They would just make whales who pay for servers more angry. Your suggestion won't help F2P in old universes at all, everything will stay the same. Only difference it would make is in new universes which i think no one really plays outside of seasons to farm achievements...
(You can still purchase and use your Detroids/Krakens/Newtrons however many you want.)
This is the problem. I am not 100% sure about this but i think i am correct to say no one who ques 99,999 x10 BC uses "halve>finish" method, because 99,999 BC is 28hours production so they stock on Detroids which are 27k DM ON SALE (24h ones) and just use that 12x time and poof 1,000,000 BC ready.
I just built 99,999 LC and "halve" is 42k + 42k to finish so you see how it makes no sense if you stock up on Detroids when there is a sale :D.
Someone can correct me if im wrong on this but does mecha shipyard also benefit from the same Detroid? So you actually get 99,999x2 with 1x Detroid if you have mecha ship??
I don't even wan't to think about halving the astrophysics past level 29. I think i'd need to halve it 3-4 times before it comes to 8-12 weeks which is also long but bearable. Any account with, lets say 5bil points, has decent investement in research so the time becomes so long that people would have to halve it 5-10x times to get to point where they can use few Krakens to finish it. So in the research department this actually benefits whales more then F2P players because the price for finishing research is higher and take into consideration that whale doesn't care if he spends 200€ more or less BUT you can be damn sure i would care as a person who has commanders+fleet slots only which is already at the limit im willing to give. For someone who invests even less this would be major blow in finishing astrophysics.
Thoughts??? Why Yes, Why Not? It's a small balance improvement, but a good one, imo.
I won't calculate it but by eyeballing this topic i would say players would have to pay 20-25% more to get the same stuff combining HALVIN with ITEMS (with exception to research).
F2P or low investement guy wants to maximize the money spent will definitely lose out in this type of change. If someone thinks twice about spending 50€ monthly on ogame then even 15-20€ more is plenty more, but a whale who can dish out 1000€/month doesn't care if he spends 1200-1300€.
In my opinion i think you are missunderstanding the situation here by thinking that "increase in price" will bring more balance because in the end, for example the HoF you gave, they would dish out 250-300€ more to achieve the same results...people with plenty of money to spend don't care about how much they invest there, truth be told that is why they are up there to begin with...
edit: as long as you can buy resources, and have items and halving option, the game will be broken. Only thing that would lessen the difference is if you limit whales to "x" amount every month, which wont happen so...
Honestly this is not a competitive game anymore so i don't see a problem. You achieve nothing by being in top10. Just stay safe, make some friends who are whales since there are plenty of them
and enjoy your casual play 