I'm just about there (have Ares, Xora Tauri II and Xora Tauri left to conquer), and started thinking about the common advice to rush into using the Wahrian time gate ASAP at the end. My understanding is that the main benefit of the time gate is to convert all of the RPs into TPs, giving a sizeable boost starting over, such that being able to get and use the Alpha/Beta gates into the next game layer and making progress there is possible. I think - and am soliciting advice about this part - that it might be more beneficial to rebuild production to output only Iron, Steel, Titanium and RPs (and resources required by the RP labs), and let RPs build even past having enought metals to build the time machine, shifting those resources into RP labs in order to maximize the final amount of RPs, which determing the number of TPs gained. In my case, I'm currently running at 300,000 RP/s, and think I could easily double and possibly triple that rate by the production conversion. I'm not doing a speed run, and would let RPs accumulate for a couple of days, bumping the Scientific Research buff as it becomes affordable. That gives a first approximation of an additional 75e9- 100e9 RPs per day, which translates to at least a factor of 10 TPs more than just resetting immediately (if I did all the math right, at least). This seems at first look a rather large boost for not much effort - unless I'm missing something.

The amount of TP you gain after time traveling is based on total RP earned and your influence (based on numbers of planets conquered). Doubling Influence will double your TP gain, while in case of RP... well, from what I see in the research calc, increasing it 10 times gives you like 20% more TP. Actually it seems that TP : RP ratio is somehow logarythmic (wiki says it is ln(1+(RP/2 x 10^11)). You could of course focus on research. If you still havent reset, I recommend you building up even bigger army for Xora Tauri (with the help of Battlecalc) to make sure at least SOME of it survives, then try to conquer Alfari, Xenovirgo and if possible, Seal of Conquest. These three planets will give you total + 2282 Influence points, while at whole galaxy 1 you get like 1-2k... actually doubling your TP with only 3 more planets conquered (4 if you count Solidat which needs only to be colonized) Part about Iron, Steel and Titanium is very good - before you reset, perhaps while gathering bigger fleet for what I mentioned above, try to build as many as possible Time Machines EVERYWHERE. Instead of, for example 4 at Ishtar gate (their cost would be 1 + 1,5 + 2,25+ 3,375 = 8,125xIron cost of first gate, not even mentioning 15xSteel or more in case of Titanium) - you should be able to squeeze out 8 machines if you build one by one on planets you have. Why you ask? There is some formula that bases on your total amount of Space Machines, giving you Orion Cargos at beggining of next run... extremally important as your production boosted by TP will me many, many times higher... while cost of ships remains the same (for now) and you will lack well-built economy, unlocked research and energy to produce nanotubes and robots for more irons, while still in early phase of next run. Anyway, here is summary: * If you can increase RP production easily by a lot - do it asap, squeeze out some TP and RP that can still help you this run * Try to conquer 1-3 more planets in Galaxy 2 (+ colonize Solidat, free 5 influence) to get MUCH more TP; * Build as many time machines as you can for free orions

Thanks for the answers and additional info. I was under the impression that the enemy fleets get larger after Xora Tauri, and that it wasn't realistic to take them before doing the first time reset. If that's not so, then I'll absolutely go for the influence points as you indicated. Lacking the additional planets for influence points, I was looking at reasonable ways to increase RP only, and spending an hour rejiggering production plus waiting a couple days to build RP seemed like a good trick to try. I used wolfram alpha with the RP->TP formula, with influence points held constant, but only for the unspent RPs - not the ones already spent on tech - to get a sense of relative gain from increasing RP production by 2 orders of magnitude, which took the output TP from 85 to 850. This would be in addition to the TP from purchased tech, which I was ignoring as a constant for the comparison. I don't have any experience on what that 850 or so TP would actually buy me, at this point for all I know it's only a couple of levels here and there. Thanks for the tip about not clustering the time machines on a single planet, from what I've seen on the cost scaling of other buildings that's a critical bit of intel.

When you time travel, the Technology Points you start over with (I'll call this "NewTP") are: NewTP = OldTP + 2 * Influence * Log5( 1 + TotalRP / 200 billion) "OldTP" is how many Technology Points you started the run with. (For your first run, this is zero.) "TotalRP" is how many Research Points you earned this run, both spent and unspent. You'll see this at the bottom of the game as "Total RP earned". "Log5()" is the logarith base 5. Log5(5) = 1 , Log5(25) = 2 , Log5(125) = 3 , Log5(625) = 4 , and so on. So, for a linear progression of Technology Points (within a single run), you need to keep multiplying your Research Points by 5. ... Note: You'll also see the following formula floating around, which is mathematically equivalent: NewTP = OldTP + (2 / Ln(5)) * Influence * Ln( 1 + TotalRP / 200 billion) ...where "Ln()" is the natural logarithm, or logarithm base e (= 2.718281828459...)

Yes, had found both forms, which I used in my analysis via wolfram alpha. Both forms show _Influence_ being a direct multiplier, with the effect from RP having a logarithmic decay, requiring increasing amounts of RP to provide a linear increase of TP - just as you noted. I was holding _Influence_ constant, since there are only so many planets in the Perseus arm, and at the time I believed the common statements to reset ASAP after capturing Xora Tauri and not going for the space gate and the worlds in the next game layer. So what I was looking at was how much of a difference collecting RP past the point of being able to do a time reset, and whether the penalties associated with the delay in doing so was reasonable. Since my OP, I found the TP estimator tool (Thanks GodLloyd! Neat and useful tool!), which answered how many I could expect at my current total RP (which is 1685 TP). I then calculated forward for an additional order of magnitude and a smidge more that I'd obtain over 48 hours of waiting and accumulating RP (which is two orders of x5), to find that it would gain me an additional net 850 TP for a two days delay. So a rough 50% increase in TP in exchange for two days of waiting seems just inside the worthwhile category to me, but YMMV. :>) However, as Karczek noted above, there could be a much larger gain by conquering Alfari, Xenovirgo and maybe Seal of Conquest, which if all three are taken give a direct multiplier increase of 2282 influence points - a much larger gain, and one that is done in parallel with farming RP at a slightly lower rate in order to maintain fleet building. Win - win!! I've now conquered Ares, and am building up for Xora Tauri II, which should take about 24 hours from now, then rebuild and take Xora Tauri and then I'll have to decide which path I want to take. But I do appreciate both your direct feedback as well as your other posts, which have some good nuggets of insight into the game mechanics.

A short update, for anyone who's curious: I decided not to build fleets after looking at what I'd have to produce, but to redirect production into Iron, Steel, Titanium and build up labs to generate more RP, since I was about 35e9 RP short of buying the Secrets of Space and Time. Killed off all the ammunition, armor and engine facilities, shut down nanotube production to free up a bunch of graphite, and away I went. At this point in time, I've gotten the Secrets of Time and Space tech level 1, built 3 time machines and am about 90% complete on the fourth. I'd read that the number of Orions available after time traveling is proportional to the square root of the number of time machines, so I'm hoping for 2 Orions. I've been checking my TP progress using the in-game tool, and have gone from about 1800 TP to 2737 TP - a rather nice gain, all due to producing RP as fast as possible (currently at 535e3/s, up from 322e3/s - not quite the tripling I'd hoped for, but not bad). All in all, a nice ending to my first run on Perseus I think.