That's good, but I do not understand why the Aureate and Storm Phoenix were ever set to 3.5 hours and remain at 3.5 hours. I gage how useful they are by what they can do at say province 30 in the tournament. If you look at the fire, well, 50% increase attack, well, with the later provinces that increase in difficulty by 3.6%, well, it is about 14 provinces before the ratio is the same again. You also have the squad size rapidly increasing, so the overall losses would be much higher when that ratio for attack matches again. so cut it half, say it really helps you to get about 7 more provinces without extra cost. That's 42 encounters.
With goods, well, at province 33 my goods cost was 222k of tier 2. I get 5141 from a t2 manufacturer, so I'd need 22 manufacturers out and collect twice to cater 1 encounter from the use of a pet food on the storm. I've never understood why this benefit isn't 5 days instead of 3.5 hours. And the aureate give 300% of base and the base of my t2 is 540 so instead of 5141 I'd get 6761 for two rounds and I'd need 68 manufacturers for the increase to pay for a single extra encounter. I'd also have to burn 22 MM to actually get this.
At province 10 it would be about 20 manufacturers required to get enough goods to cater a single province.
I do not think this has ever been looked into and I am dumbfounded to find any logic in how this is perceived as any kind of benefit worth using a pet food. The only reason I can think of for such a short time frame is the calculations were done not on 300% of base, but actual production. Then using a pet food would be like an extra day of production from your manufacturers, whereas now it is like 2 hours and 15 minutes. It just doesn't do much and it is totally dwarfed in its benefit compared compared to the military pet food boosts.