Ugh! Harbors...

Recently a number of my worlds have hit Arctic Future with the goal of nothing more than to get through it (and OF) as quickly as possible.  Obviously the primary obstacle is Promethium and Orichalcum.

Way back when Arctic Future was new, I had settled on "just use +Promethium" as my arctic strategy and copied it forward to Oceanic Future when that released.  Worlds I've done since have largely copied it but weren't in a rush.  And I still wholeheartedly recommend just +Ore for a lazy world that may not collect on time.  Even if -time was better in theory, failure to collect it on time would pull +Ore back ahead.

But what if you were willing to set timers and get on at crazy times.  Can -time be better?  One of the properties of -time is it gets increasing returns the more you stack (to the cap of 7 hour trips).  Going from 24 hours to 20 hours is 20% better.  Going from 20 hours to 16 hours is 25% better.  It's also for the same reason better with a fully upgraded harbor and base trip time of 17-18 hours instead of 24 hours.  By contrast +ore is %-wise less incrementally effective the more you get.  going from 65 to 80 ore is ~23% better.  Going from 80 to 95 ore is ~19% better.

But bear that in mind, just how good can each strategy get.  Let's start with Arctic Future:

With maximum upgrade crew:

Time Crew	Time	Promethium
Steersperson Tsani	-180m
Navigator Avril	-144m	+4
Navigator Zhon	-121m	+5
Steward Bryce	-90m		28% Time Boost
Trip Yield	7.0h	74	10.6 / h

Promethium Crew	Time	Promethium
Storesperson Maddox		+24
Miner Pikatthi	-39m	+17
Sailor Elise	-33m	+15
Quartermaster Mediha		+11	47% Ore Boost
Trip Yield	16.6h	158	9.5 / h

So time *is* capable of out-producing +promethium when fully upgraded and with extra attention, but the catch here is that you're not likely to hit max crew before you no longer care about promethium.  It takes 154 trips to get a member to level 10 in Arctic.  And you're probably not there much more than two months tops.  

In general early on time crew will level about 50% faster than promethium crew due to more trips.  We'll compare Level 4 Promethium (24 trips) vs Level 5 Time (38 trips) as somewhat indicative of where you might expect to be at the 1 month mark.

L5 Time Crew	Time	Promethium
Steersperson Tsani	-123m
Navigator Avril	-80m	+1
Navigator Zhon	-89m
Steward Bryce	-50m		18% Time Boost
Trip Yield	11.4h	66	5.8 / h

L4 Promethium Crew	Time	Promethium
Storesperson Maddox		+14
Miner Pikatthi	+4m	+9
Miner Bobby	+8m	+9
Quartermaster Mediha		+5	29% Ore Boost
Trip Yield	18.2h	111	6.1 / h

While Time Crew isn't *that* far behind in production at the 1 month milestone, it is much worse at the start, with an un-upgraded harbor:

L1 Time Crew	Time	Promethium
Steersperson Tsani	-91m
Navigator Avril	-50m	-4
Navigator Zhon	-70m	-5
Trip Yield	20.5h	41	2.0 / h

L1 Promethium Crew	Time	Promethium
Storesperson Maddox		+10
Miner Pikatthi	+50	+6
Miner Bobby	+75	+7
Trip Yield	26.1h	73	2.8 / h

As such my recommendation for Arctic Future in a practical sense, is to focus on +promethium, and only take -time if it's enough to move the collection time to a more convenient spot or if the crew members you want are not available.  The storesperson and miners are your main crew, but other crew members that have +promethium are good subs.  All those words to circle back to "just take +promethium" :)

Oceanic Future is a different story.  They made the time crew members in general much stronger in OF.  In fact they're so strong there's multiple configurations that hit the "minimum trip time" cap and allow you to include a member for other considerations.

