I'm one of those guys who buys GP. I've bought a few hundred worth so far. I like the game and have disposable income, yay me.

Early on the 1000 research points for 15GP was a reasonable deal - it got me a research level, or at least a good bit towards a research level.

Now that my lowest tech costs several thousand research, it's not a bargain at all. I suggest that the amount of research you get for 15 GP scales to your level with a minimum of 1000, so that it remains another thing worthy of spending GP on.

Obviously the alternative is what I'm doing now - just not buying RP anymore with my GP. But if I run low on GP, I'll buy more, which is a good thing for everyone, all around.

Yeah, I've thought about that too. I don't really see why they shouldn't do that.

Yep. It needs to scale with your rank. After all, daily rewards had the cash scaled with rank so is the wheel. Why can't RP??

After all, 15 GP for TINY 1k RP when my production is 10k RP per hour?? What a joke.. Cost is way too much for neglectible return..

My thinking is 15 GP buys you 100% your research cap.

If you have a 30,000 research cap at rank 200, you'll get 30,000 RP's with 15 GP. Besides the higher tech's cost well over 200,000 RP's per increment so that still doesn't unbalance gameplay. All my available tech's now are at that range and I'm rank 200 myself. So 30,000 won't really make a huge difference. The highest tech's cost MILLIONS of RP's, so again, 30,000 research is nothing. Even if I was rank 400 with 60,000 RP cap, if I'm researching, say, Supernova Generators at 800,000 RP's or Hyperflux at 1.6 million RP's, that 60,000 RP gained from one GP payment won't unbalance the game.

First let me say that I have only spent 32 dollars and see no need to spend any more....That being said research has always been the balancing factor for non CC players. While some people could achieve high rank quickly research was never cost effective so players who had spent time player could still compete since CC ships tend to be hollow. I can easily defeat a rank 400 if he has ranked up quickly, however if you can simply instantly buy research the game will become even more unbalanced. Basically you should have to work at SOMETHING instead of just buying it. If GL would go down that road Dan should just offer rank 400 ships with options such as 10 k per hour planets production 2000 tactical officers etc in the manner one buys a car. So I say it should stay just the way it is.

Here we go again with the CC arguments.

For those who don't CC, the research boost would be an incentive for them to buy GP's to catch up to the high levels like PSI Core, Kaos, etc. in research. As it stands, people aren't encouraged to buy GP's unless its for Quasi Expanders and Terraformers with the 10k stats for mission planets. Money wheel? 1000 RP's? Energy refills? Forget those.

Make these other GP options MORE attractive, then more people will be buying GP's to use them. That simple.

I didnt say there shouldnt be CC players, if there were none there would be no more game. There are plenty of GP options now, however i would bet over 80% goes to energy refills. You have just ignored the point and just want to be buy EVERYTHING. You can buy deck, rank points and energy only research cant be purchased practically. My current research is cheap at 400000 and impractical to buy. If however you ranks up first to a high rank and then purchase research you can buy millions of points of research fairly cheaply. Can you tell me why Dan shouldn't sell pre assembled ships if you want him to sell research so cheap as well, I dont see much of a difference from what your proposing.

To say that this change will not imbalance the game if the rp is scaled is not a well thought out thought.To be able to buy your ship in the manner of which is being done..I.E. CC where is the joy of leveling up and getting the free things that you put time into? Not alot of persons have "disposable" income and play this game for fun. While if i had the extra I might spend it on the game too and fault no one for that but remember that the balance must be maintained. I think that the energy fill is more popular because of the npc aspect.Working and building a ship you can be proud of makes this game more worth playing to me. where the fun?

razorxxx

Lets examine the GP options.

1. Full recharge energy (10 GP). This can be done by energy cubes, tri-matrix emblems, or leveling up.

2. Fully Repair Hull (3 GP). This is a joke. You can repair hull every 5 minutes, and you can easily afford the repair. Want to repair in a hurry? Use time manipulators. Or use Repair drones.

3. Fully Recharge Shields (3 GP). Use Shield Restorers, a relatively common artifact drop from AP's or wait about one hour for full refill.

4. 1000 research (15 GP). The subject of this thread and discussion.

5. Random artifact (10 GP). Pretty horrible. What are the chances of scoring a Quasi Expander? You could very well score a pathetic Spy Probe artifact for your random prize.

6. Spin Galaxy Wheel (10 GP). Another "gamble". Might be worth it if you need like 100 billion credits in a hurry but that's only if you already have a high credit already stockpiled. This is generally more useful for high levels who are trying to upgrade to +10 or +12 planetary structures on 50+ planets.

7. Change Race and Procession (20 GP). Useful if you don't have the Glaviz Device or New Year's special item that does the same thing.

8. Artifact market (variable GP). There are only a few decent artifacts here worth buying.

FATHER = 40 GP.
Quasi Expander = 50 GP.
Radiant Surge Cannon = 48 GP.
Planet Flux = 40 GP.
Terraformer = 36 GP.

Less useful items:

Various storage buildings = 16 GP. Storage boosts useful for low levels, useless for high levels. Its all proportional.
Planet Renamer = 16 GP. Useful for those who are into that kind of thing.
Weather Controller = 24 GP. 2 research for 2 space? Can get 2 Spy Uplinks for same benefit, or get a +2 research for 1 space building from NPC's. Population bonus is okay, but not too stellar.

All the other artifacts in there can be gotten for free rather easily in artifact shipments.

