Gem boost for builders

[Xitra]

The cost doesn't have to be linear in order for this to work. The percentage is meaningless to you because you aren't thinking.

I don't know how else to put it. So let's use some examples.

Your 4x for 6 hour boost = 18 hours of additional time = 197 gems ... so let's make the boost 150 (nice round number close to 75%)

Your 4x for 12 hour boost = 36 hours of additional time = 321 gems...so let's make the boost 240 (again nice around number close to 75%)

I honestly can't believe I have to explain this to you. It's a pretty simple concept.

Let's start with a 4x boost for 6 hours. As you say, it knocks off 18 hours of builder time. Let's give it a cost of 150 gems, per your suggestion.

Three scenarios:

1. I start a 1 day build/upgrade. Total cost to gem completion? 260 gems.
1a. I wait 6 hours. With 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 197 gems.
1b. I spend 150 gems to boost my builder, and 6 hours later, the building is complete.

2. I start a 2 day upgrade. Total cost to gem completion is 383 gems.
2a. I wait 6 hours. With 1 day 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 352 gems.
2b. I spend 150 gems. 6 hours later, there is 1 day left to complete the build, for a cost of 260 gems. Total cost if 410 gems.

3. I start a 7 day upgrade. Total cost to gem completion is 1000 gems.
3a. I wait 6 hours. With 6 days 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 969 gems.
3b. I spend 150 gems. 6 hours later, the are 6 days left to complete the build, for a cost of 876 gems. Total cost, 1,026 gems.

In scenario 1, you save a few gems (47, assuming the gem costs are accurate). However, as scenarios 2 and 3 point out, boosting the builder actually increases your total cost in gems (by about 57-58 gems). This is why it matters that it's not linear.

Based on what I could find online, the cost per day of builder time is about 123 gems per day, for anything longer than a day. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it's in the right ballpark for the shorter builds I've seen (less than 10 days). Indeed, it works out to 11 minutes 40 seconds per gem, which is what I'm observing on a 2-day build as it counts down.


Thus, shaving 18 hours off a build would save you about 92 gems. Using dahimi's 75% guideline, boosting a builder should cost about 70 gems for 6 hours, to give a nice round number.

Personally, the benefit seems too little to be worth a whole lot, at 70 gems per 6 hours of 4x boost.

For an 8-day build, it would cost 1,123 gems to finish the build instantly. You could wait 2 days, then gem it complete for a cost of 877 gems. So you spend 78% of the gems to finish the building in 25% of the original time, which is fair-ish. Save 22% of the gems, at the expense of 25% of the time.

Or, you could boost 8 times to finish the building in the same 2 days. At 70 gems per boost, you'd be spending 560 gems, or essentially half the original cost to gem completion. So you'd save 50% of the gems, at a cost of 25% of the time.


I think something closer to 40-60 gems might be more reasonable. Warren suggested 40, right?

[dahimi]

Let's start with a 4x boost for 6 hours. As you say, it knocks off 18 hours of builder time. Let's give it a cost of 150 gems, per your suggestion.

Three scenarios:

1. I start a 1 day build/upgrade. Total cost to gem completion? 260 gems.
1a. I wait 6 hours. With 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 197 gems.
1b. I spend 150 gems to boost my builder, and 6 hours later, the building is complete.

2. I start a 2 day upgrade. Total cost to gem completion is 383 gems.
2a. I wait 6 hours. With 1 day 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 352 gems.
2b. I spend 150 gems. 6 hours later, there is 1 day left to complete the build, for a cost of 260 gems. Total cost if 410 gems.

3. I start a 7 day upgrade. Total cost to gem completion is 1000 gems.
3a. I wait 6 hours. With 6 days 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 969 gems.
3b. I spend 150 gems. 6 hours later, the are 6 days left to complete the build, for a cost of 876 gems. Total cost, 1,026 gems.

In scenario 1, you save a few gems (47, assuming the gem costs are accurate). However, as scenarios 2 and 3 point out, boosting the builder actually increases your total cost in gems (by about 57-58 gems). This is why it matters that it's not linear.

Based on what I could find online, the cost per day of builder time is about 123 gems per day, for anything longer than a day. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it's in the right ballpark for the shorter builds I've seen (less than 10 days). Indeed, it works out to 11 minutes 40 seconds per gem, which is what I'm observing on a 2-day build as it counts down.


Thus, shaving 18 hours off a build would save you about 92 gems. Using dahimi's 75% guideline, boosting a builder should cost about 70 gems for 6 hours, to give a nice round number.

Personally, the benefit seems too little to be worth a whole lot, at 70 gems per 6 hours of 4x boost.

