I've been meaning to do this for a while... compare the RP/AP base figures for a brand new player, and ultimately how long it takes AP production to generate enough scientists to surpass the research production of a base.

Now, we also have to take into account what that player is going to do with the research, so structures are an issue. Additionally, the chance of getting a specific artifact (android scientists) is exceedingly complex to work out, due to different artifacts being available with different numbers of points remaining... as such, I'm going to use some quite rough figures.

Getting the Chance of Pulling a Scientist
The mean cost of an artifact structure is 1595.833. It's fairly simple yet long-winded to work out, so if you wanna check it you can, but I just ran the numbers through excel. Additionally, there's a 1 in 60 chance of pulling any given artifact. By that logic, you should - on average - get an android scientist every 95,749 AP. That seems about right - if a little high - from my experiences. If anyone has any actual data on scientists per x, that'd be better.

The bases
Since most level 6 bases are artifact, I'm going to assume 2 level 5 artifact point bases, with an output of 24k/day. This means that the research base produces 1k/hour, and will require 250 android scientists to make up for the deficit.

Artifact Base - what're the figures?
You get an android scientist every 4 days from the base. Therefore, it would take 1000 days to reach the 250 scientists needed to permanently make up for the research production, although, you would have this even AFTER you've left the base. You will only catch up on research production after 270 weeks, and 43 million research - assuming you stay at the RP base, however, it is more likely that you'll leave around the 32 week mark (5 million research) - which will take 91 weeks to reach with the artifact base.

Additionally, since the level 5 research base will allow you to produce more from your planets.

The short answer:
Go to a research base for the first 856,200 research (enough to get +8s), then snap up an artifact base.

only problem with this logic though is it fails to take into account all the other artifacts that are gained besides scientists.
if research is your only concern fine, but that isnt normally the case.

This is true, but often when arguing for AP bases people (myself included) say that you get more research from it in the long run than you do with an RP base, which is not true, assuming that the person then leaves the research bases and ultimately ends up at an artifact base and begins collecting RP production at the same rate you are.

Of course, you have the extra brackets, x-charge, etc. which would be a big ol' project to test mathematically (though possible), and would vary largely based off of what the person put the research into.

I tell ya what. I'll figure out that stuff when I have too much time on my hands, which for now I don't, as I'm attempting to develop my own game, along with a friend of mine, have tweaks to make on the GLCalc that I've been meaning to do (such as energy to depop and fixing that god-damned invasion calc's invasion defence thing). If I have the time though, I'll dig out this thread and update it.

etc..etc.
I only read the title. arti wins, you should know that.

That's not thoroughly thought through. Arti does not automatically beat res at all points.
Arti bonus is obvious.
Res base though means you take can take less res planets which eventually lose their luster.
Also may mean quicker research of weapons meaning more sucessfull invasions of good arti planets, or quicker scanner res making more arti planets scanned. Quicker shield res helping you keep those planets. Quickly getting improved planet structures means more production faster.

Everyone knows arti makes res, but in some ways res can increase arti.

This analysis isn't quite as simple as you imply.

your 1 in 60 chance of pulling any given artifact isnt acurate

these are some off the artifacts new players should be hunting for (or trying not to get when it comes to the MSP's)
Tesseract Container = 1750 points
Android Scientist = 1800 points
Durtanium Brackets = 1800 points
Android Helmsman = 2.000 points
Ship-Bot = 3.000 points
Rescued Prisoners = 4.000 points
Mass Storage Pod = 20.000 points

you can only get an artifacts, if you have enougth points to pay for it
so as sone as your total, drops below 19.999 points, you can no longer get MSP's giving you a 1 : 59 chance to get a Android Scientist, at 3999 points you lose Rescued Prisoners, Continuum Beacon, Warp Gate Chassis increasing the chance to get a Android Scientist to 1 : 56 etc etc etc until you get below 1799 points you have 0 chance to get Android Scientist

at low production, you can use this to try optimizing what you get, so you pick up as few MSP's a posible, and and stop pulling more artifacts once your total gets below 4.000 points, so you have a 1 : 59 chance to get a Bot, Prisoners or Android on every point you spendt


Sure, you will proberly be getting around 50K artifact points pr day from a level 6 artifact base, so the first 30K points are imposible to controle - but stopping at 4K points, and and letting your total build up to max 19.999 again before draw again, will give you a few extra off these artifacts pr week, compaired to just just using the all option

at low production levels, this can make a huge difrence, but at high artifact production you stop carring about this, and just want your artifacts as farst as posible......