Balanced Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Electrician Stan	-495m
Officer Deklan	-70m	+15
Officer Zia	-30m	+18
Reactor Walter		+28
Trip Yield	7.1h	129	18.2 / h

Just Ori Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Reactor Controller Alize		+22
Reactor Walter		+28
Officer Zia	-30m	+18
Auxiliary Eun			50% Ore Boost
Trip Yield	16.5h	170	10.3 / h

Excellent value from Electrician Stan who cuts *over 8 hours* off by himself and causes the time-optimized crew to make close to 80% more per hour!  Without him you probably want at least two time-primaries instead of one of the ore payload characters.  You already get good gains from time with a level 4-5 crew (albeit with more time characters).

L5 Balanced Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Electrician Stan	-260m
Sonar Tech Kali	-285m	-6
Electrician Yara	-165m
Reactor Walter		+17
Trip Yield	7h	79	11.3 / h

L4 Just Ori Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Reactor Controller Alize		+11
Reactor Walter		+15
Officer Zia	-20m	+9
Auxiliary Eun			27% Ore Boost
Trip Yield	16.7h	112	6.7 / h

A time-focused crew has already pulled way ahead with somewhat levelled crew.  It's already surpassed the level 10 Just Ori crew.  A teeny tiny bit of bad news though is that they don't fare so well at level 1 with an un-upgraded Oceanic Terminal.  

L1 Time Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Sonar Tech Kali	-265m	-8
Sonar Tech Iggy	-90m
Electrician Yara	-110m
Trip Yield	16.3h	42	2.6 / h

L1 Just Ori Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Reactor Controller Alize		+8
Officer Zia	-15m	+6
Yeoman Skye	+40m	+7
Trip Yield	24.4h	71	2.9 / h

It is however not dramatically behind, and as we've seen it'll surpass it pretty quickly with harbor and crew upgrades.  In terms of which time crew members to focus on:

Electrician Stan is the strongest of the time crew at high levels but starts out rather average.  You should try to include him to get him experience whenever possible.

Sonar Tech Kali starts as the largest time savings at a cost of a decent chunk of your orichalcum per trip, but makes your other time investments better at that time.  She doesn't improve very fast with levels however.  She will nevertheless offer the 2nd highest time savings at level 10 and the orichalcum penalty will not be so significant by then either.

Sonar Tech Iggy, Electrician Yara, and Digit Rosa are all medium-strong time members with average levelling progress.  You'll use them a lot earlier when your other time members need more help, but later a couple of them (or one of them and Kali) will be the backup plan if Stan doesn't show up for you to pick.

Officers Deklan and Zia aren't the strongest time members but are great orichalcum payoffs in combination with stronger time members while still being able to help cutoff some of the last hour or so.  Deklan cuts off a bit more time while Zia adds a bit more orichalcum.

Navigation Hailey is not worth considering.  Any crew where she'd theoretically surpass other options is already at minimum trip time.

Note that once you have your time assistance somewhat levelled it may occasionally be worth including good orichalcum increases over some of them if the collection time with a full-time-boost is inconvenient and you won't take advantage of the savings anyways.

Beta Space Race Update II

Ok, since I last posted on how my beta city was doing I've advanced to Future Era.  Halloween event was great for goods which enabled me to get moving forward, but in Tomorrow Era, supplies very much became the limiting factor now.  So I remodeled my city with as many TE supply buildings as I could and have been sending my spare FP to Lighthouse of Alexandria for now.  

I'm all set on goods up to TE now I think and am just waiting to make enough FE goods and supplies to advance to the Arctic Harbor.  

I suspect it's now too late to make it to SAJM in time for Titan, but hope to be in VF+ at least, past the OF blockade.  In other news speaking of a space race I have another big post coming soon about what I'm doing in Dilmun, the new US server :)

Beta Space Race Update

 Ok so it's been a bit over a month since I started working on getting my beta city from PE towards the space ages.  I've had some busy weeks recently and failed to login anywhere close to daily, so I'm falling behind a bit.  I just moved into Contemporary today (so 2 ages forward since last post where I'd just moved to Modern).

Goods have been the main limiter as expected - perhaps even more so than expected.  I'm short on almost everything in terms of PE+ goods, but do have a solid production of most of them.

It's not impossible to get back on track, but I'm going to have to pick up my login frequency.

