Galaxy Legion: Planet Buffing Races

There are three races in the game which have to be unlocked by doing a long mission chain and which have the ability to permanently buff a planet. These buffs all work the same way, the different races just buff a different planet production resource. Every 40 hours you can spend 200 energy with no experience gain. In return you get to increase the abundance of one planet by one tier (you add .25 to the multiplier).

I've been working towards completing the mission chain to unlock the artifact race but have hit a bit of a snag. It turns out I've actually been running at a money deficit for the last little while by working on that mission chain. (It requires a very high amount of scanning to do the missions, so I've had to keep switching in and out scanners, weapons, and energy modules as I work on it. Each time you unequip something it takes damage and it costs money to repair them, and I've been paying an awful lot of money to do so.)

I'm also very close to completing the mission chain to unlock the mining race. (I did most of the chain already because I wanted to get a passive cloak reward for my awesome planet.) I'm running low on money and the way you net more money is by spending less or earning more. Stopping the artifact chain for a while is a good way to spend less. Buffing my mining planets is a good way to earn more. So it seems like spending a couple days to finish off the mining chain could make a lot of sense.

The question then is what exactly will this ability do? How will I use it? Overall planet production pretty much boils down to size times abundance so it will be more efficient when used on a bigger planet. Most of my current mining planets are not very big but the thought crossed my mind of taking a truly terrible research planet that happens to be very massive and buff it up over time. Let's compare...

I have very massive planets now and their production from buildings is 40. Double that for owning the planet for 5 days and multiply by the .25 bonus and I'd be adding 20 points per hour every time I use the ability on a very massive planet. Large planets seem to have a base of 30 and very large a base of 34. So a large would get 15 per hour and a very large 17. My very large starts at a 2.25 multiplier. It will take 18 uses to max it out. If I were to abandon it and replace it with a very massive planet with no mining at all my two potential income functions are:

40*34*2*18/2*(2.5+6.75)+34*2*6.75*t = 459t+226440

40*40*2*18/2*(.25+4.5)+40*2*4.5*t = 360t+136800

Huh. I will admit to being surprised at this outcome. I was expecting it would make sense to grab the worthless very massive planet and buff it up but it looks to be not even close. I guess the difference between the two sizes isn't actually that big (I gain 3 per hour per use) and the difference in starting value is huge (153 compared to 0). If I could use this ability into infinity then I'd start profiting after using it 52 times.

It's capped at 6.75 per planet, but I can actually use it more often on the naked planet. I only got it up to 4.5 in the example; I could have used it 9 more times. Maybe a better comparison would be to look at what I could do with 3 planets? I could have three copies of my base 34@2.25 planet or I could have two copies of my base 40@0 and one copy of a base 34@2.25.

3*34*2*2.25*(t+40*53)+40*54/2*(17+918)+918*t = 459t+973080+1009800+918t = 1377t+1982880

1*34*2*2.25*(t+40*53)+40*54/2*(20+1080)+1080*t = 153t+324360+1188000+1080t = 1233t+1512360

Even in the 'fair' comparison the huge planets lose out. Both the flat amount earned as we use the ability 54 times and the amount earned every hour thereafter are lower with this option. As long as you have access to a large number of 34@2.25 planets you're golden.

I don't have an unlimited number of them, but I do have a lot and the ability to get more. It takes a month to fill out one of those planets and I can colonize 22 new planets each month so I'll have plenty of places to use the ability. Right now I actually can't afford to take that many planets, unfortunately, but hence why I want to start buffing my mining points.

Of course there is also the issue that I'm building awesome planets without having any plans for defending them. That could actually be a real problem but I figure I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. (Possibly I'll need to start cloaking planets as I buff them?)