, the "cost" is the last N planets. Let's try again saying I have 50 income planets (mixed RP/mining) and assume they are all like 15x, around 500m income per ("best case scenario"); apply to the above example, say I got 300 AP planets or 50 income planets the 300 AP planets. Colonizing 300 planets is 2,038,522,500,000 credits (we are ignoring invade to simplify). 350 planets is 3,773,030,625,000.

The cost difference is 1,734,508,125,000 (~1735b). Those 50 upgraded planets need to generate 34,690,162,500 a piece over an arbitrary period (colonizing the 300 planets) to justify themselves. That gives 70 days @ 500m each, which still seems pretty reasonable considering how many planets we are talking about (no one gets 350 planets in 70 days).

But... let's take a normal person who is adding a mining planet. Without having everything 15x. So the planet has about 1/3 of the resource value (still implying rich/vrich VL natural toxic). You can get about 150m/day out of it. So the time to breakeven is ~210 days instead. Still a good deal right ?

I am not sure at what point it would have been "not worth it" to add the income, I can't find a case that matches anyone's planet count (which surely is < 500 planets at most) that says you should not have and upgrade at least 50 non-AP planets. However, if you get one now with 300 planets... you are likely colonizing more slowly anyway... it's hard to justify getting a non-AP planet when you get this high.

As I was bored and curious, I found that a 200 AP/hour planet will give you more credit than would from a 500m/day mining/research planet after ~23 years(in term of total credit generated over the entire period)

Now.... do we love the game that much? XD
granted ppl might run around with 500-1000 AP/hour planets sometimes... but that's still 5-10 years so~ meh~

Not sure how you estimated that, but 4k/hr will yield about 1 of each of the 60 items per day. I don't know the market prices of all of them, but if you sold some of those items it would be a decent amount now that I think of it. But mainly people get AP for the personal use ship items: prisoners/bots, etc, which is hard to value in credits, but safe to say it's worth more than other resources.

all that are spare change in the long run...
the real thing is android scientist
a 4k/hr production will give you a 100k/hour (or 2400k/day) increase in income permanently each day via average of 1 android scientist.
So over the course of say 100 days, that give you 2400k*100(the one you get on day 1, which lasts the whole 100 days)+2400k*99(the one you get on day 2)+2400k*98 and so on
24k*(100+99+98....1)=2400k*5050
now, if it was 1000 days, it's 2400k*500500 etc
and finally, the course of 10000 days, 2400k*5,0005,000(12trillion), which is more than 10,000*500m(5trillion)

Anyway, if you calculate it out, you will notice that 1700000/(production rate per hour) is roughly the # of days required for it to have a total CR income that match a 500m/day planet over the entire period of time. Any time below that, the constant 500m/day is better, any time above that, the AP planet is better.

Well if you just look at the android -> RP -> income layer, yeah it's barely anything. However, selling a time manipulator runs on 100-200m for example, other stuff like grids that gets used a lot maybe similar value. So if someone can tell me what having 1 of each artifact would sell for (yes, a lot of them aren't sendable, so their value is arbitrary), I can estimate. But trust me the higher players value AP above all else.

I know, AP is defintely most important~
it was just a random note regarding ability to pull in CR XD
It's the theortical period of them where AP beats all RP/MP in every aspect of its effect, even CR income.

selling artifact etc will yield more AP in the short run compared to scienstist boost. But it doesn't have growth--you will only have so many to sell no matter how long you had the AP income.
But scientist stack over time, so in the long run, it gets bigger. even 1 AP per hour can eventually yield 1000 trillion cr/hour (granted.... that's gonnta take forever)

This is real simple, when you get where you are making way more credits than you use, do not get any more mining (until you start needing more), when you reach your goal of research points, do not get any more research, you will ALWAYS NEED MORE ARTIFACT POINTS. As for exact numbers, those all depend on how YOU play the game, simple enough? Just play the games by feel, been working well for me for about 50 years.

Granted I'm still a low level player, but IMHO I am getting mining planets enough so that I can cover my daily upkeep, anything beyond that I go for ap planets. I figure anything else I need in credits I'll get from selling arti's or rp once I max out.

You've been playing computer games since 1961? Or are you referring to sport in general?

This is a very tricky question.

The longer you have been getting high ap the more reserach you will be having also the more npc you kill the more research per hour you get.

I have been pulling high ap for 1.5 years. It gave me enough time to build up my research and mining. I think its safe to say that by collecting only quality mining and reseach planets it should be 30% mining 30% research and then 40% artifact. Once your done with all research then the research contract will help fix the deficit,

in the end it will be the design of planets that will be the game changer. Maximizing space on the planet is key to having high production in all areas.

Say a very large planet mega rich x 3 will yield x amount of resources for player a and y amount for player b and z amount of resources for player c. The player who can squeeze the most resources from a planet. Will gain the advantage.

Of course you have to balance the probability of losing the planet if you put in a very scarce defense and or cloak. Putting too much defense and or cloak will make you lose in efficiency.

Games in general, computer games since early 80's when i got my first, a Commodore C=64, started writing programs on it that were published on LoadStar.

I always wanted a C64, but we couldn't afford one. I used to play on my cousin's whenever I got a chance.

Sorry, I'll shut up on this now before I get accused of threadjacking.