Originally
posted by
hsifreta:
so all that about stock and jumping is just to confuse us. what you actually mean is that you'd maintain the amount of defence you'd normally have for that level, and farm you newbs.
You still stock and jump. For techers, stocking starts around the 5th week of the reset. You will see this week corresponds to the drop in tech price (as they go full time teching), and food goes up as they start stocking.
For casher/farmer, stocking starts about 2 weeks from end of set (in about 2-3 days as of this post). If food prices are extremely high, it can start as late as 10 days from end of set (on between 40k-60k land - in the past this used to be 80k land before the building cost formula and military losses for bottomfeeding are increased). Due to large land sizes, (unlike a techer on 25k-35k land), it is still positive cash flow to cash to the last turn of the reset.
Obviously there are people that decide to start earlier than this, but it is not mathematically sound to do this, growing by X land to gain X amount of production for the remainder of the reset will get you back more than the costs to get X land, not only that, current food prices are so high, you suffer a large loss later, when selling your food. Unless you're a Demo. But you have to be a Demo from the first few weeks of the reset, because almost nobody switches government once above 15m NW due to the extreme loss of infrastructure. This isn't Alliance, you can't sit on 1m turrets and be safe.
In the current food prices, it is likely people will stock the cash on hand as it is and eat corruption. If food is above a certain price, it is calculable that eating corruption is a lesser loss compared to buying food at $60 and selling it at $35 to your PM. You will see, for example, none of the countries above 40k land have started stocking yet; it is still better to grow (grab land), rather than start stocking for another 1-3 more days at most. That is, you can calculate whether gaining X land's worth of production for the remainder Y turns of the entire reset, will give you back more than what you spend grabbing it. What you spend grabbing it includes the cost of jets loss, the oil used, the additional cashing income lost by not using the turns to cash (you use it to spy, PS, build), the construction costs of that X land, and the tech cost (to buy) for maintaining your tech %.
For commies, they don't stock at all because of the 10% commission, it equals a 20% loss of stock right away (sell units, buy food). They instead perform something called a "cash-out" (hitting the cash button), in which they spend money to produce units, until their "upkeep in 1 turn" divided by "NW of units produced in 1 turn" is larger than $254/NW, after which it is better to buy troops and tanks from your PM. This scenario does not happen on Primary because you need to be about 90k-100k land in size before you have any chance of getting close to this $254/NW figure, so Commies cash to the last turn of the reset.
The rules of stocking are the same as on Alliance, the larger your land size, the later stocking starts, and your defenses needs to scale gradually over the course of the reset so you do not look land fat at any time. Comparatively, the land-traders on Alliance that landtrade to 80k land only stock for 6-7 days and take ~2 days to jump, so their stocking only starts 1 week from end of set.
While stocking on solo servers, it is normal to increase your turret count by 500k or 1m on a daily basis, which deters retals and makes you look not land-fat.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the top 10 countries in the last few resets:
http://www.eestats.com/primary/oldranks
See when they stop grabbing (check their news). See when they start their jump. You can tell if a country is a techer, their daily NW losses are negative between logouts, and they are 25k-35k land in size. A farmer's daily NW losses between logout are positive (selling food increases your NW slightly because cash has a higher NW value than bushels at these market prices). A casher's NW doesn't change much between logouts, it might go up or down due to SOs (generally up, but very few changes). An Indy has extreme negative NW changes between logout.
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