Beta Space Race Project

Like many, I've historically only played Beta for a sneak-peek at features before they affect live.  One glaring shortcoming of this being one of the things I always want to test most, new ages, has been out of reach because I haven't put the time in to get anywhere close.  I'm going to try over the next 9ish months to fix that - which sounds like an interesting challenge.

My starting point isn't exactly from scratch but it's not a monster city either with the trappings of current optimized gameplay.  No Arc, No Traz, CF is only level 10.  Only settlement GP is a level 4 Ygg Tree.  I'm not guaranteeing any of that will stay that way - but if I opt to improve such things, it will be with mind to making the rest of the journey either shorter or easier overall.  I am not trying to make a monster city, just to get to the end era to test next era.

I do have 540/456 Boost from various events that were running at times when I wanted to test something on beta (which may or may not have been the event itself).  Probably ~200 FP a day in collections.

I moved from PE to ME today - I was in industrial not too long ago, and have not built up much for goods from PE, but I do have 5 PE eagle mountains from last wildlife event and renovated 5 stage of ages to ME.  I reno-ed other older event buildings to ME to produce ME goods.  I expect goods to be the biggest challenge to me blitzing the ages.  

Features, and my intended use of them:

• Events - Probably the most important aspect to getting things off the ground is improving my event buildings.  Similar to a new city, pretty much any event has to be considered a good event, even if the prize isn't perfect - because it's competing with either empty space, or prizes so old that any modern prize is an upgrade.
• GE - I should be able to handle diff 4 without issues.  And it's a significant source of goods, so it'll be a priority.
• Settlements - We'll see....  I'm going to be treating beta as "usually-once-a-day" still as opposed to my live worlds - and settlements are pretty slow at that pace.  But I probably should do something in them, even if it's slow.
• GBG - probably a little now and then time permitting.  But it'll be in my 1-man guild with a city that isn't really built for it.  So likely top out at gold.
• Arena - have signed up again to it.  Easy rewards.

So, my hopeful stages/timeline

1. The race to Arctic + Oceanic Future - Hope to be done this in 1-2 months, because getting the harbor and terminal operational as soon as possible is a huge priority if I'm going to make it into the space ages anywhere close to Titan's release.  200 FP/day is way more than enough for this phase, and I'll likely be blocked by goods frequently, so I will have a little ability to work on GBs somewhat still.  I'll be starting with Temple of Relics which I'd not built this far on beta because it's not like I GE-ed much here.  But it offers additional current goods as I move up.
2. The promethium/orichalcum grind.  I expect this will take 4 months at best.  ~1 month for AF and 3 months for OF.  
3. Higher ages - ~4 weeks each.  I hope.  I'll need a lot more FP and goods production by the time I reach this point - so hopefully I've kept up on events!

Understanding Obtaining FE+ Troops In Ages before Contemporary Era

This might be a bit of a long post, because there's a lot involved with how this works and rather than saying "just do this" I'm going to try and explain everything that's going on.

If a "just do this" post *is* what you want, look here: https://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/higher-age-units-guide-v1-22.37109/

Ok so the process of getting these troops in Contemporary Era+ I've explained before and is relatively straightforward.  Save what you can for techs, and only progress the continent map and research tree when the story tells you you have to.  The reason you can't do this normally in PME or earlier is because of "hard tech blocks" that once they come up you cannot pass without progressing to the age in question.  At the end of each of the CE and PME continent maps there is one of these blocks.

So how do you get by these quests?  You have to stop them from appearing at all.  Starting in Contemporary Era the story occasionally "breaks" depending on your actions.  Story quests have prerequisites and if you've done something unexpected like fighting ahead on the map past where the next quest would be, it skips that quest - if later quests have that quest as a prerequisite, the story can disappear entirely.  This can be useful to get 3 recurring quests in an age that's not the last - but in this case it's going to be used to skip a "hard tech block".  By completing the last province of the CE continent and moving onto the next map while skipping the optional provinces not required before you advance the quests, it'll skip to Dictator's Death, and then the story will disappear.  Presumably "King of the Desert", the CE blocker quest, requires either you to have completed another CE quest that you skipped or to control the whole map.