For an 8-day build, it would cost 1,123 gems to finish the build instantly. You could wait 2 days, then gem it complete for a cost of 877 gems. So you spend 78% of the gems to finish the building in 25% of the original time, which is fair-ish. Save 22% of the gems, at the expense of 25% of the time.

Or, you could boost 8 times to finish the building in the same 2 days. At 70 gems per boost, you'd be spending 560 gems, or essentially half the original cost to gem completion. So you'd save 50% of the gems, at a cost of 25% of the time.


I think something closer to 40-60 gems might be more reasonable. Warren suggested 40, right?

The point is boosting a builder in this manner is no different than buying small increments of time and it should be priced as such with a bit of a discount thrown in for waiting.

It should not cost me 260 gems to rush 1 day worth of time and only 40-60 to do the same thing on a short boost if I'm willing to wait 6 hours for it. That's not reasonable.

[WarrenJames]

I did say something worth <ignored>

Let's start with a 4x boost for 6 hours. As you say, it knocks off 18 hours of builder time. Let's give it a cost of 150 gems, per your suggestion.

Three scenarios:

1. I start a 1 day build/upgrade. Total cost to gem completion? 260 gems.
1a. I wait 6 hours. With 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 197 gems.
1b. I spend 150 gems to boost my builder, and 6 hours later, the building is complete.

2. I start a 2 day upgrade. Total cost to gem completion is 383 gems.
2a. I wait 6 hours. With 1 day 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 352 gems.
2b. I spend 150 gems. 6 hours later, there is 1 day left to complete the build, for a cost of 260 gems. Total cost if 410 gems.

3. I start a 7 day upgrade. Total cost to gem completion is 1000 gems.
3a. I wait 6 hours. With 6 days 18 hours left, the cost to gem completion is 969 gems.
3b. I spend 150 gems. 6 hours later, the are 6 days left to complete the build, for a cost of 876 gems. Total cost, 1,026 gems.

In scenario 1, you save a few gems (47, assuming the gem costs are accurate). However, as scenarios 2 and 3 point out, boosting the builder actually increases your total cost in gems (by about 57-58 gems). This is why it matters that it's not linear.

Based on what I could find online, the cost per day of builder time is about 123 gems per day, for anything longer than a day. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it's in the right ballpark for the shorter builds I've seen (less than 10 days). Indeed, it works out to 11 minutes 40 seconds per gem, which is what I'm observing on a 2-day build as it counts down.


Thus, shaving 18 hours off a build would save you about 92 gems. Using dahimi's 75% guideline, boosting a builder should cost about 70 gems for 6 hours, to give a nice round number.

Personally, the benefit seems too little to be worth a whole lot, at 70 gems per 6 hours of 4x boost.

For an 8-day build, it would cost 1,123 gems to finish the build instantly. You could wait 2 days, then gem it complete for a cost of 877 gems. So you spend 78% of the gems to finish the building in 25% of the original time, which is fair-ish. Save 22% of the gems, at the expense of 25% of the time.

Or, you could boost 8 times to finish the building in the same 2 days. At 70 gems per boost, you'd be spending 560 gems, or essentially half the original cost to gem completion. So you'd save 50% of the gems, at a cost of 25% of the time.


I think something closer to 40-60 gems might be more reasonable. Warren suggested 40, right?

The point is boosting a <ignored>

I was close to being right?! I would post what my logic was for that 40 gem for 6hr, and 70 gem for 12hr (http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...t-your-builder) if only the thread itself that I posted it on didn't get deleted. Oh well, I remember it was based off of gut feeling guestimations from the barracks. I took the values from it, since it seemed to be the most costly per hour, came up with 30 gems for 6 hours, felt it was too cheap, and said 40 gems for a 6hr boost. And because of how gem cost changes as you go up in 'bought time' I doubled it, 80, and took 10 gems off the price (down to 70) for what felt like it was fair.

Been quoting 40 gems for 6hr boost and 70 gems for 12hr boost ever since. Never really did any hard and fast numbers on it. Making it 50/90 for 6hr/12hr seems like a good cost to me, and partly that is where it counts. If the average player doesn't 'feel' as if it is a good deal, they won't do it, unless someone of authority does the numbers and gives more proof. And Supercell can't really give out the math, nor rely on other players to get them into spending gems.

[Xitra]

The point is boosting a builder in this manner is no different than buying small increments of time and it should be priced as such with a bit of a discount thrown in for waiting.

It should not cost me 260 gems to rush 1 day worth of time and only 40-60 to do the same thing on a short boost if I'm willing to wait 6 hours for it. That's not reasonable.

Supercell clearly set the precedent with boosting the barracks. It costs 20 gems to complete 2 dragons in the barracks, or 1 hour of build time. I can boost my barracks for 10 gems and get the dragons in 15 minutes. It's 25 minutes to stack 3 dragons, yet with a 10 gem boost they'd be done in 22.5 minutes, saving me in excess of an hour.


