Artifact Hoarding Is Bad
In my first blog post, I gave a real fast run down of frequently asked questions with answers. In this post, I want to address an ongoing debate from Galaxy Chat.
Hoarding Artifacts in Hades Star...
Hoarding artifacts is a terrible thing to do, at the beginning. This is especially so if you have a play style like mine and actively farm red stars multiple times a day. When you first start playing, you have a seemingly endless supply of hydrogen.
On your first play session you run shipments, you do an RS or two and you're done. Wait a little while and more fuel, run some more red stars. Pretty soon you're in a spot where you can't seem to spend your fuel fast enough. (This will end pretty quickly by the way.)
So you have lots of gas, and spend that gas like you should!
You will quickly amass a collection of artifacts, your transports are full and so too is your research station. Artifacts are the key to the door of technological advancement. Completing research of an artifact will give you a tidy sum of credits and some hydrogen.
Here's the thing: salvaging an artifacts will give you about 10% of the value of credits and fuel compared to completing research. BUT! You can acquire more than ten times the number of artifacts in the same time frame that it would take your lab to finish research four. So what to do?
Well, you could drop off those artifacts onto one of your planets. Except, that stops your planet from generating shipments. And the key to advancement is money.
How do we deal with this dilemma? We got all these techno fidgets that hold the key to power. More artifacts researched is more money and fuel and blueprints... But what to do with them?
If you're only a once-a-day kind of commander, load up 24 hours worth of research and salvage the rest. If you're more active than that, keep one research slot open in your tech lab. Have three of your target artifacts in queue to be developed. That leaves slot #4 open. Load all your extra artifacts there, and salvage them. Then go get more and salvage them too.
You will earn more credits faster using this method. You can earn quite a large percentage of your daily income through salvage. At my current rate of play, about 40% of my daily 120,000C income is from salvaging artifacts.
Because I salvage, I earn as much per day as players who are 2 or more red star tiers above me.
You will often here me degrade the idea of hoarding artifacts. At the early game you need every credit you can acquire. Storing arts on a planet will just cost you money. But there are times where storing arts is not only needed but advantageous.
When to hoard artifacts? The most obvious reason to hoard artifacts is because you are planning to be offline for more than a day. Note, the research lab does not automatically refill. So even in absentia you will need to log on 2 or 3 times a day to collect completed tech and reload new artifacts.
Another reason to store artifacts is: daily life. We sleep, we work, we play. We're not always able to be online for long stretches. In this situation, here's what I do.
I load up my research station with all four arts ready to be developed. I have four more artifacts on my transports. Right be bed or what have you, drop those arts onto your desert planet and then complete all of your shipments.
During this brief time, you'll maybe lose one shipment. Once all your deliveries are made, recollect the artifacts from your planet onto your transports and log off.
While offline, your planet will be loading new shipments and generating income, and you'll still have a day's worth of technology to unlock.
Remember, efficiency is success! Go forth commander and conquer!