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With these GP options laid out, the ones that are likely to be used are the artifact shop, the energy refill, and the galaxy wheel (for those needing gazillions of credits). Changing your race / profession option is nice too. The repair / shield recharge is USELESS, and the random artifact is too risky considering the sheer amount of "can get free via AP" artifacts on the artifact shop compared to "only can find at artifact market" ones.

Now, my recommendations:

Repair Hull (3 GP) = change to: Add 30 Hull (15 GP).

Recharge Shields (3 GP) = change to: Add 15 shields (15 GP).

Random Artifacts (10 GP) = change to: Random Non-AP Artifacts (30 GP). Might get Quasi for cheap but you may get a Storage building for almost 2x its GP price.

Artifact Market = Cut all the common AP items GP cost by 50%, while keeping the rare / non-AP items at original price.

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This should give players more incentive to buy GP's, and have more good options to select to spend their GP's on.

As for the research / GP situation. A level 400 player has a cap of 60,000 RP's. The high end tech's like Supernova Generators or Dimensional Masking or the like cost over 600,000 RP's PER increment, and easily over 2 million to complete the tier. Okay, lets say the level 400 uses GP's to buy research using my idea.

600,000 RP's = buy the research GP 10 times for total of 150 GP. Then multiply that by 3 or 4, depending on how many increments (some tiers are 3 increments, and others are 4) or different research amounts (some are 500,000 per increment and others 800,000). We're looking at 450 - 600 GP's to complete ONE high level research tier. That's equalivent to buying your mission Dyson via 10 Quasi Expanders at 50 GP's each.

Now multiply that for all 8 tech fields. Thats 3,000+ GP's! Even more if you want to do 2 or 3 tiers per field.

Now lets revert to the original 1,000 research per 15 GP. The same player would need to get 60x as much GP's to do the same thing. Who can afford to pay 180,000 GP's to catch up in 8 high level research fields using the old system? 180,000 GP's equals approximately $18,000 in real world money. Who wants to pay THAT much for a Facebook game?

But wait! This is assuming the player is level 400. Most GL players are level 50 - 200 these days. Level 200's get 30,000 research capacity, so 30,000 research with 15 GP's as per my idea. They'd need TWICE as many GP's as a level 400 to catch up in the same tech's. The beauty of my idea is that it's DYNAMIC, it depends on the player's level and the average tech's for these players.

Not game breaking in the slightest.

Ok your picking the just about most expensive tech there is and making it sound like middle of the pack research. It is the very end of energy research, so your just reinforcing my point. So for a little over 50 dollars you can buy super nova mk4s. I find your constant reference to super nova and hyper flux as a totally disingenuous argument. From the math i believe you can research the entire weapons tree for about 850 gp or about 80 dollars(60000 res for 15 gp). Shields a lot less then that, so a rank 400 can buy the entire research tree, everything from weapons to planetary production, for a few hundred dollars. You also mention options but your only adding one option so other then advocation the right to buy your ship tech very cheaply your not adding anything else to the game. Im glad you have so much disposable income, the vast majority of GL players do not spend hundreds of dollars a on a simple FB Beta game, seems like you just dont want to work for it and put the time in and just want to buy it all. Get good planets and plod through research like the rest of us have through time spent building research production and and game time harvesting it.

This is the dumbest thread in the suggestions and ideas forum. Research is what holds the little balance in this game already due to levels. If these ideas were implemented... well.. bye bye balance is all i can say.

Maybe I'd hold a funeral on it's behalf as well in fact

I refer to these high end tech's because most people would be trying to research these by rank 300. As a fact, I'm rank 200 myself and I have researched all the tech's under 200,000 RP's per increment. The next batch of tech's I need to research are double that. If I don't spend GP's or anything, it will take me roughly 100 days to get all the way up to Hyperflux Relays if I pour every bit of research I have into it, starting from Intra-D Collider tier and go all the way to the end. I've been playing GL since May.

So cut the level 400 example to a level 200 example. It would cost them twice as much GP's to research the same tech's a level 400 would.

My original point still stands. Using the 15 GP's for 1000 RP's would cost a level 400 about $18,000 real world cash to advance all 8 tech fields one tier in the higher end tiers. Considerably less real cash for the 3rd or 4th best tiers in all tech fields.

Besides, $100 real world money is still a lot for a FACEBOOK game. If this was a serious MMROPG with monthly fees like WoW or EVE or whatever, then I can see spending $100 to catch up with the higher level players. But over $1,000? Let alone $10,000? Forget that. I could pay for a year's of college or a car for $18,000!

Think in terms of balance, fools. Think what would having research scaled to rank do? Just think for 5 fxxxxx seconds -.-

It would not imbalance the game, if the scaling was done in such way to not imbalance the game. And certainly, it could be. To complain it would imbalance the game without considering how it might scale, is just to shout for no reason.

How about spinning a percentage wheel - from 10% to 40% in 5% increments - and being awarded that much of your max research pool? With two '1000 RP' bars - kind of boobie prizes like the x1 and x2 slots on the galaxy wheel?

I'd pay 15GP to spin that wheel, probably repeatedly, even if I hit 10%.

Alternatively, what about just giving you 25% of your RP pool?

Or, scale it by giving you 100x your level, with a minimum of 1000RP? 6400 RP at level 64 would help me, but not in any game changing fashion. It'd play to my impatience the way 1000RP does not any longer.

There's three scale thoughts; I'd be happy with any of the three... anyone else?