Anyway, I think a slightly more "reasonable" way to boost the barracks is to do a 2x boost, rather than a 4x boost. For simplicity, I'll use a 12 hour boost at 40 gems. This approximately fits your criteria of using 75% of the "instant" cost, though only the marginal cost of 123 gems per day (almost 62 per 12 hours). Actually, it's closer to 65%, but whatever...

Going back to the original scenarios, for a 1 day build:
Instant cost: 260 gems.
12 hour wait + instant cost: 134 gems
12-hr boost cost: 40 gems

Scenario 2, 2-day build.
Instant cost: 383 gems
12 hour wait + instant cost: 321 gems
12-hr boost + 24 hour instant cost: 300 gems

Scenario 3, 7-day build
Instant cost: 1000 gems
12 wait + instant cost: 938 gems
12-hr boost + 6-day instant cost: 917 gems


Now, all this is assuming a flat rate for boosting. A flat rate only makes sense if it's lower than the marginal rate for long builds (123 gems per day, about 5 gems per hour saved).

However, I suppose we could propose a "smart rate" that calculates how many gems are actually saved, and then charges 50% or 75% of that rate. But I'm not personally in favor of this.

Also, if you're really worried about people boosting builders for short buildings, we can use another precedent from existing boosts: minimum building level. You can't boost mines or pumps or barracks until level 5.

In this case, rather than a building level, you could simply make a requirement that the building have at least 2 days left. That way, you can't speed up the final day of the build, when the marginal gem cost is highest.

[dahimi]

Supercell clearly set the precedent with boosting the barracks. It costs 20 gems to complete 2 dragons in the barracks, or 1 hour of build time. I can boost my barracks for 10 gems and get the dragons in 15 minutes. It's 25 minutes to stack 3 dragons, yet with a 10 gem boost they'd be done in 22.5 minutes, saving me in excess of an hour.

Troops and buildings are totally separate use cases as I mentioned earlier in the thread. There is a huge difference in impact of being able to cheaply boost builders vs. cheaply boosting barracks.

If you boost barracks you're still gated by building build times. Build times are where the real time sink is.

Anyway, I think a slightly more "reasonable" way to boost the barracks is to do a 2x boost, rather than a 4x boost. For simplicity, I'll use a 12 hour boost at 40 gems. This approximately fits your criteria of using 75% of the "instant" cost, though only the marginal cost of 123 gems per day (almost 62 per 12 hours). Actually, it's closer to 65%, but whatever...

Which means it doesn't fit my criteria at all because you're getting the bulk rate while being able to purchase tiny increments of time. You should not get the 123 gems per day discount rate by buying 12 hours at a time.

Now if they want to add an option to double the rate and base that cost on amount of time left that might make sense.

So if you have one week left on a building, you can double the speed for:

1 week = 1000 gems so...double speed would be 500 gems. Meaning you save 68 gems over the rush cost of 568 gems for 3.5 days of time.

If you one day left:

1 day = 260 gems so...double speed would be 130 gems. Meaning you save 4 gems over the rush cost of 134 gems for 12 hours of time.

It could be they throw in a discount there, but I think 75% is way to high considering that again you're buying smaller amounts of time at what is already a discounted rate reserved for larger blocks of time.

[WarrenJames]

This really needs to be done on a spreadsheet and formulas graphed out. One, I can understand those better than just numbers on a page, and two, you get better details, and find the average, and slop of given ranges.

Would be spectacular if Supercell gave us ratios on stuff like boosted barracks vs instant trained units. That way we have a history of how such a feature will react when going live at a set value. As if that would happen, but would be as I said spectacular.

I'm sure that with a high enough listed cost, a boosted builder isn't going to be used for small projects that take such a short time. Then again, I can see the usefulness of a boosted builder bringing up to speed a brand new building, plowing past those short times, until it gets to that one day mark, and really working into those longer upgrade times. I mean, a builder is not going to just stop being boosted when the job is done, right?

[dahimi]

I mean, a builder is not going to just stop being boosted when the job is done, right?

Which is another issue.

There is no way to assign specific builders to specific projects so they'd have to come with an interface for that too.

Much better to not have to do that by having boosts apply to projects (with no overrun) instead of individual builders.

[Xitra]

Troops and buildings are totally separate use cases as I mentioned earlier in the thread. There is a huge difference in impact of being able to cheaply boost builders vs. cheaply boosting barracks.

If you boost barracks you're still gated by building build times. Build times are where the real time sink is.

I guess we're just looking at it from perspectives that are too far apart to agree on this. I can see what you're trying to say, but I disagree. We'll just have to leave it at that.

