I don't know if anyone else has made one of these (probably), but I'm posting it here so all of you can use it if you find it useful!
First off - I'm playing this for fun and not really interested in optimizing my progression through the ships, but it's a fun problem to think about and calculate on! So, I've collated the different ships prices, their capacities and tried to make a sheet that can guide us through the "which ship should I upgrade too" -question.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aAscwb6Nf0bXcQxI2BoY38YlZm1v71CyWa8C2wepwi8/edit?usp=sharing
So - how do I read this?
The first sheet sets up some ground-rules, like how much do we expect to make on a round-trip and how much spending-money would we like to have when we buy a new ship. It also calculates what we can expect to make each hour with the basic ship (no upgrades), maxed out for cargo (no shields) and with shields but otherwise maxed out for cargo (what can I say, I'm conservative that way).
The second sheet calculates how many hours of grinding (given the data in the first sheet) you'd have to put in to go from each ship to all the other more expensive ships (at their suggested target balance). I've made one for keeping each ship (on the top) and one for the more common trade-up route. On this one I've also plotted in my own route in blue. Remember, these values have a lot of assumption, so mostly they're valuable to compare the ships against each other - not to plan on getting your Python by next weekend
The next sheets contain data for the calculations - look them over to see the calculation and follow along at home. If you find any errors, please tell me!
I hope this will be helpful to everyone out there looking to trade up and wondering what goals to set yourself, and remember - having a fun but less efficient ship is probably a better investment of your time ;-)
First off - I'm playing this for fun and not really interested in optimizing my progression through the ships, but it's a fun problem to think about and calculate on! So, I've collated the different ships prices, their capacities and tried to make a sheet that can guide us through the "which ship should I upgrade too" -question.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aAscwb6Nf0bXcQxI2BoY38YlZm1v71CyWa8C2wepwi8/edit?usp=sharing
So - how do I read this?
The first sheet sets up some ground-rules, like how much do we expect to make on a round-trip and how much spending-money would we like to have when we buy a new ship. It also calculates what we can expect to make each hour with the basic ship (no upgrades), maxed out for cargo (no shields) and with shields but otherwise maxed out for cargo (what can I say, I'm conservative that way).
The second sheet calculates how many hours of grinding (given the data in the first sheet) you'd have to put in to go from each ship to all the other more expensive ships (at their suggested target balance). I've made one for keeping each ship (on the top) and one for the more common trade-up route. On this one I've also plotted in my own route in blue. Remember, these values have a lot of assumption, so mostly they're valuable to compare the ships against each other - not to plan on getting your Python by next weekend
The next sheets contain data for the calculations - look them over to see the calculation and follow along at home. If you find any errors, please tell me!
I hope this will be helpful to everyone out there looking to trade up and wondering what goals to set yourself, and remember - having a fun but less efficient ship is probably a better investment of your time ;-)