as for recearch...... Gas Very Massive Research: Rich or Research: Extremely Rich are very easy to find, join a god legion with a few rank 300+ members, and they will proberly give you a few off those for free to help boost your recearch
a planet like that can easily bring in 200-300 recearch pr hour even at low recearch levels, and are easy to boost even futher if you go Kronyn

good artifact planets on the other hand, are not so easy to find or boost

Kronyn chain (rank 5) = 85K energy, Taltherian Chain (rank 230) = 400K energy

so if you make it a priority, you can proberly change race to Kronyn around rank 50 - 70 the chain gives you around 188K XP, but I havent bothered calcylating how many ranks that will give you if you start it at rank 5
but before you can start boosting the stats on your artifact planets with the Taltherian ability you be atleast rank 260 or more
so by then, You could easily have a few Colossal Plasma planets X17 mega rich in recearch

same with mining, hunt NPC's to pick up Toxic Purifier and you easily have a few x15/16 mega rich Toxic mining planets, by the time you unlock the Taltherian race

so as I see it, an artifact base wins every time

The argument is not wether res is better than arti.
It is instead can a res base early on actually result in more arti than an arti base.


Also earliest level for finishing kronym is 96. That is with 0 exp from anything else for 91 levels, and never using a neural.

Slowing your ranking and letting your research catch up while soaking up arti is a much better alternative.

Only if you do not have decent planets to take. Otherwise that slow ranking is holding you back more than a mining base.

856K recearch at 24K recearch pr day = 36 days + 1 day to get loyal when you switch base
and that is presuming you only do the production recearch

37 days at 50K artipoints = 37 * 50.000 = 1.85 mil artifact points
you will get around 19-20 off every artifact if we presume an even distributiuon
(this isnt 100% true, as you will get a lot more of the low cost artifacts then you will off the high cost, as you will get those all the way down to around 250 artipoints, but some off the high cost stop at 20K, 5K 4K or 3K points, but it is the fastest aproximation you can do without trying to guess presisly how the players draw theire artifacts)

that is somewere around +120 scienctists, +90 helmsmen + 40 decks, + 60 rank points, and + 1400 cargo

difrence betwen production 2 and production 8 structures on a Terra Very Large Artifact: 2x Mega Rich
is somewere around

Very Large = size 57
so 8 Analyzer Drones = production 16 vs 3 Gravitonic Revealer +1 Subterranean Probes = 21 production if you go all production on the planet
but you would also have plenty off Space Elevator, Warp Gate, Processing Core, Refining Lab and Relay Tower to put on the planet from your artifact points and Planetary Time Vortex to make sure you got max production from day one (but lets leave those out for now)

with those 2 basic setups, production would be
16 * 3.5 * 2 = 112 artifact points pr hour = - points pr day if you had been sitting at an artifact base for 37 days
vs
21 * 3.5 * 2 = 147 artifact points pr hour = 3528 points pr day

difrence is 840 artifact points pr day

lets say, you get 10 planets like that one.... = 8.400 more artifact points pr day
(10 planets = rank 36, and Terra Very Large Artifact: 2x Mega Rich are hard to find, so most off the planets you pick up early in the game wont be this good - so 8.400 extra points pr day, as a lot more then you actualy will get unless you buy a Mission exotic + dysson as soone as you can)

at that rate it would take you 217 days to get the 1.85 mil artifact points you would have gotten from the artifact base in 37 days

at the same time, 120 sicentists = 120 recearch pr hour would give you 624.960 recearch points


but what the artifact base would realy give you on those planet would be
1 Warp Gate, 2 Space Elevator, 1 Processing Core, 1 Refining Lab, 1 Relay Tower + 7 Analyzer Drones = 19 artifact production or 133 artifact points pr hour = 3192 artiafct points pr day

and the 1 Warp Gate, 1 Processing Core, 1 Refining Lab, 1 Relay Tower will also help your production on your mine and recearch planets, so you would need more than just production 8 structures for a chance to catch up
take that into account, and you will never catch up to a player that spendt all his time at an artifact base,

also, the +90 helmsmen + 40 decks, + 60 rank points, and + 1400 cargo
will give the you an edge in combat, making it easy to pick up Dominion Cannon, and other battle marked as farst as posible, as you will have more defence, attack and energy - more energy and attack from Tactical Officers and Engineers = farster ranking, as it takes less energy to kill NPC's and you get more energy to spendt every time you rank


so, NO if I was restarting in this game, I wouldnt bother spending time at a recearch base

wait a sec. comparison needs to have equal base levels to work. your math is like comparing a six shooter to a glock

your math is also wrong. 3 gravatonic revealers + 1 subterranean probe = 27 arti points
that more than doubles the difference.