Which means it doesn't fit my criteria at all because you're getting the bulk rate while being able to purchase tiny increments of time. You should not get the 123 gems per day discount rate by buying 12 hours at a time.

Now if they want to add an option to double the rate and base that cost on amount of time left that might make sense.

So if you have one week left on a building, you can double the speed for:

1 week = 1000 gems so...double speed would be 500 gems. Meaning you save 68 gems over the rush cost of 568 gems for 3.5 days of time.

If you one day left:

1 day = 260 gems so...double speed would be 130 gems. Meaning you save 4 gems over the rush cost of 134 gems for 12 hours of time.

It could be they throw in a discount there, but I think 75% is way to high considering that again you're buying smaller amounts of time at what is already a discounted rate reserved for larger blocks of time.

Actually, speeding up the remaining time makes more sense in some ways. It eliminates the issue of starting a boost for a building that will finish before the boost expires. It also handles the issue of the extreme discount for the final 1-24 hours. But I don't see a point of offering the feature if there isn't a built-in discount. Why boost with 7 days left, when you can wait 3.5 days and then make the decision, based on your need for a free builder, your available loot, your schedule to farm for more loot, need for the building, etc.

And anyway, there's still a considerable amount of waiting involved, which means impatience is still going to make people spend more gems for the instant build. So it's not like Supercell is suddenly going to lose 25% of their revenue if they offer this 25% discount for boosting. Plus, I assume that if someone changes their mind and decides to gem completion anyway, they're going to have to pay even more gems. It'll happen. Supercell will lose very little, if any, gem income. Indeed, I assert (without proof) that they would increase income. Win-win.

[dahimi]

Actually, speeding up the remaining time makes more sense in some ways. It eliminates the issue of starting a boost for a building that will finish before the boost expires. It also handles the issue of the extreme discount for the final 1-24 hours. But I don't see a point of offering the feature if there isn't a built-in discount. Why boost with 7 days left, when you can wait 3.5 days and then make the decision, based on your need for a free builder, your available loot, your schedule to farm for more loot, need for the building, etc.

There is a built in discount. You save 68 gems (over 10%) by starting the boost when you have 1 week left as opposed to waiting 3.5 days and rushing it. I did also mention that they could throw in a further discount in there, but considering in this case you're getting 10% already, I don't think an additional 25% is warranted. Maybe another 10-15%.

And anyway, there's still a considerable amount of waiting involved, which means impatience is still going to make people spend more gems for the instant build. So it's not like Supercell is suddenly going to lose 25% of their revenue if they offer this 25% discount for boosting.

I think it's important, though, to make the pricing schemes consistent. You should not make out like a bandit for boosting projects vs rushing them.

Plus, I assume that if someone changes their mind and decides to gem completion anyway, they're going to have to pay even more gems. It'll happen. Supercell will lose very little, if any, gem income. Indeed, I assert (without proof) that they would increase income. Win-win.

SC would have to work the math on this one. I'm sure they could reduce the rush cost accordingly if the project has been boosted.

[WarrenJames]

If not that many people are paying for the instant completion, then Supercell is not making very much money. The cost for the saved time is too high for most of the consumers to feel it is worth spending money. Plus there is the perception issue of not seeming like a good deal at all using the instant completion feature, and just ignore it wholesale.

If you add a feature like this, they see the cost difference in the boost and instant complete, they will think it is great and go for the better deal. Plus you have them seeing only a small cost at a time, bosting, re-boosting, and boosting again to get some of those annoyingly long upgrades done. Before most realize it, they have spent thier gems! But they felt really good about it because they felt like they got an awesome deal!

This could drive some more people to actually pay, or use things like an ad app to gain points and get spend them on gems, and this would pay for the 'double addiction' of building faster, and feeling like they are getting thier money's worth.

You have to price things right for optimal income, balancing cost, profit, and demand. Too high a price, and hardly anyone buys. Too low, and you can't sell enough to make a meaningful profit. There is this 'magic point' where you maximize profit, which on a graph is where the the supply cost and demand price lines cross.

To give you an idea just how good (or 'bad') this idea is, I would even be tempted boost a builder or so with these prices. Which means there is a chance they would start getting income out of me. Currently, they get $0 from me, since I know better with the current system, and can wait. Many people are in my boat, and many don't even put in much thought on this as I do. They just don't 'feel' it is worth it, with a rare few going so far as to ruin thier game experience for some of those large gem rewards, when it is less than $10 worth of gems! There are many things they'd pay for for more than $10, and do regularly, to not live with the hassle, and yet their are a few that just have to over work for those few gems.

Buttom line: You can't just make cold hard numbers and expect people to buy it. The cost has to seem good enough to get them to go for it.