Galaxy Legion is a Facebook game with a lot of different things you can do to make your empire better. One of the ways is the Facebook game standard of running missions. You get a certain amount of energy every hour and have different missions you can do to spend energy on experience and rewards. One of the twists they throw in is to have a story line mission chain running with a limited duration. You have 2 weeks to do the current mission if you want to, or you can just ignore it. After those 2 weeks pass the next mission in the chain becomes available. Do it if you want, or pass. Eventually the story will play out and the mission chain will be added to the base game to be done as normal, but you have to start at the beginning. Your progress is tracked and remembered but you can't go finish off the second mission unless you complete the first one.
The current storyline had an annoying first mission. To complete it you'd need to obtain and turn in 500 of an artifact which I get 1-2 of per day. Yeah. I managed to get it done twice in the two weeks it was up but that involved getting extras from Andrew and Byung. I'm not expecting to do the mission when it gets re-added, so if I want any of the rewards further down the chain I need to go them during the limited two week window. I did just that with the second mission, getting all 4 of the modules from that mission. (It adds to scan and invasion attack and can be used on top of all existing modules so they're just an added bonus to two stats I need to have absolutely maxxed out any time I use them.)
The third mission in the chain just spawned today. It's a mission that costs 2000 energy for a reward and can be done 6 times total. The experience/energy ratio is decent but not exciting. My rough math puts me at making almost 80 energy per hour, so I can get all 6 rewards in about 150 hours of energy. That's 6.25 days, or less than the 2 weeks I have to do it. So, I can get it done if I want to. Keep in mind that I don't expect to get a chance to do this mission again for an awfully long time if ever since I still need 450 more flux probes to cash in on the first mission in the chain.
One of the other aspects to the game is planets. Every 4 levels you can colonize another planet. Planets have different sizes, types, and different resources available. The game has millions of available planets and you can use your scan stat to find more, but you're capped on how many you can find based on your scan stat. So, for example, I know of 262 planets right now. Unless I research better scanners or find a way to forget one I've found I can't find any more. I'm allowed to own 36 of those planets, and want to get the ones that make the most resources.
The current mission reward is a single use artifact which allows you to add an extra +25% research modifier to any planet you own. So you can take a planet from x1 to x1.25, or from x3 to x3.25. Assuming I get one of these, where should I use it?
The first thing to note is that it doesn't matter what the current modifier is. All else being equal the net gain is the same regardless of where the modifier started from. If a planet has a base production value of 100 then going from x1 to x1.25 takes me from 100 to 125, or a gain of 25. Going from x3 to x3.25 takes me from 300 to 325, or a gain of 25. So, assuming equal base values it doesn't matter what the modifier is.
What if the base values are different? A planet that makes 100 base gains 25. A planet that makes 200 base gains 50. Having twice the base gives twice the gain. So, I want to use it on the planet with the biggest base production value. And in this game that essentially boils down to one thing: planet size.
The bigger a planet is the more buildings you can cram onto it and the higher your base value is going to be. The biggest planet I've ever seen is very massive, though you can make bigger ones. I have a few very massive research planets kicking around and at my current tech levels my base is 74. So this artifact is worth 18.5 research points per hour if I get it. Currently I make 2125 total, so getting all 6 of them would be a 5% boost to my total research production. Using a week's worth of energy for a 5% research boost seems pretty worthwhile, especially since it's a permanent long term bonus.
Now, I could use all 6 on the same planet or spread them out across my 3 different very massive planets for the same impact on my income. Another part of the game is planets can be attacked and invaded by other players if they also scan the same planet. My viewpoint has been that defending my planets is a waste of time (I'll go into details later) but suffice it to say if anyone really wants any of my planets they can trivially take them. So stacking all 6 in one spot runs the risk of losing them all in one shot. (Especially since making one planet really good makes it more likely someone will really want it!) So, I should spread them out and not stack them up, I think.
One final twist is the artifact has an extra bonus. If it gets used on a planet with a x1.25 or less multiplier it actually gives +.5 instead of +.25. Now, I don't actually own a single planet with a best stat of only x1.25 so I can't really make use of that bonus. But I could colonize a planet which is very massive and x1.25 research. On it's own it's not really worth taking. (My spreadsheet says it will be worth 83.75 which is worse than every planet I currently own.) On the other hand if it was very massive and x1.5 then it would be worth 100.5 which is actually better than 10 of my current planets. So while it wouldn't be spectacular or anything it would be reasonable quality. In fact it is better than every other non-colonized research planet I've scanned. So if I was going to get another research planet before going on another scanning binge this would be the one I'd take.
When it comes right down to it that bonus twist elevates the very massive x1.25 planet into one I think I want. And I think the overall boost from this reward is enough that I want to have it going forward. The window to get it is small, but the bonus is reasonably unique and fairly strong, so I'm going to go for it. I have stronger things to do with my energy *right now* but those options will still exist in a week and this one won't. Run it!
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