this is the setup thunderbolta used



if you want recearch you'll have to go to a level 5 base, as you normaly find those in traning and new legions
but theire are quite a few level 6 artifact bases out theire, so you dont have to limit yourself to staying at a level 5 artifact base.
so as I see it, to keep it as realistic as posible, you would pick a legion with a level 6 artifact base as that are the level most artifact bases have acording to thunderbolta - so that is the level most players joining a legion with an artifact base would get



what you get from doing math late at night , typed in 3 * 6 + 3 = 21 instead off 3*8 +3 = 27
change the difrence from 21 -16 = 5 points to 27-16 = 11 points = 1848 points pr day pr planet = 100 days (with 10 very lagre Teran x2) to get the 1.85 artifact points

or if you take the artifact structures into account, that is 27-19 = 8 points = 1344 points pr day pr planet = 137 days
presuming, the the production level off the player on the artifact base stays at 2 all 137 days

137 days with 120 extra scienctists, = 2880 recearch pr day, = less then 1 day for Megastructures, 4 days for Nano Assembly (level 1-3), 9 days for Deep Extraction (level 1-3), 5 days for Hyperspheres , and 31 days for Global Meshing

so after 14 days, of spending the recearch from scientists on production structures
the production would be, 1 Warp Gate, 2 Space Elevator, 1 Processing Core, 1 Refining Lab, 1 Relay Tower + 4 Deep Scan Harmonizer + 1 Analyzer Drones = 23 artifact production reducing the difrence to only 4 points pr hour

and after 45 days you would have 1 Warp Gate, 2 Space Elevator, 1 Processing Core, 1 Refining Lab, 1 Relay Tower + 3 Mesh Probes + 1 Deep Scan Harmonizer = 24 production
but after 45 days would also have been enougth for the recearch base player to put 1 Warp Gate, 2 Space Elevator, 1 Processing Core, 1 Refining Lab, 1 Relay Tower on all his planets, = 1 Warp Gate, 2 Space Elevator, 1 Processing Core, 1 Refining Lab, 1 Relay Tower + 3 Gravitonic Revealer = 29 production

so basickly 120 scienctists would more or less eliminate the production advantage you get from production 8 structures in just 14 days
so around 200 days to catch up to the 1.85 mil artifact points is more or less accurate, even if I miscalcylated the production off the recearch player in my first post

there are plenty of res lvl 6's if thats what you want.
run the numbers on the same lvl base and they wont be nearly so far off.

I submit that the answer to the "which is better" question is not the same for everyone. Not everyone has the same goals in the game. And not everyone finds the same aspects of the game fun. And some people need different things at different points of the game.

It's a question that sound simple but the answer is complex and does have some grey area.

I agree 100%

I'm not saying you cant find a level 6 recearch base
the 24K recearch pr day was the number given by thunderbolta, what I'm doing is simply compairing that to what you can easily get from base shipment in some off the legions recruding members here on this forum

if you look at, Board index » Galaxy Legion » Legions
you can easily find 5, 10 legion on page 1+2 who are recruding members and have a artifact base level 6, or even level 7

The Diamond Lance - -A Level 6 artifact base, 55k+ daily
Earths Militant Evolution - Our Level 6 base is artifact based with .... (no daily production listed)
-------NEMESIS------- - lvl 6 artifact base (no production listed)
Felons Unleashed - A level 6 artifact base maxed out...
Desperado Family - level 7 Base - Around 70K Artifact daily shipment
The Sith Lords - Level - 6 Production - 50k+ Artifact points per member. Even split 5 days per week.
We Don't Exist - Our level 6 base pumps out about 56k to 60k artifact points per day
etc etc etc

sure you can also easily find a legion with a level 6 recearch bases I see on page 1+2 are
Titans of Navarone - lvl 6 50K Res/25K Arti base
X Ascendant - 65K - 70K research per day, with an addition of 7 - 12K arty.

