So, pod workers tiers

[Foxy]

Im fairly new to the game and been abusing pod workers cause they are awesome!

now im combining energy pods and got to pod V now which is awesome to charge the beacons and feeding the queen since it´s a whopping 3 times multiplication of energy

BUT, as it come to pod workers the math is not the same

it´s like this:
LVL 1 pod worker: consumes equivalent of 1 lvl I pod and lives 5 minutes / speed 12
LVL 2 pod worker: consumes equivalent of 2 lvl I pod and lives 7.5 minutes / speed 14
LVL 3 pod worker: consumes equivalent of 4 lvl I pod and lives 10 minutes / speed 16
LVL 4 pod worker: consumes equivalent of 8 lvl I pod and lives 12.5 minutes / speed 18
LVL 5 pod worker: consumes equivalent of 16 lvl I pod and lives 15 minutes / speed 20
LVL 6 pod worker: dunno, not there yet

so in terms of life / pod I used (min per pod)....... and then adjusting for speed because they are more effective as they are faster (base = pod I worker (12)) (min per pod * speed variance)

LVL 1 pod worker: 5/1 = 5 / adjusting for speed = 5
LVL 2 pod worker: 7.5/2 = 3.75 / adjusting for speed = 4.3
LVL 3 pod worker: 10/4 = 2.5 / adjusting for speed = 3.3
LVL 4 pod worker: 12.5/8 = 1.5 / adjusting for speed = 2.3
LVL 5 pod worker: 15/16 = 0.9 / adjusting for speed = 1.5

So with this in mind, what would be the rationale for using anything but Lvl 1 pod workers
i sometimes use pod 2s when there are no pod 1 around but.... am i missing something?

[Alleas]

Pod 6 = 17.5 minutes speed 22

imo i think having a higher speed beats the lifespan, they can get more work done and longer.
let say 1 minute = 1 mile / km what ever distance you wanne use.
so if a pod worker 1 at speed 12 lives for 5 minutes he does 5 miles/km
then a pod worker 6 at speed 22 for 17.5minutes does 385 miles/km
so that comes out to about 6.5 pod workers 1
but in that time the pod worker 1 needed to go recharge 6,5 times witch i think is a loss in production / gathering or wathever it is doing.

so i still think i higher pod worker is beter then a lower one.

small example i experienced is i was setting up a energy coillding build.
used pod 2 workers but it constantly got on a slow because they needed to recharge more.
i needed to add extra backup pod 2 in there to make up for the ones that went recharging.
i switched to pod 3 and the output when stable and i need to put in less backup pod 3.

[Foxy]

Originally posted by Alleas:

Pod 6 = 17.5 minutes speed 22

imo i think having a higher speed beats the lifespan, they can get more work done and longer.
let say 1 minute = 1 mile / km what ever distance you wanne use.
so if a pod worker 1 at speed 12 lives for 5 minutes he does 5 miles/km
then a pod worker 6 at speed 22 for 17.5minutes does 385 miles/km
so that comes out to about 6.5 pod workers 1
but in that time the pod worker 1 needed to go recharge 6,5 times witch i think is a loss in production / gathering or wathever it is doing.

so i still think i higher pod worker is beter then a lower one.

small example i experienced is i was setting up a energy coillding build.
used pod 2 workers but it constantly got on a slow because they needed to recharge more.
i needed to add extra backup pod 2 in there to make up for the ones that went recharging.
i switched to pod 3 and the output when stable and i need to put in less backup pod 3.

Yeah i get the speed buff but that can be countered with beacons and they fly.... and with much less energy comsumption

also i included the speed differential into the calculation and maybe for pod 2 can be justified... pod 3 and above is just wasteful.... and energy is kinda critical in the game,

[riverrat2800]

Originally posted by Alleas:

Pod 6 = 17.5 minutes speed 22

imo i think having a higher speed beats the lifespan, they can get more work done and longer.

