Skill Points?

[Jean Arnaud]

Your suspicions are way too specifiic given what we know. There is no indication that any specific skill is required here.

I mean, we know the formula (I think), but we do not know how to determine each variable:

Tech Level = Sum(Tier*Rank) / (Max Points/10)

When tech level reaches 6, we can enter the center, though tech level is not displayed in game. As an aside, the "Skills" stat in the details sheet does not have any connection to any of this as far as I can tell because it is always way too high. For example, on Nergal, I only have 15 Skill Pts. (15 researched items), but my "Skills" is 244! That is 16+ points per skill researched and so those numbers must not be actually related. I had a much different (lower) ratio on Belitlli. In any event, I don't believe this is connected to the formula above.

Calculating the sum of the skills (tier*rank) should be fairly easy, but "max points" is not clear. There are 48 skills (12 fleet, 10 combat, 12 science, and 14 trade). Multiplied by 9, there are 432 possible skills. Dividing by 10 gives us 43.2, and if 6*43.2 is the goal, then we would need 260 points to enter the center area. I believe this to be
max points" and the remaining analysis uses this assumption, though again, the term "max points" is not clear to us yet.

Of course, given that formula and the way training subsequent levels of higher tier skills works (24 hours for each level after first training that skill), the fastest way to reach tech level 6 is to train up to tier 6 skills immediately and then max them out. Take any one skill tree for example, and it takes 504 hours (21 days) to reach and finish tier 6, plus another 8 days to max it out. Thus in the first 29 days, a non-researcher would have 69 points. If 43.2 is the correct denominator, this is only a tech level of 1.6.

Maxing out a second tier 6 skill in the same tech tree would yield an additional 54 points after 384 more hours (16 days). Thus, after 45 days, a non-researcher would have 123 points. Given that there are only 2 tier 6 skills in each tree, we would then need to max out the tier 5 skills in that tree (24 hours per level), which I believe would be more efficient that starting over in a new tree to research to tier 6. I am not aware of any trees having 3+ tier 6 skills, though I have only played as a researcher. So taking another 8 days to max whichever tier 5 skill was used to attain tier 6, we would then have 163 after 53 days, or a tech level of 3.77.

Now at this point, the server is about to end on its own (2 months have almost passed) even if some researcher hasn't finished it off yet (unlikely). Further, we would have to research the next tier 5 skill from level 1, which is 6 days of research for only 5 points. In other words, there is no chance for a non-researcher to attain tech level 6 if the math above is correct. It is literally impossible.

As several people have already noted, this method for attaining the center clearly favors researchers, though they would have to know what they were doing as even in a relatively long game, they would not necessarily achieve a high enough tech level if they were researching a lot of low tier skills (increasing fleet size, planetology, rare ore collection), though these tier 1 skills are important for other reasons.

However, even at researcher speeds, I do not believe it is possible to attain 260 points in 2 months. Using the calculations above, we would note that after 39.75 days, the researcher would have attained the 163 points above. This still leaves more than 20 days to gain the reamining 97 points. Let's see. Another 10.5 days to max the second tier 5 skill (45 points) for a total of 208. At this point, I might go for aiming for another tier 6 skill in another tree rather than maxing both tier 4 skills, though 6 days of maxing the already researched tier 4 skill would provide 32 points (240 total now), which is a decent return on time. In any event, attaining another tier 6 takes the researcher 15.75 days, which means we have run out of time without making it to 260, since we would need 15.75 plus another 6 days to get the full benefit of a tier 6 (69 points from tier 1 to max tier 6).

I acknowledge there may be a slightly more efficient ways to focus on tier 6 versus on tier 6 skills, but I can't imagine it would save more than a couple of days. Feel free to mess around with this strategy and the numbers, and let me know how it goes. I don't want to write down each possible permutation, but doing it in my head, I do not see a way to get to 260 in 2 months, even at 75% research time. The closest I have come to 260 in running numbers (using the tier 6 down method above) is 252 after 60.25 days (researcher). I'll let you know if I spot something further.