So your story's gone, that's all well and good - but how do you get the FE troops then?  At various points, the story is eligible to return without you having completed prerequisite quests - just for being at the right spot on the continent map and not having a Story Quest.  We'll call these "resume points".  FE has a few of these.  So we're able to rejoin the story in time to get FE troops.

Now I mentioned that Postmodern Era also has a blocker, "The End of This Chapter".  I also didn't mention the story "breaking" before Contemporary Era.  So...  this one needs to be avoided via an anomaly in the PME story.  At one point near the end of the PME story, they want to give you a choice as to whether to cover up the actions of Colonel Lang or to tell the truth about what happened, "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".  Apparently in order to make it eligible to abort, they had to flag it as a Side Quest.  This allows "resume points" checking your quests to see that you don't have a Story Quest and as such let you pick up story from that point.  So the core point for getting them before Postmodern Era is to simply never complete or abort "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".

Ok so that's it for the extra complications in terms of quests...  But there is another detail to deal with - you do have to somehow manage to take all these continents!  To take ME through FE up to hover tanks by negotiation requires ~40k PE+ goods!  That's a lot of goods to purchase, so you might want to fight as much as possible.  

But for large segments of the map you'll be using units 1 or more eras out of date.  Accordingly you need significant amounts of boost.  The attack of units isn't much of a problem in my experience (i.e. if you have the 3 main attack buildings that should cover most of what you need to 2-shot enemy units), but given the awkward armies you're often using the defense of your attacking units is of paramount importance.  So in preparation for attempting this, you may wish to focus on stacking event buildings that offer defense for attacking army.  You will also need a source of a significant number of rogues.

To fight with rogues on continent map you need to move your "real unit" to the corner and keep it far enough away from enemy units that they don't pick it to attack.  Continent map does not prioritize rogues over non-rogues like the AI you're used to from GvG/GBG/Neighborhood battles.  But it does prioritize proximity to a large degree - so parking the real unit in the corner while you fling forward the rogues does often work.  Rapid Deployment units have a tendency to occasionally blast your real unit before you can move it.  And that's a big part of where the need for defense comes in.

Overall summary of process:

BA-LMA: 

• Skip some unnecessary techs - not crucial to reach Hover Tanks or if your target age is Progressive Era but the more you skip the easier it'll be to reach OF troops in Industrial.
• Try to build up rogues and defense bonus for attacking army.  
• Be as caught up as you can be on Story Quests before Colonial Age (you should get stuck on a quest requiring you to build Colonial buildings)

Colonial Age: 

• Carefully enter it researching a minimum of techs.
• Complete Industrial Story and as much of Progressive Story as you can until you get stuck (there's some quests requiring you to build Industrial or Progressive buildings).

Industrial Age+: 

• Continue carefully dealing with tech only as fast as you have to to complete story.  Extreme option is to win Police Stations from events, daily challenges, or expedition so you don't have to use up techs on researching them.
• Finish PE+ME story in whatever manner you prefer.
• Only negotiate with Che Guerrero when required to take one of his provinces in PME, don't take the other yet and don't fight any sectors inside.  This is necessary to receive the MG Teams that you'll be using to fight for the next while.
• Proceed with story as directed along the peninsula where you negotiated for a province from Che.  Fighting or Negotiating is fine with the other leader.
• Receive 5 MG Teams (and some commandos).
• After finishing the one side and being directed by story, conquer Che's other province by whatever means you prefer (you can fight him now if you prefer)
• Finish PME story up to "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".  Do not complete or abort this quest until you are done trying to get units above your age or are in Postmodern Era.
• Complete the Contemporary Era map without advancing story while not scouting the 2 optional provinces (in the north-west) that are unnecessary to get off the map (in the north-east).  Once you've scouted the first province of the TE map it is safe to advance story (possibly earlier, but if it doesn't work out you may not be able to get Hover Tanks til Contemporary Era) - it should just vanish for the time being.  Complete TE map as you please.
• TE story can be resumed at "Meet Miguel Mantos" immediately after scouting Rio Roxo - and possibly other spots.  Doing so may enable you to win troops useful to fight the rest of TE and FE continent with but may also require more techs.  If you wish to skip the entirety of TE story, you should do the same as CE and take only what you have to and get off the map before advancing story.
• Only negotiate with Joy Danba in the first province in Future Era.
• Upon finishing your negotiations for her entire province, FE story should be ready to resume telling you to scout the next provinces.
• Follow story as directed until you reach the point where you need to scout Kalabuye and Bisoraba (the two provinces adjacent to Botuku).
• Do not touch Kalabuye until Joy Danba has given you 3 Hover Tanks.
• Continue on with story as you please.  You will get 1 more Hover Tank and some assorted other troops.  Tech count permitting, you may continue following story until about halfway through the OF continent map winning a great deal of additional advanced troops.