But if you use them in production, the extra speed is wasted while they are sitting waiting for the output from the machine

[Foxy]

Originally posted by riverrat2800:

Originally posted by Alleas:

Pod 6 = 17.5 minutes speed 22

imo i think having a higher speed beats the lifespan, they can get more work done and longer.

But if you use them in production, the extra speed is wasted while they are sitting waiting for the output from the machine

Yeah this is a factor.. they spend time waiting for a product, also. you can put beacons or floodlights and it becomes much less of an issue since they fly with lights and the energy comsumption of a lit worker seems to be super low (would have to calc that)

[Bob, the doge]

I use pod II workers as a rule (it's the level you harvest in the islands). I might start with pod I workers in the home island if I start a pod worker loop before I have colliders working to the scale needed. I tend to build my loops compact, so the extra speed is not really a factor (and if I need extra speed, one or two beacons are enough).

[Fwiffo]

It is less efficient to use anything above tier 1 worker, and the higher you go, the worse it gets. Speed sounds good on paper, but it's only good when ants aren't doing anything, and is largely mitigated by building somewhat efficiently. Even if you don't, just the lack of need to produce the energy pods offsets higher tiers.

For instance, I tried going for tier 3 workers. In order to do that, I have set up 24 tier 2 colliders (in groups of 3, set up to only produce when there's a need to) and 12 tier 3 pods (grouped similarly), all hooked up to beacons and placed pretty efficiently, and each group used 4 ants. To keep up with the energy pod needs, around 40 ants were used just to make the energy pods, with another 25 gathering the tier 1 flowers, leaving very few ants to actually do useful work. I kept it up for a while, but gave up when my base started approaching low levels of tier 1 pods - this setup simply consumed more energy pods than the island could supply.

So I switched to tier 1 with no other changes - after the initial 10 or so minutes of filling energy pods supplies, I have found that I have too many ants going around the main base, so I had to recycle about 20 of them - and I still had more free worker ants than I had when using tier 3 workers.

Tier 2 is a workable compromise, but offers very little improvements over tier 1 (you just need fewer chargers, but in my case 5 were more than enough), anything above that is straight up detrimental.

[Foxy]

Originally posted by Fwiffo:

It is less efficient to use anything above tier 1 worker, and the higher you go, the worse it gets. Speed sounds good on paper, but it's only good when ants aren't doing anything, and is largely mitigated by building somewhat efficiently. Even if you don't, just the lack of need to produce the energy pods offsets higher tiers.

For instance, I tried going for tier 3 workers. In order to do that, I have set up 24 tier 2 colliders (in groups of 3, set up to only produce when there's a need to) and 12 tier 3 pods (grouped similarly), all hooked up to beacons and placed pretty efficiently, and each group used 4 ants. To keep up with the energy pod needs, around 40 ants were used just to make the energy pods, with another 25 gathering the tier 1 flowers, leaving very few ants to actually do useful work. I kept it up for a while, but gave up when my base started approaching low levels of tier 1 pods - this setup simply consumed more energy pods than the island could supply.

So I switched to tier 1 with no other changes - after the initial 10 or so minutes of filling energy pods supplies, I have found that I have too many ants going around the main base, so I had to recycle about 20 of them - and I still had more free worker ants than I had when using tier 3 workers.

Tier 2 is a workable compromise, but offers very little improvements over tier 1 (you just need fewer chargers, but in my case 5 were more than enough), anything above that is straight up detrimental.

Tier 2 is fully usable imo, the main drawback of tier I is the short lifespan of 5 min, the extra 2.5 mins of a tier II for me at least justifies the extra pod spent for less downtime of the worker going to recharge

Ill try to do the calcs today of the energy cost of boosting via beacons bcs that is quite important in the final calculation. maybe im super wrong and boosting via beacons is super expensive (energy wise) and maybe is better to use a faster higher tier worker

[Bob, the doge]

Originally posted by Foxy:

Tier 2 is fully usable imo, the main drawback of tier I is the short lifespan of 5 min, the extra 2.5 mins of a tier II for me at least justifies the extra pod spent for less downtime of the worker going to recharge