and both off these, also produce artifacts.....


presisly what bonus you get from the base ability, depends on the race off your members



vs



max bonus for Cyborg DataChannel = 60 members * 2% = 120% if all are loyal Vygoid/ Zolazin
max bonus from Trade Route = 10 treatyes + 5 * 2 treatys from Embassy = 2 + 20 * 2 = 42% if all are trade treatys

so again, even the production you get from a artifact/recearch base is one big aproximation
potentioaly, you can get higher recearch production then artifact production form a base if they are both same level, and you have 22+ loyal Vygoid / Zolazin members
as I stated, In my calcylation I used 24K points points for the level 5 recearch, base and 50K production, numbers could be higher or lover depending on presisly what legion you chose to join


as for planets, as I stated In my aproximation I used 10 very large teran x2 for production
even with those, it would take you quite a few days to catch up to the the 37 days off artifact production from a level 6 base
but the truth here is, the 2 players at the 2 difrent base types would proberly be hunting for difrent planet types, the player at the artifact base would proberly colonize 1 or 2 easy to find very massiv gass planets for recearch, and would be able to buy atleast 1 ok artifact planet, if he sells some off the artifacts he picks up from base shipment
the research player would be hunting for mostly for artifact planets, and would proberly end up with a few Oceanic, Desert, Icy and if he is lucky 1 or 2 Terra
but also depends on what planets you can get from your legion.......or buy for GC's and tcp's



True, that would reduce the number of artifact points to get in 37 days to around 900K points
but at the same time, you could also argue that most players wouldn't only be staying in the recerach legion only 37 days to get the production recearch, but would build up basic recearch in all fields = 90+ days stay at the recearch base instead

and the the production you get from production 8 structures are only worth something is you have desent planets to put your structures on - reduce the planets from VL teran x2 to Large Oceanic ex rich and it will take even longer to catch up to the artifact points gained by spending 90 days at 25K artifact production pr day

so as you sayed your self.....



and the result you'll get depends on what, on how you aproximate

production gained from attifact base vs recearch base,
how many times the base is disabled while you get your points from it
the Planets you get (found, bought and shared)
how mutch defence you put on your planets
random generator, witch determinens presisly what artifact you get,
where or not you buy a mission exotic and/or dyson
how farst you choice to rank, as rank gives you more planets
presisly what you spendt your recearch points on
what aspects of the game you value
and presisly how high you value hiving high recearch
and proberly a few other factors I havent even mentioned here

difrence is, I defined presisly what aproximations I used to get my result, in as many off these cases as posible, or didnt include them as it would be almost imposible to determine how mutch faster you would rank by buying Engineers with the 60 extra rank points you should also pick up from Rescued Prisoners
I could easily change some off the aproximations and get presisly the oposit result if I wanted to
but theire is nothing wrong in comparing a level 6 artifact base to a level 5 recearch base, as long as you are clearly stating what is the basis for the calcylation is

the funny thing about math is: both answers are 100% right at the same time as long as you define how you calcylated it:D
the answer you'll get, depends on what factors you include in your aproximations

so the bedst answer to the question is

very interesting topic.

Would it be possible to compare lvl6 pure Artifact vs lvl6 pure research?

To the above discussed: when the deficit of research point is returned thru And. Scientist - hm, the topic is in fact very complex, as till you get equil research production, you could with research base have better scanners and thus better choice of planets with nice production.
I think, the middle way will be the most beneficial to majority - start on research base stay till rank 100 min (depends on ship build and resources from planets, poor research production maybe rank 150) and then move to Artifact base.

So to specify more my question:
Would it be possible to compare lvl6 pure Artifact vs lvl6 pure research till rank 100/150?
(we can assume, that it takes 4 months due PvP focus?!)

Level 6s are all maxed out on the main production mod.

this is how i put it to my legion members.
beyond giving you a huge jump on planet buildings, research bases simply arent going to benefit you a huge amount when compared to an artifact base, because whilst you may have the research done, you wont have the decks to effectively equip 8 weapons, 5 hull, 8 defence mods etc etc.
you may be able to equip a few weapons and a couple of the other mods, but if youre building your crew up and not wasting rank points on decks, its pretty much pointless.
Ive suggested everyone in the legion use as few rank points as possible on decks, and let ship bots build you up entirely.