At A Glance
- Understand how upgrade formulas scale (mining, speed, cargo) to know when returns diminish.
- Use projects, rooms, managers, and secondary systems to multiply your gains beyond raw planet upgrades.
- Time resets, credit sales, and boost usage strategically to maximize long-term growth.
Core Upgrade Formulas & Scaling Mechanics
To make intelligent decisions, you must understand how the core upgrades scale:
- Mining Rate formula:
Upgraded Base Mining = 0.25 + 0.1 × (level − 1) + 0.017 × (level − 1)² - Ship Speed formula:
Upgraded Base Speed = 1 + 0.2 × (level − 1) + (1/75) × (level − 1)² - Cargo Capacity formula:
Upgraded Base Cargo = 5 + 2 × (level − 1) + 0.1 × (level − 1)² (rounded)
These formulas show diminishing marginal returns, especially as levels rise. Because costs increase faster than gains, the payback time slowly lengthens with each upgrade. This means that early upgrades are highly efficient, while late ones can become leeching drains on resources.
Also note: if you upgrade mining, speed, and cargo equally, you may end up paying three times more than if you had prioritized mining and only upgraded speed/cargo when necessary.
Project Tree & Unlocking Strategy
Projects are a pillar of long-term progression. There are four main branches:
- Telescope (expands planets visible)
- Colonization
- Planets / Ore logistics / Alchemy
- Production / Asteroids / Debris
Key tips:
- Unlock Management early so you can hire and assign managers.
- Telescope projects unlock new planets in batches (~3 per telescope level).
- Beacon, Cargo Logistics, and Ore Targeting are mid-tier projects that enhance yield and control which ores are prioritized.
- Alchemy, Advanced Alchemy, Superior Alchemy let you upgrade ore types on planets—use these when the payback makes sense.
- On the production side, Asteroid Refined Drilling, Asteroid Harvester, Debris Scanner and their upgrades yield occasional high-value returns beyond standard ore.
Don’t rush expensive projects that your current galaxy can’t support—only unlock those whose benefits will pay back within your remaining run.
Rooms & Their Multipliers
Rooms are unlocked when you reach ~10 million galaxy value, using credits from selling galaxies. Each room offers a boost to one or more systems.
Notable rooms and their effects:
- Engineering: increases mining speed multiplier
- Forge: boosts smelting
- Aeronautical: enhances ship speed
- Packaging: expands cargo multiplier
- Astronomy: reduces planet upgrade cost (e.g. 90%)
- Workshop, Laboratory, Robotics, Lounge, etc.: reduce project costs, increase credits, idle time, etc.
Each room has a “min cost,” “per level” bonus, and a maximum bonus. Some multiplicative bonuses can be massive in late game, e.g. shipping, mining, or cargo gains. But room cost escalates steeply, so you must choose wisely which rooms to develop first.
Good priority order: mining-related rooms (Engineering), then cost reduction (Astronomy), then shipping/cargo enhancements, and then side rooms (Workshop, Lounge) as your game stabilizes.
Managers & Secondary Bonuses
Managers amplify planet performance. Each manager has:
- Primary bonus: applies to the assigned planet (e.g. mining, speed, cargo)
- Secondary bonus: once the manager is ≥3 stars, gives a global bonus (e.g. +5% mining across all planets, +10% craft speed)
Primary bonuses are multiplicative with room and planet multipliers. Secondary bonuses are additive across managers with the same stat.
Manager strategy tips:
- Early on, assign mining managers to your highest-yield planets. Use speed/cargo managers temporarily to clear bottlenecks.
- Promote managers by discarding three of the same star quality to bump one up, but only when it makes sense—the promotion cost can sometimes outweigh gains.
- Always prioritize managers that offer secondary traits in mining, smelting, or crafting, since those affect the entire galaxy.
- Use the Classroom room to boost manager bonuses further.
- Increase manager slots (with dark matter) only when you have more planets than available slots.
Credit Sales & Reset Timing
- Credits are earned when you sell a galaxy; the amount depends on galaxy value.
- It’s more efficient to sell at exact orders of magnitude (e.g. 10 million, 100 million, 1 billion) because credit growth between magnitudes slows sharply otherwise.
- Between magnitudes, credit gain is nearly linear: climbing from 10 M to 20 M gets ~10% of the difference in credits between 10 M and 100 M.
- Unless you have a reason (tournament, boost timing), aim to reset at round magnitudes.
Reset (selling your galaxy) is not failure—it’s how you convert transient growth into permanent boosts and credits. When upgrades or new planets start giving very long payback times, your run has probably peaked. That’s your cue to reset.
Also, multiple shorter runs often outperform one long run in total credit accumulation, especially early on.
Boosts, Tournaments & Events
- Planetary boosts give ×10 multipliers to productivity on specific planets—use them when upgrade payback is still low (e.g. ≤ ~50 minutes).
- Time Warp + Production Boost combos are powerful because upgrades during warp get applied over the warp duration.
- Use boosts when they can amplify upgrades—not when income has stagnated.
- Tournaments run over 48 hours. Galaxy value at the end determines ranking and rewards (resource stars, dark matter, credits).
- Events & Missions: near the end of a run, check missions and spend existing resources (projects, colonization, upgrades) to complete missions before reset.
- Missions often center on boosts, unlocking planets, upgrading, smelting, crafting, etc. Strategically timing your reset to coincide with rewarding missions helps maximize yield.
Advanced Tactics & Interactions
- Bottleneck monitoring: ore pileups indicate shipping/cargo imbalance; slow growth suggests mining is lagging. Adjust accordingly.
- Ore prioritization: with Cargo Logistics and Ore Targeting projects, you can pick which ore(s) receive bonus yield. Use this to favor higher-value ores.
- Planet distance vs yield: outer planets have longer trip times—which reduces effectiveness. Unless their yields compensate, inner planets often remain more efficient.
- Asteroids and debris: these occasional sources can spike income if your planets lag. Invest in their projects only when your main setup is stable.
- Colonization investments: colonizing gives equivalent benefit to a few mining upgrades. Only colonize when upgrades or planets are no longer cost-effective.
- Dark matter usage: spend wisely—on boosts, manager slots, or purchasing good managers. Avoid frivolous use.
Final Thoughts
This deep dive reveals that Idle Planet Miner is far more than endless upgrades and planet unlocking. The game rewards strategy: understanding upgrade scaling, choosing smart projects, optimizing rooms, leveraging managers, and timing resets and boosts.
Always measure decisions by payback time, and shift your focus when returns drop. Use your permanent currency (credits, resource stars, manager upgrades) to accelerate subsequent runs. With careful balancing of these systems, each galaxy becomes more efficient, and your empire grows faster than ever before.