Ill try to do the calcs today of the energy cost of boosting via beacons bcs that is quite important in the final calculation. maybe im super wrong and boosting via beacons is super expensive (energy wise) and maybe is better to use a faster higher tier worker

T1 vs T2 is a question of practicality. If you have T2 plants, T2 is better, if you have T1 plants, T1 is better. From a pure numbers perspective [edited for clarity]:

T1 - 5/1 = 5 minutes per energy spent
T2 - 7.5/3 = 2min30s per energy spent
T3 - 10/7 = 1min26s per energy spent (and it only gets worse)

Speed costs: boosting ants doubles their speed, so a boosted T1 pod worker moves faster than a T6 (speed 24 vs 22). Beacons drain a constant amount of energy, regardless of how many ants they're boosting (3 beacons in a deserted location drain as much as 3 beacons in a busy intersection). I didn't test extensively, but I'd say that you can get around 10 beacons per energy per second. A T6 pod worker costs you a T6 pod (125 energy) every 17.5 minutes (ignoring recharge times), or .119 energy per second. This would give you enough energy to power about 1.2 beacons, if my previous estimation is correct. How many ants you can keep boosted with that depends on the job layout, but let's assume it's at least 1. So, at a minimum, for the price of a T6 worker, you can keep (at least) one T1 worker moving faster than a T6.

Do note that you can't actually power small beacons with T6 energy because the energy storage can only hold 100 units, and a T6 pod holds 125. Sadly (for science), I'm 100% not in the mood of testing the energy efficiency of LED beacons to add to this discussion. But my guess is that they would make the situation even more favorable to the "boost cheap ants" side, due to the increased area of effect that LED beacons have.

[Bob, the doge]

Originally posted by Fwiffo:

you just need fewer chargers, but in my case 5 were more than enough

Let's say we can charge 4 ants per minute; it takes 10 seconds of processing time to charge, let's play it safe and assume it takes an extra 5 for ants to get into position (I tend to be adventurous and consider 5 ants per minute).

T1 ants last 8.5 minutes before death, so let's again play it safe and consider their total lifetime as 7.5 minutes. This means a single assembler can recharge 30 T1 pod ants. 37.5 with greater (but still acceptable IMHO) risk of ant death. For T2, the numbers are 40/50 ants, respectively.

We're turning a 50% loss of energy efficiency of going from T1 to T2 into a 33% increase in the number of ants serviced by a single station.

[Foxy]

Originally posted by Bob, the doge:

Originally posted by Foxy:

Tier 2 is fully usable imo, the main drawback of tier I is the short lifespan of 5 min, the extra 2.5 mins of a tier II for me at least justifies the extra pod spent for less downtime of the worker going to recharge

Ill try to do the calcs today of the energy cost of boosting via beacons bcs that is quite important in the final calculation. maybe im super wrong and boosting via beacons is super expensive (energy wise) and maybe is better to use a faster higher tier worker

T1 vs T2 is a question of practicality. If you have T2 plants, T2 is better, if you have T1 plants, T1 is better. From a pure numbers perspective [edited for clarity]:

T1 - 5/1 = 5 minutes per energy spent
T2 - 7.5/3 = 2min30s per energy spent
T3 - 10/7 = 1min26s per energy spent (and it only gets worse)

Speed costs: boosting ants doubles their speed, so a boosted T1 pod worker moves faster than a T6 (speed 24 vs 22). Beacons drain a constant amount of energy, regardless of how many ants they're boosting (3 beacons in a deserted location drain as much as 3 beacons in a busy intersection). I didn't test extensively, but I'd say that you can get around 10 beacons per energy per second. A T6 pod worker costs you a T6 pod (125 energy) every 17.5 minutes (ignoring recharge times), or .119 energy per second. This would give you enough energy to power about 1.2 beacons, if my previous estimation is correct. How many ants you can keep boosted with that depends on the job layout, but let's assume it's at least 1. So, at a minimum, for the price of a T6 worker, you can keep (at least) one T1 worker moving faster than a T6.

