"Dust and affordability to train up = part 2 - the XP/Dust ratio"

#PokemonGO: TLTR: The XP to dust ratio depends on your playstyle. It should likely be the most important factor in deciding if you spend dust on a pokemon or not as this decides how many pokemon you can keep maxed out. But no matter what your XP to stardust ratio - you will be able to afford to train up more pokemon with higher level.I’m reading a lot of useful analysis as well as questions here. One common one is – I have an IV ?? (fill in your number here) – should I power it up or not. The common answers I see are:1) Keep stardust as long as possible2) Only power up really high CP mons3) Wait for the ideal move set4) Just have fun (actually this one least often)These answers in my view miss the most important issue in deciding how to use stardust – your XP/Dust ratio. In my view this ratio – which is heavily dependent on play style – is more important in deciding how to use your stardust than anything else.I generated a spreadsheet to calculate different theoretical XP/Dust ratios. I also used 4 ratios (2, 3, 4 and 6) to calculate how many Pokémon you cana) Keep permanently at highest possible level (starting at trainer level 10)b) Train up to highest possible level using level 20 egg Pokémon (starting at trainer level 20)c) Train up to highest possible level using level 1 Pokémon (starting at trainer level 20)For example, at level 25 you could keep 3.1 to 9.4 pokemon maxed out depending if your XP stardust ratio is 2 or 6. Important to notice – the numbers slowly go up with level. The higher your level, the more Pokémon you are able to afford being trained up to max. no matter what source. So how did I get the ratios of 2, 3, 4 and 6 and what playstyles correspond to these?Assumptions:You visit 1 pokestop for each Pokémon you catch. The spreadsheet (http://ift.tt/2hl5lOW) allows you to alter that value – but it only changes you values slightly – unless you have an extreme playstyle. You can easily check your own value in the medals area – check your value for collector and backpacker.I assume 10% of bonus XP for each Pokémon caught. Again – it won’t change a lot – but you can alter that value in the spreadsheet. Formulas are on sheet 2 (Dust XP ratio – you might have to make your own copy to allow editing) 10% assumes a curve ball or a nice throw – or one great throw for every 4 balls without a bonus.The highest ratio – 6 – assumes that you use lucky eggs for all your XP and that you gain your XP grinding pidgeys (or weedles aka 12 candy evolutions)The second highest ratio – 4 – assumes that you grind pidgeys – but you only use the lucky egg for evolutions.A ratio of 3 can be reached either using 25 candy evolutions and lucky eggs or 12 candy evolutions without lucky eggs.A ratio of 2 is reached using 50 candy evolutions and no lucky eggs.Here is a table with some selected numbers – for your own level go to the complete spreadsheet:Leveldust ratiokeep maxed outtrain up from 20train up from 12529.46.13.02536.34.12.02563.12.01.030215.9106.730310.66.64.43065.33.32.235239.118.114.135326.012.09.435613.06.04.7402na4436.7403na29.424.5406na14.712.2Other play that effects the ratio:Hatching eggs (without lucky eggs) gives you a ratio < 1. A 2K egg is 700 XP for 600 stardust average, a 5K egg is 1000 XP for approx. 1200 star dust and a 10K egg is 1500 XP for an average 2400 dust. Doing a lot of hatching will drive down your ratio.Gym combat: You gain ‘no’ XP and 500 dust for every Pokémon defender claimed. In principle that could yield you up to 5000 dust/day. Your ratio in gym battles is much more flexible. Battling a lot while not claiming often only gives you XP. So your XP to dust ratio is high – battling little or just sniping gyms will give you little XP but still some dust. Keeping a defender in a gym > 21 hours is the same. So if you battle a lot with a special style then you might need to raise/lower you XP/dust ratio.The daily bonus – this wasn’t in the game when I originally did the spreadsheet. The bonus benefits most if you play slowly.I do ignore in my ratio calculation:Bonus XP for first time catching a Pokémon. This value is very important early in the game but will diminish a lot once you reach level 20. I gained around 50K XP at level 23 (out of my 464K) but this extra XP is very uncommon now and the 25K XP left I could claim will not matter much.The bonus for every 100th Pokémon of a certain species – come on – that is rounding errors and my analysis isn’t that exact anyhow.Off course this leads to the question – is power levelling bad? After all – it means the amount of Pokémon you are able to keep at max level will be heavily diminished?The simple answer is – it doesn’t matter one way or the other. You can always keep on levelling up more pokemon AFTER you reached level 40. The main benefits of levelling up quickly are:a) Getting eggs maxed out (but there isn’t a benefit here once you reach level 20)b) Getting wild catches at level 30.c) Having a higher max level for CPThe drawbacks are – you have less Pokémon at that max level. Also trainers seem to rate the savings too high. Assuming you level up your perfect wild Snorlax no matter what level you will spend an average of 232500 dust vs and average of 254750 for a level 20 trainer.The true benefit in my view of early level 30 isn’t the benefit to the end game / saving on the dust for levelling up the pokemon you want to level up to max eventually. It is to spend no dust at all on some level 30 defenders that you just use as you get them (until you replace them eventually with fully maxed out ones).Some last words: I’m aware you currently only reach level 38. But I didn’t redo the table as I assume one day you can level up to 40. I originally wrote this 3 or 4 month ago when my level was in the early 20ties but never got around to actually post it. There are likely some extreme playstyles that have a ratio > 6 and I'm now more likely at a ratio of below 1.5 as I don't care much about XP anymore.Part 1 of the affordability ratio is here: http://ift.tt/2gZNr7L via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2hl2cik