Galaxy Legion: Vendoring Scanners vs Rebuying

I recently capped out my first research tree in Galaxy Legion. I now have access to the top tier (and very expensive) scanning module. I spent a week saving up the cash to build them and went on a scanning spree today. I found a handful of good planets but not nearly enough to satisfy my need for more stuff. I'm going to have to scan again once I collect enough star chart purgers...

Up to this point I've always vendored my scanners as soon as I finished a scanning run for a few reasons...

• I'm not terribly patient (though I am more patient than Andrew) and am typically broke after buying the scanners. I'd have found a bunch of new planets and want to colonize them and selling the scanners would give cash to immediately get an extra planet or two.
• I was very unlikely to scan again until after researching even better scanners. So the current ones would be obsolete...
• Scanners have a fairly hefty upkeep cost and storing them in my cargo hold for a long time may not be very efficient.

However, a couple things have now changed. I can't get better scanners so what I have now won't become obsolete ever. I have a 15% reduction in upkeep cost which prolongs how long I can store them without losing money in the process. Planets are starting to get pretty expensive to take and develop but I can still take probably 3 more planets right now if I sell off the scanners.

Should I keep the scanners around as an investment in the future? How often do I need to scan to make it worth storing them? What are the numbers here? (All numbers are per scanner. I can use 5 at a time so quintuple these to get the total costs.)

Initial cost - 6490M
Upkeep cost - 208M
Resell value - 2450M
Repair cost - 4900M

I currently have the scanners purchased and equipped. Going forward my options are either to sell them off right now and rebuy the next time I want to scan or I can unequip them (triggering 10% of a repair) and pay upkeep on them every day until I use them again. So next time I scan I can either pay:

initial - resell = 4040M

OR

.1*repair + x*upkeep = 490M+208xM  (where x is number of days between scanning runs)

The breakeven point here is going to be:

4040M = 490M+208xM
x = 3550M/208M = 17.1 days

Now, you expect to get one of each artifact per day for every 4000 artifact points you make per hour. I'm a little over 8000 now, so I should be getting 2 star chart purgers per day. This means at the breakeven point I'll be able to find 34 new planets. Today I scanned up 95 new planets and only found a few that were really good so I'm probably going to want to get more than 34 planets from my next run...

So either I need to wait more than 17 days between scanning runs or I'm going to have to get more star chart purgers from the bad experience repeatable mission.


It is also important to note that if I sell off the scanners I have now I get to make immediate use of that cash. So even if I was planning on scanning again in 17 days I'm going to be better off vendoring the scanners and rebuying them.

I thought I was going to be convincing myself to hold on to these things but I've managed to do the opposite. Well, I think I may have convinced myself to do the star chart purger mission... But even if I do that I'm not going to scan again soon enough to justify holding on to the scanners. Time to vendor them!