Recurring Quest Basics and Minimizing Aborts

This is a topic I've thought on some today because of a nerf on beta to large scale completion of recurring quests.  Basically they're introducing a 3 second delay whenever you abort a quest before it goes away.  This means that doing one specific recurring quest over and over gets damaged.  I have some hope the riot this change is likely to cause will have them reconsider, but even if they do there is something to be said for considering this anyways in terms of reducing tedium.  I'll list quests from best to worst and discuss issues/strategies for completing them frequently.

Bronze Age Through Future Era:

1. R'lyeh - Spend X FP.  If you've got places you can spend the FP and get it back or if you've got a project you're looking to invest some of your savings in, you'd like to do this as much as possible.
2. Unbirthday Party - Pay X Coins and Y Supplies.  If you've got a high level Chateau Frontenac you can afford to do this every time it comes by as well.  If your Chateau Frontenac is not so high yet you can still afford it sometimes probably when you have excess coins and supplies.
3. Fnord - Gather X Coins.  During collection time you can do this many times as event buildings tend to have high coin production.  Combine it with some coin boost such as from St Mark's Basilica, Friends' Tavern, or Boost Bottles to be able to do more completions while going through your collection.
4. The Spink - Gather X Supplies.  This one is harder to keep up on.  You can still manage it in low ages, especially with premium production buildings.  In a new city in Iron Age without many event buildings it's actually one of the more efficient quests to work on - use tavern Supply Boost and get a Lighthouse of Alexandria if planning to work this.  But as your city space starts to get taken over by event buildings (which usually don't make many supplies if they make supplies at all) and you advance in ages, it becomes more difficult to complete this many times.  One thing you can do during collection is hold this as your 2nd recurring quest (requires LMA+) and as you get supply rewards from the other quests, sometimes this one will complete too.
5. Double Research - Research Two Technologies.  You don't actually want to do this one too often, but it will stop showing up as you get near the end of tech for your current age.  And making a quest go away is almost as good as completing it because you still don't have to abort it.
6. 3x Have 4 (unit A) and 4 (unit B).  You may seldom ever see these other than when you've just entered an age - so they do no harm.  A prerequisite to show them to you is that you have 2 or less of each A & B.  So to keep them blocked all you need is at least 3 unattached units of 3-4 of the unit types in the age.  There is a useful time to do these in Bronze Age when training times are really low with Slingers & Spearfighters.  Since Spearfighters train almost instantly you have 1 Spearfighter Barracks plus pairs of Slinger barracks.  You delete down to 2 Spearfighters and 2 Slingers, abort until you get the quest.  Then collect 2 Slingers and quickly train 2 Spearfighters.  Repeat ad nauseum.
7. 3x Produce (A)s - Complete (2-5) 24 hr productions in (specific non-premium production building of the age).  While these used to be the bread and butter of many quest-focused players, these days event buildings are too good to justify using much space on regular production buildings.  As such these 3 quests tend to be ones you just have to accept you're going to abort.

With this in mind you can expect when collecting or spending FP to complete at least 2 quests per 4-5 aborts.  While collecting AND spending FP you can expect to complete as many as 3-4 quests per 3-4 aborts.

