Is Emergency Build useless?

[Pax]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
What is the differance if you build ten ships in the first 10 turns and none in the next ten, or if you build 10 ships over the first two years? I could see if it was the differeance in 10 or 20 colnies. Do you really see a decisive differance in getting the same ten colonies a few turns faster?

Presume colonisers that cost up to 3K in one or more categories.

Presume further, a 2-turn average flight time, and 2 turns to build colonisers at normal rates. At the end of 2.2 years, you can have 10 colonies, ranging in age from "just got there" to 1.6 years. You also complete your eleventh colony ship.

OR

Same average flight time; 1 turn per coloniser on EBuild. At the end of the same 2.2 years, you will have (from the first 1.0 years' building) 10 colonies, ranging in age from 1.0 to 1.9 years. You will also have 10 turns' worth of building, at 500/turn/resource. That is 5K/resource towards more ships. At 25% build, you could actually build a cost-3K coloniser in 6 more turns; with 2 years of flight time, you now have an ELEVENTH colony, age 0.4 years, at the Turn 2.2 mark. 4 more years of 25% build gives you another 2K of a twelfth coloniser; one more year gives you the rest of that coloniser, and you then have half the flight time to a new colony. The next year gives you most of a thirteenth colony ship.

Overall result: if you can put a shipyard on EBuild early, and don't suffer for lack of military shipbuilding (IOW this is easiest in a 3+ HW start), you can profit by about two colonies all told (11 colonies to 10, one en route rather than parked at the spaceyard, and about a year ahead of schedule for subsequent colonisers).

Plus isn't the risk you run pretty substantial? What happens if an enemy race shows up about the time your homeworld heads into a 10 turn phase of slow build? You have no capacity then to throw up any sort of defenses. The enemy could attack with a couple of escorts and at the least blockade your homeworld. Wouldn't that about finish you off?

Geoschmo

That's why the first thing you should build (IMNAO*), is a Base SY. 8) While the HW frantically cranks out colonisers, the base churns out cheap explorers and satts/mines/whatever for the HW. And a beginning tech base, with SY and control components, has 50kT of hull space left -- about enough for a CSM, which provides some (small) immediate deterrent to ultra-early attacks.

* -- IMNAO = In My Newbie-Arsed Opinion

[ October 06, 2002, 19:54: Message edited by: Pax ]

[Arkcon]

I use emergency for thing that take more than a year to build that I only need one of, or won't need something built for that next year. Examples are:

1). large, self-repairing stellar manipulation ships - maybe that's cheezy, but I do it anyway. Seriously, if my race has advanced technologically enough to build planets or warp points, why make me wait two years for the ship? OK, no realisim responces here, I know it's for balance. But someone else thinks it would be more realistic if the process took a more time, rather than the ship building.

2). upgrades of 25 facility 1's of various types to the next level. If that's all the planet does, mine, research or Intel, I want the benefit as soon as possible. Maybe if when upgrading multiple facilities, it happened one facility at a time rather than waiting for the whole stack to upgrade, then I wouldn't use emergency.

3). Bases on warp points build by mobile shipyard. Build on emergency, turning a 0.7 yr build to 0.5 , shut off after construction, then send the 5 engine cruiser with spaceyard to the next warp point, the reduced rate time may be up by the time it reaches the next point, especially if it has to resupply (can't fleet with the base it just built anymore )

4). Ringworld component. As I mentioned in another thread, if you want to build a ringword to prevent a star from going nova, you have to use emergency build at the Last possible moment or it won't be built in time. (Please don't tell me how to tweak spaceyard rate instead, this is just an example)

Whew, that's a long post. So what have we got. The only benefits of emergency are to work around/exploit some other rules. I'd like emergency to stay, until the others were fixed. Simply put, some building is too slow to be fun. Balanced -- yes, part of the planning a good empire needs -- sure, fun -- no.

I only once built a star destroyer. I had the tech, just wanted to see the message. Anyway, I was so bored I shut off the log message and end turn confirmation. So I could press the F12 key 24 times and get it. Feh, hardly worth it.

[ October 06, 2002, 21:15: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Fyron]

I have the SYS I send with my fleets EB extra repair bases if my fleet becomes more damaged than the repair ships can repair in a few turns. Or, I'll have them EB some more troops if a lot died in the Last invasion of a planet. Since the SYS will be moving again in a few turns anyways, they cant build anything, so the slow build time is meaningless to them.

[PvK]

Other times where emergency build is useful:

* Build a base space yard, have it build something on emergency build, then mothball or scrap it, or have it build units.

* When you have many planetary yards, which you don't have enough resources to all build with at the same time, anyway.

* When there is an emergency in one area of the map (i.e., enemy invasion) and you want as much built as fast as possible, to maximize the response. (Gee, am I the first one to mention using emergency build for emergencies?)

* When something is down to 0.2 years to complete, and emergency mode will reduce it to 0.1. By cancelling emergency mode the next turn, you get 25% more production than you would have otherwise, which is also a good time to buy something cheap that you wouldn't have wanted to spend a whole turn on.

* When trying to build expensive facilities, such as important system-wide ones, which take over a year to build. The fact that one of the planetary yards will be at low production for a year thereafter is often insignifigant compared to getting that important facility working 5 or 6 turns earlier.

Etc.

PvK

[LGM]

I have several friend that I play SEIV with and the standard opening is Emergeny build 10 turns with the home world. Variation: If you have a high shipyard reate, you might buil a few escort ships at normal build for a turn or two and then go crazy building colonizers. You can use the Last couple of turns to build orbital shipyards, however, I only recommend doing that if you have no good places to send a colonizer or if you start next to a possible rival. Generally, you want your construction capability on your frontiers, not in the middle of your empire. You want to stake your claim early on, so you should not even send your first couple of colonizers to colonize in your home system, if you can help it. If you send ships immediately to all your adjacent systems, you will see if there is a danger and you can adjust your building to reflect that (switch to orbital bases, if necessary).

Exception: Only use this if colonization is wide open. If you are only allowing breathable atmostpheres, then you do not need all the colonizers as colonizable world will be relatively rare. You might build a few colonizers initially and switch over to bases in this sort of game.

[Taera]

As i play more and more i use EB less and less. I used to use the kickstart techinque but i found out that the 10 years slow just does not worth the initial quick start. I jsut build 2-3 orbital shipyards that build [all the rest] and use my homeworld for about first ~20 turns to pump out as much colony ships as possible.

[Fyron]

Actually... it is quite easy to run out of resources with whcih to fund the HW and all of those BSYs by turn 11 or later. So... wiht the EB, you don't pay much for the queue of the HW during that slow build period when the resource shortages come up, and you can delay or prevent the shortage.

[Taera]

Is that to me? I dont use EB as much now, only when i need something NOW. Like in emergency war situation.

[Captain Kwok]

Fyron - did you not notice that I posted my stolen tactic of building 5 spaceyards using EB? I believe that is one of your secrets to success...that...and hacking the game files.

[geoschmo]

Basically though to take advantage of this fast early expansion you have to do some things before the game. For one thing you have to spend some racial points raising your construction rate. I figured it out and it requires something like 32%. You can get 5 from picking the engineer culture, but you will need to get the other 28 from either the hardy industrialists and a little added to your construction characteristic, or adding a lot to your construction characteristic only.

Without doing this you cannnot get colony ships on one turn, even on emergency. IIRC the emergency used to be 175% or maybe even 200, and you could get a colony ship in one turn without going so heavy into construction on your racial setup.

Without this you only get your colony ships in two turns, and that means you are only getting 5 colony ships the first year, instead of ten. Does this change the equation do you think?

Geoschmo