| Psycho_Honey | Friday, November 18, 2016 - 08:50 am 
2 questions.
1. Is upgrading more cost effective to buy low quality and upgrade to max quality or buy 330q and upgrade from there
a) For Weapon Systems.
b) For Ammo.
2. What is the rate of quality decline?
a)Is this quality decline negated while weapons and ammo is stored in space or nah?! |
| Aries | Friday, November 18, 2016 - 09:23 pm
1. The answer to this varies depending on the cost of the weapon or ammo. The reason for this is that cost of weapon and ammo upgrades is fixed where the cost of the weapon and ammo varies. So, less expensive items like jeeps and tank shells you always purchase at 330 quality and never upgrade and more expensive items like stealth bombers and laser guided bombs you have the opportunity to save money purchasing the item at 120 and upgrading.
1. For any given item, you might want to pull out your calculator and determine the difference in the cost of each added quality in the weapon/ammo's purchase, .01 times cost, versus the cost of a single upgrade. Making this more difficult is an added twist. If you upgrade manually, the quality of the upgrade does not appear to matter. If you upgrade automatically, the quality of the upgrade is determined against the quality of the weapon/ammo it is upgrading and may consume more or less units depending. This is explained in a game news article 169:
"The number of products that are needed for maintenance/upgrading will decline first in a linear way with their quality, and on top of that, there will be an additional decline factor, which depends on the difference in quality. This factor will be around 10 - 25%.
On the other hand, operating or upgrading a product that is already at a high quality, will require more upgrading and operating products. the number will increase in a linear way, depending on the quality. There will be no additional factor.
As a result, the number of products needed in the process of maintenance or upgrading will decline faster because of the added factor and will result in a lower cost."
2. Not sure the calculation of quality decline for weapons/ammo stored in countries. There is no decline for products stored in space stations or enterprise stock. Not sure about space centers, I don't keep my stuff in them. |
| Psycho_Honey | Saturday, November 19, 2016 - 05:48 am
So in essence, to upgrade a 330q weapon, I need to use a high quality upgrade in the automatic process, to remain cost effective?
Based on what I read here, I think the real solution is to start from low q weapons/ammo and just go. I can't stand number crunching although I admit the necessity of it in this case. Where are all the real MathemaFackers when you need them? I could really use Laguna right now...
Thanks Aries. |
| Zentrino | Saturday, November 19, 2016 - 08:56 am
The quality of the upgrade does not make a difference in either the speed at which the upgrade is completed or in the number of upgrades required to move up. I tested this recently using int units in 2 countries. Both units were the same quality to start. I used upgrades that were 122Q in one country and 250Q in another. Units in both countries upgraded at the same speed and used the same number of upgrades to get there.
I always buy all weapon and ammo upgrades at 120Q. |
| Psycho_Honey | Saturday, November 19, 2016 - 09:44 am
Thanks for testing this Zentrino. That bit of information is incredibly valuable. I may try to test this with two different countries too. Try 330/120 weapon and ammo units with 330/120 quality upgrades and see if this holds true as well.
Hard to prepare properly without the right info. |
| Aries | Saturday, November 19, 2016 - 03:49 pm
My understanding is that the speed of upgrades should indeed be the same. However, the difference should be, that when you use automatic upgrades, in how many upgrade products are consumed each month depending on their quality. |
| William Miller | Saturday, November 19, 2016 - 06:28 pm
Please post your results, thanks. |
| Zen | Saturday, November 19, 2016 - 08:13 pm
So I've been wasting tens of trillions SC$ on 300-330q upgrades. End my life. I normally buy ammo/weapons at 330q except expensive ones at 120q. However I always buy ammo and weapon upgrades at 330q.
Please test this so I don't waste more money. |
| Zentrino | Sunday, November 20, 2016 - 01:28 am
I guess it was PB unit not an int unit that I tested on. Here are the specific results:
I have been conducting an experiment to see if the quality of the products Ammo Quality Upgrades and Weapon Quality Upgrades makes a difference in either the speed of the upgrade or the number of upgrades required. I have concluded the experiment with positive results.
In country 1, I had a single PB unit with 400 PB and 48,000 PB missiles. The unit began at 254Q and I started with 10M ammo quality upgrades at 122Q. The weapon upgrades were at 122Q as well. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn off the auto-buy feature for weapon quality upgrades so I can't compare numbers here but the ammo upgrades are telling enough.
In country 2, I had a single PB unit with 400 PB and 48,000 PB missiles. The unit began at 254Q and I started with 10M ammo quality upgrades at 245Q. The weapon quality upgrades were 250Q. Again, for the reason above, I can't compare the numbers of those upgrades. (I also created the exact same number of supply units in both countries and had a balance of 10,000 PB missiles in each that matched the Q of the missiles in the units.)
I started on game date Sept 29, 3876. Today is October 2, 3879. Three years have passed. Here is where we stand now.
Country 1 the unit is now at 327Q. I have 6,453,712 ammo quality upgrades left. (Remember, this is one using 122Q upgrade products.)
Country 2 the unit is now at 327Q. I have 6,453,040 ammo quality upgrades left. (Remember, this is one using 245Q upgrade products.)
As you can see, both units are at the exact same quality which means the lower quality upgrades operate as quickly as the higher quality upgrades. Further, for a reason I don't understand, in a recent game month, the country using the higher quality upgrades used more ammo upgrades than the other country. This difference occurred all in one month from what I can tell. Every month I have checked they have been the same until I saw the difference and it has not changed since then. In any event, that means that higher quality upgrades do not consume fewer upgrades to reach the same quality.
The results indicate the purchasing ammo and weapon quality upgrades should be done at 120Q to save money as higher quality does nothing for the output. Hope this helps! |
| Psycho_Honey | Sunday, November 20, 2016 - 06:21 pm
This is good info Zentrino, thanks for sharing. |