Arctic Future:

1. Spend 99 FP, Spend 200 FP
2. Pay 300k Coins & Supplies, Pay 280k Coins & Supplies.
3. Gather 1M Coins
4. Gather 900k Supplies & Gather 1.5M Supplies
5. Build 8 Decorations of your Current Age - This is a new and somewhat useful type of quest.  It's quite possible to do indefinitely even without a very high Chateau Frontenac once you have access to the Ice Flower at the end of the tree, but it does involve a fair bit more clicking to build and eventually sell the decorations.
6. Gain 10k Happiness & Gain 12k Happiness - Even more doable indefinitely, but takes even more clicking still.  Using low age cultural buildings this can be done on the cheap.  But most of the time these will be always-abort quests.
7. 2x Recruitment Quests - unlike in earlier ages, you can't block these out because the task is to recruit more, not to have so many.  These will be always-abort quests.

With this in mind you can expect when collecting and spending FP to complete ~6 quests and abort 5 quests while holding onto a gather supplies quest.

Oceanic Future:

1. Spend 139 FP
2. Buy 5 FP - A new quest type this age, as long as you're below 10 FP you can do this every time you pass it for quite some time likely.
3. Pay 500k Coins & Supplies - Starting to get very expensive, but still manageable in between other quests
4. 3x Finish 6 24 hr productions (any building) - Another new quest type.  You can use event production buildings or blacksmiths for these quests too.  Since there's three copies of the quest you can finish 3 quests at once.
5. Gather 1M Coins
6. Gather 1.5M Supplies
7. Research 2 Technologies - blockable by finishing research for the age
8. Have 4 Hydroelectric Eels and Have 4 C.R.A.B. Mechs - blockable by having 3+ of either
9. Have 20k people available - blockable by having 10k+ people available
10. Gain 16k Happiness - a lone always-abort quest.

With this in mind you can expect when collecting and spending FP to complete up to 7 quests and abort 2 quests.

Virtual Future/SAM:

1. Spend 200 FP
2. Buy 15 FP - Significantly more aggravating than the OF one as you cannot buy more than 10 FP at a time.
3. Spend 150 FP and Buy 20 FP - An annoying semi-overlappable quest with the above 2.
4. Pay Coins & Supplies - Continues escalating rapidly.  You may not be able to afford to do these all the time anymore depending on how many other quests you do in between.
5. Finish 6 24 hr productions (any building) - only 1 copy of the quest anymore
6. Gather Coins
7. 2x Gather Supplies
8. Win 20 Battles and Gather Goods - If you have a source of many battles and have a guildmate list a bunch of large trades this is a viable quest to finish quickly for free.
9. Finish 1hr production 5-6 times in (nonpremium supply building of the age) - Can be targeted to be run many times in a day.  Helps if you're short on supplies.  Will be an aborted quest to most though.
10. 2 Quests: Have More than X people; Have Less than Y people.  One of these will be blocked, the other will not and be an always-abort quest.
11. Gain X Happiness - always-abort

Realistically it starts getting much harder to do many of the quests in one-loop.  I would expect to complete 4 quests and abort 6 quests per cycle during collection.  And complete 2 and abort 8 much of the time.

SAAB:

