I'm at $240K and rising, but I'd like to add another wrinkle to the discussion. I could rise faster on the $/hr side of things, but I'm measuring my economic success differently than that. As many of you know, the Supply Depot gives an astronomical $/hour because you "can" collect it every 5 minutes. A level 10 Supply Depot will give you a whopping $36,000/hour statistic, but if you're like me, you won't collect as much from that building as you would from a level 3 Ore Mine. And very importantly, it takes very little time (about 24 hours) to reach level 3 on the Ore Mine, but a lifetime (something like 180 hours) to get the Supply Depot to level 10. Sure the Ore Mine costs more, but I'm talking about pure speed here -- getting my base producing a bunch of money as quickly as possible.
The level 3 Ore Mine will only get you $4,083 per hour (a pittance compared to the level 10 Supply Depot), but you'll collect as much on a per-day basis from both buildings (unless you have absolutely nothing to do and just sit there collecting your Supply Depot all day). As a result, I look at $/day, and use some reasonable estimates for how many times I will collect a building during an average day. Like all but a few of you, I sleep through a bunch of potential Supply Depot and Armory collections every day! Add in work, lunch, life, etc., and I miss a few collections here and there. When I put those estimates of number of actual collections per day into my economy/upgrade spreadsheet, it revealed that upgrading certain buildings were far more beneficial from an actual $/week collected standpoint than just relying on the $/hour statistic. Upgrading an Oil Rig to level 2, for instance, adds an extra $175,000 per day, and it only takes the same amount of time as it does to upgrade a Command Center from level 4 to level 5 (which only nets you an extra $25,000 per day). Spending the time upgrading the Oil Rig is far more fruitful than the Command Center, by that standard.
I have ignored the difference in cost for Oil Rig upgrades versus Command Center and so on, but that's because it doesn't take me as long to get the money to do the upgrade as it takes for the upgrades to happen, so I don't see a real issue. In other words, when my upgrade completes, I've already collected enough money (through economy or occasional PvP) to buy the next upgrade. I'm not ready to pour money into units yet, as I'm camping here for a bit. With an occasional boost or unit building upgrade (which seem to take longer), I collect some extra cash from the my money makers and then get back to upgrading money buildings. At some point, though, my economy will be good enough (not sure when that'll be) and I'll stop working on economy upgrades and do a few more unit building and boost building upgrades, and then start back to buying some units. By that point, I'll have a ton of money per day (maybe not per hour, but per day) coming in to support those boosts and unit acquisitions.
Originally Posted by JMC
It turns out it will take 79 minutes of nonstop clicking to buy 920 palmtrees and then another 79 minutes to sell them 