Do note that you can't actually power small beacons with T6 energy because the energy storage can only hold 100 units, and a T6 pod holds 125. Sadly (for science), I'm 100% not in the mood of testing the energy efficiency of LED beacons to add to this discussion. But my guess is that they would make the situation even more favorable to the "boost cheap ants" side, due to the increased area of effect that LED beacons have.

Nice analysis! thanks!.... Yeah the part i was missing was the one you clarified (a lit beacon spends energy a fixed X energy regardless of how many ants it was powering), so yeah it gives a premium to build tight as to create busy intersections that maximize the energy used for every beacon (and powering those beacons ideally with efficient higher tier energy pods)

Havent as yet finished the full tech tree but.... as far as i can tell, energy (although renewable) is my main limiting factor moving forward. Everything else is relatively plentiful
so managing this aspect is key for me

[Foxy]

don´t wanna open a full new thread to ask a simple question, but many of you seem to have finished the tech tree.. so here it goes.....how many lesser gyne points do you need?? since i have a lot and dont wanna keep wasting resources if i have much more than i need

[Bob, the doge]

Originally posted by Foxy:

don´t wanna open a full new thread to ask a simple question, but many of you seem to have finished the tech tree.. so here it goes.....how many lesser gyne points do you need?? since i have a lot and dont wanna keep wasting resources if i have much more than i need

I think that would merit its own thread, and my quick reply is "damned if I remember", because you can't see tech costs after you paid for them. But I'd say around 50ish? Then some 35ish T2 gyne points and I see 20 T3 gyne points blocking my way at the very top. I'm not quite done with the tech tree, so there may be some more yet to come.

Edit: just thought of a way to improve the estimates: I produced a total of 97 gynes in my colony (T1/T2 combined), and have 4/6 (respectively) left after buying everything that required them. I know I had at least 21 T2 gynes (I just went crazy at gyne building for 1 hour because I wanted to get rid of all the buildings, and got 21 T2 gynes). I updated the numbers in my initial estimate to reflect this.

Edit²: I started my current colony when certain techs that no longer require gyne points had that cost, so the final number is probably lower.

[Foxy]

Originally posted by Bob, the doge:

Originally posted by Foxy:

don´t wanna open a full new thread to ask a simple question, but many of you seem to have finished the tech tree.. so here it goes.....how many lesser gyne points do you need?? since i have a lot and dont wanna keep wasting resources if i have much more than i need

I think that would merit its own thread, and my quick reply is "damned if I remember", because you can't see tech costs after you paid for them. But I'd say around 50ish? Then some 35ish T2 gyne points and I see 20 T3 gyne points blocking my way at the very top. I'm not quite done with the tech tree, so there may be some more yet to come.

Edit: just thought of a way to improve the estimates: I produced a total of 97 gynes in my colony (T1/T2 combined), and have 4/6 (respectively) left after buying everything that required them. I know I had at least 21 T2 gynes (I just went crazy at gyne building for 1 hour because I wanted to get rid of all the buildings, and got 21 T2 gynes). I updated the numbers in my initial estimate to reflect this.

Edit²: I started my current colony when certain techs that no longer require gyne points had that cost, so the final number is probably lower.

Thanks! i inmediately stopped my Gy 1 production, was way over.
And as a stopgap since i dont know what to do with the extra ants, i placed ... and im really sry about this ... a recycler

[dj8472]

Originally posted by Foxy:

don´t wanna open a full new thread to ask a simple question, but many of you seem to have finished the tech tree.. so here it goes.....how many lesser gyne points do you need?? since i have a lot and dont wanna keep wasting resources if i have much more than i need

It was 50 T1 points before the latest update which removed gyne points from main trail and stockpile gate

[Bob, the doge]

Originally posted by Foxy:

And as a stopgap since i dont know what to do with the extra ants, i placed ... and im really sry about this ... a recycler

Making and recycling inventors is the way to go!