1. Spend 150 FP, Spend 200 FP
2. Win 12 Battles without Losing - No longer requires a goods trade
3. Defeat 40 Units (or solve a complex negotiation) - New quest, really easy to do alongside the win battles one
4. Finish 6 24 hr productions (any building)
5. Exchange 4 items in the antique dealer or Collect 4 incidents - New quest.  It can probably fit into your rotation a few times a day
6. Aid 30 players or Spend 400 Tavern Silver - New quest.  If doing aid during collection, it fits into rotation nicely
7. (Defeat a Large Army or Finish 5 minute productions 15 times) and Gather 500 goods - New quest.  It can be completed a few times during collection or every time if you have someone setup trades for you to clear regularly.
8. Recruit 5 Units (or pay way too many goods) - New quest.  It will randomly complete when you GBG and win units.  Otherwise having this quest before you collect Alcatraz is worth something.
9. Gather 1.4M Supplies & 2.2M Coins - Replaces individual coin and supply gathering quests.  It tends to be limited by supplies depriving you of potential quests from collecting coins you would've enjoyed in earlier ages.
10. Finish 8 Productions in a Space Farm - Replaces the 1hr production quests of the previous 2 ages.  Can now be 5 minute productions.  A cluster of Space Farms can be a large (annoying) quest source.
11. (Defeat a Very Large Army or Solve a Complex Negotiation) AND Finish 8 4 hr Productions (any building)  - New quest.  4 hour productions not being ideal for much, this is usually an always-abort.
12. Buy 20 FP and Pay 2.4M Supplies - New quest.  Sorta like a really annoying really expensive Unbirthday quest.  I treat it as an always-abort.
13. Gain 30k Population or (pay way too many goods) - New quest.  Always-abort.
14. (Win 20 Battles or Complex Negotiation) AND (pay way too many goods) - New quest.  Always-abort.

With 15 unblockable quests in the rotation and 5+ that are likely always-aborted this can be a frustrating age to quest in.  The trick would be if you can manage to simultaneously be in the middle of your collection and fighting things and aiding and spending your FP all at the same time.

A pure-FP or pure-fighting loop will involve 2 completions to 12 aborts.  Combining them improves things to 4 completions to 10 aborts.  If you add in ones that can be part of your daily tasks at the same time you can get it up to 7 or so completions to 7 aborts.

Arc Past 80 - When and how far?

Level 80 is the first major stopping point for the Arc.  The reason for this is that the rate at which its contribution bonus increases drops to 0.1%/level, while its cost/level is now going up sharply.  You may however have noticed that some people have taken Arc significantly further than 80.  I'm going try to address when this makes sense for you and how far you should go :)

The primary motivation for taking your Arc further can be boiled down to a desire to make FP.  The treasury goods are nice, but you could level one of the other treasury GBs or build Statues of Honor if you wanted to make more of those.  For most buildings the math on how many FP they'll make is rather straightforward and accordingly once they start going up sharply in cost they stop being worthwhile to level for the sake of FP - usually stopping somewhere between level 50 and 70.  With Arc however the amount of FP it makes depends on the amount of FP rewards you get - which can depend on activity in 1.9 threads and sniping.

For the sake of this analysis we're going to make the following assumptions:

• Your Arc benefit is coming solely from 1.9 threads (the daily investments column assumes those investments are at 1.9 - but really it's the amount of rewards you claim not the amount you pay for them that determines the cutoff; so if it's at 1.8 instead say it'd take less "investment")
• You are moving your Arc up in increments of 10 levels - makes the table smaller and from a practical perspective you won't actually see individual levels difference
• You want to payoff any levels you take within 1 year (modifying this to a different standard like 6 months or 2 years is as simple as doubling or halving the investments).
• The table is stopping at level 180 on account of no evidence that Arc's contribution bonus rises any further past that point.

*Level Range*	*Daily Investments*
80 -> 90	7359
90 -> 100	12879
100 -> 110	20928
110 -> 120	32146
120 -> 130	47533
130 -> 140	68220
140 -> 150	95710
150 -> 160	131968
160 -> 170	179425
170 -> 180	241270

The very top levels are simply not going to be worthwhile for all but the most die-hard players.  But levels up to 130-150 or so could be justified for active players who keep the 1.9 threads moving if they adjust their time for a payoff to something somewhat longer.  It all depends on just how much opportunity you have for investment :)

How much would receiving more than 1.9 change the above table?  Not much.  Taking 120->130 as an example, if you were receiving 1.95 instead for all spots you'd be down to 46479 FP/day invested to pay it off in a year - but you're probably also in a position where it's harder to get those investment opportunities in a 1.9 thread since many of your contacts would also be using a 1.95 thread where you're not even making profit yet (if you were taking spots in it anyways, it'd still count in terms of reducing your losses - but simply not taking high spots would reduce your losses further without all the extra investment)