A new update just came out today which changed the balance of units and the game economy significantly. Although the unit re-balances are interesting, it’s too early to comment on their effects with any certainty – the meta is still being figured out. However, I have done some maths on the new economy to help determine what the best way to spend diamond is. We’ll also find out if we’ve been ripped off (spoilers: we haven’t been).

The Most Efficient Use of Diamond

Unlike clickbait videos that try to game the algorithm, I can tell you right now that the best ways to spend diamonds is either resetting bounties or buying cloning chambers. If you want credits, reset bounties. If you want cards, buy cloning chambers. It’s that simple.

This a screenshot from the spreadsheet I used. This table tells you how much of each resource you can get per diamond for each of the activities. Here is the whole workbook. Inside are some explanations about what the values are, how I got some of the values, and some of the assumptions I made.

Have We Been Ripped Off?

The short answer is no. Here is an additional comparison with the previous values before the patch. We are losing a little bit of value which I think is made up for by the more efficient cloning and better convoys. I would like to know why bounties were nerfed, though.

Finishing a whole convoy cycle (150 crates) yields slightly more rewards as before. A note of caution, however: rushing crates is twice as expensive now for the same rewards, meaning rushing’s value has been gutted. You were probably better off resetting bounties since last patch anyway, so this isn’t a huge loss. Overall, we aren’t being ripped off.

The Vault

Some players had confusion about whether the vault was taking your cards hostage and forcing you to pay diamonds to get them. This is not the case. The cards in the vault are generated out of thin air as a bonus when you open crates. Your cards are safe and sound.

That said, though, the vault isn’t very good value. Unless you are really into random epic cards (instead of targeted epic cards from cloning chambers), the vault isn’t good value. It’s even worse value if you open it before it’s full. Unless I’m missing something, it’s best to steer clear of the vault.

Closing Thoughts

Our community shouldn’t be so quick to jump on the bash EA train. After doing calculations, we see that the economy change hasn’t really changed that much. If anything, the improved cloning vats will be a great source of extra cards – even if you are just using the free chamber.

So let’s take a step back and look at the numbers before we complain that the devs are trying to milk us, alright? They’re some really cool people.

Spotted a mistake? Want to discuss the maths behind this a bit more? Join our metahub discord server and find me there!

It’s been a while, commander, see you again soon!