Just think it through... do 10 long computing results for Help Stop TB taking a total of 240 hours computing time count less than than 20 short Help Stop TB that take a total of 48 hours to complete, on the same machine if you will?¿?

Another reason against using credits for basing badges on, is the, oft discussed variable credit allocations/calculations that are generated between the various projects we've got running here. Yes, "in theory", the credit system should work out the same/very similar for whatever you're crunching - but, as can be witnessed by numerous different discussions. that's not true in practice.

At least with time, it's simple. 1 CPU crunching for 1 day = 24 hrs run time, 2 CPU's crunching for 1 day = 48 hrs etc.

Somedays then i have just had my two four core NUCs = eight cores, runing 24 hours I can be credit for nine days. So one day more then they have cores.

Wendsdays is one of those days. I Shut off the other two computers (an i3 and an i5) before midnight on tuesdays and dont turn them on for after come home from work on thursdays.

Relying on CPU time for badges is in particular fair for limited contributors, not being able to run 24/7 nor multiple hosts. After a couple of weeks, they can see that their contribution is honoured, based on the gifted time.
Cheers,
Yves

You asked about the base of the badges... stick to that [if there's still doubt in your mind as to why the badges are based on runtime and not points or results validated]. Points was eliminated, a myriad of reasons including cheating, and result counts too [because they are not equal in computational effort, even could lead to the aberrated in aborting the long running tasks to cherry pick the short running ones], which leaves runtime as the most par of the available measures... A person with a 4 core computer will be able to reach any level of badge sooner than a person with a 2 core computer. Those that put in the most computation time, get to the highest levels.