There have been a number of natural Dysons sold for large amounts of GP items based on CTP equivalencies, and I have my doubts that it works out for the buyer in the end. I've run some rough numbers that seem to validate my feelings. I'm curious what everyone else's thoughts are.

My example case is the recent sale of a 45x Artifact Dyson for the equivalent of 175K CTP. Now, I haven't checked to see how the buyer is paying in this particular case, and perhaps they have that much CTP/equivalent in artifacts from trading, NPC, extracting off planets. However, for this analysis I'm going to assume (as it seems to be the most common case) that the planet is being bought with storage artifacts purchased with GP.



Now, there are a bunch of other ways the GP could be spent (dumping poor colonies, QSEs, planet fluxes for good invades, etc), but I'm going to compare with the simple case of buying Terraformers.



Given that many Terraformers, and the worst case scenario of using a supply of extremely spare VM gas planets which will take 26 TDs each to uplift to 14x Artifact (+ the 14x minerals and 15x research), you can get 5.5 Colossal 14x MR planets...



Now, the Dyson will likely be rifted (assuming the buyer has not rifted 3 planets already), and while it's not the best use of a rift, let's assume that the non-Dyson buyer finds a Terra and uses the remaining 13 TDs to max it and then rift it.



I'm not going to work in Trellith or supply conduit for the production output of these. They would increase the benefit of a single 60x planet. I am assumming that many of the rift buyers don't have a lot of supply conduits and may not have unlocked Trellith, but you can correct the rift numbers in each case if you desire to see whether it shifts it.

My conservative rough estimates of final outputs:


Those are conservative numbers, both cases can be optimized more given the right artifacts and layout. I'm curious if I'm wildly off on either of those cases as well. If I'm not, than a least optimal use of the GP for uplifting gas planets seems like a better payoff that buying and rifting the Dyson. Let me know what you think!

Using your numbers, not only would trelith close that gap, but it would actually put the dyson ahead by about 300.

Also have to consider the dyson uses much less planet slots, and unlike the plasmas it can never be stolen.

And if the buyer sold the storages on. their own say 650 per, the gp cost drops to about 4300.

That drops it to about 120 terraformers, which basically means the loss of one plasma.

I do consider the plasma uplifts to be the simplest non-optimal use of the GPs, so including Trellith in the calculations, do you think it's likely that the rifted Dyson still beats out 4300 - 5000 GP spent strategically on better project planets and the like? Or (and this is entirely possible, as I haven't calculated out all the ways it could be used) are the plasma uplifts actually a better/best use of that GP?

Win.

When I get the chance after work I'll play with the numbers a bit. My guess is the best use would be tech to buy already maxed planets.

Considering market prices, you could probably get 7 nice 15X+ planets that range from VM to MC for that 175 CTP.

Probably, but I'm putting just short of 90k into the base, so I'll have about 80-85k to work with. Still enough to buy a few good planets, though.