Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

I never really found a good use for mobile shipyards. Until now.

I'm in a PBEM game with two friends. They started near each other and I'm on the other side of the galaxy. I needed a way to get to them with an effective fighting force.

By mixing one ship with a shipyard component in with nine repair/solar panel ships I was able to move my fleet its full turn, stop and retrofit ships almost every turn. One shipyard allowed me to make changes to as many ships as I had repair cruisers. Next turn, the components were repaired and my fleet moved on. My 24 BB's got seriously upgraded on the way.

By the time I reached my friends (fighting through three empires on the way) I had upgraded to Phased polaron V's and Type V shields. Even better, quantum reactors.

One more tip. Retrofit damaged ships first. They need to get repaired anyway.

T-

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Someday I'll tell my friends about this forum... Naaaah.
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Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Repair and construction ships have numerious uses. IF you intend to conduct fleet operations repair ships are indespensible. Construction ships are invaluable. Send them out with mine layers and satallite layers and a cargo hold full of people and you have a long range almost never ending colonizer scout ship. Drop off spy sats and mines in every system and colonize every system along the way.
Build fleet repair ships with sensor arrays and solar panels and fuel tanks and you drastically increase the range of your fleets and open 20-40 Ktons of space on indivdual ships. Fleet support ships are almost as critical as the combat ships themselves.
SEIV is a great game because you can put so many things together in a huge amount of ways.

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Neat idea but construction bonuses don't apply to spaceborn shipyards.

Much better idea is a planetary shipyard on EVERY planet. Once you have your system capital identified in newly conquored space build a shipyard on the nearest tiny moon. That way you get your bonuses and you can load up mines, fighters and whatever you wish onto freighters/minelayers/Carriers/transports.

I agree completely that the sheer number of options in this game is wonderful in that there are so many different ways of doing things. However, some things are much more effective than others.

T-

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Personally I'd rather put two or three "construction bases" in orbit over every planet than put a ship yard facility on every planet. The build time per construction base would be lower than what you'd get out of a ship yard, but you leave the facility slot open to do things that can't be done by ships (ie research and intelligence).

just my $.02

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Definitely don't agree there. Fortunately we live in a free country and I am quite happy allowing you to express your ideas and opinions to spite those bastards who attack us out of frustration that their medievil system of Religious government doesn't work!

Sorry. Thought I was Dennis Miller there for a moment.

I used to agree with you. What I've found is that later in the game when you're building the type III facilities you need a shipyard to build them in a single turn. The production gained over the course of the game by having these facilities earlier outweighs the investment in having a SY on a planet instead of a facility. Taken in conjunction with the fact that you can produce ships and units MUCH more quickly, spaceborn shipyards don't make a lot of sense (note I am saying shipyards, not repair facilities).

Of course, I personally thing racial construction bonuses should apply to spaceborn shipyards. That would make your idea extremely viable.

The best test is to try the planetary shipyard tactic. No human player I've encountered has failed to switch to this methodology after it's been demonstrated to them in a game.

That could mean I play against weak opponents. What it really means is that 80 - 120 planetary shipyards in a game with a construction bonus dominates. Give it a try and let me know what you find.

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Your construction characteristic and culture bonuses do apply to space based yards. But the advanced racial trait does not and they get no population bonuses.

Planetary based are faster individually, space based though allows a greater overall rate with the same number of planets because you can have as many as the game will allow you to build bases. Plus it's nice to have several bases over one planet and be able to produce a fleet in one spot rather than have to collect all your ships from all over the empire.

It all depends on your play style. Personally I use both. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Geoschmo

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

I tend to try and find planets w/ moon(s). Then build 2 (or 3) planet-based yards for ships and build several space-based ones to construct units. Depending on the units, you can get quite a few out of a group of SS's w/ SY's and still reserve the higher production planet-based yards for ships.

Space-based yards are generally too slow building ships (for my tastes anyway), yet definitely come in handy during 'strategic' moments in the game (ie. build more ships as fast as you possibly can!! or wholesale retrofits...)

EDIT: Oh yeah, the original topic. Actually, thats kinda' a cool thing. IIRC you don't even have to stop for the repairs to continue. If you retrofit more components than you have repair capacity, move the fleet anyway. As long as the ships are fleeted together, the repairs will continue...

[ September 12, 2002, 04:28: Message edited by: rdouglass ]

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

And, you can repair cloaked ships too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Hmmm. Using Mobile space yards to produce fighter replacements for my carriers while retrofitting my battleships on the fly...

Pardon me Gentlemen, I need to issue some additional orders to the Dark Nebulae Expeditionary Fleet.

T-

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

I think you can do mobile repairs and retrofits, but not mobile construction.

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Sorry for the newbie question but if you build more than 1 spaceyard on a planet, and you build something there, do they both "work" on the construction or do they have seperate construction queues?
Am i correct i assuming that for instance 2 construction ships only work on items in their own construction queue and thus don't stack?

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

There can be only one....

Wow, just had Deja Vu relating to the Highlander series.

Seriously, you can only have one planetary shipyard but multiple shipyards vessels/stations. Each planetary shipyard, spacestation yard or ship yard has it's own queue.

T-

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Geo, I don't know why you would want to mothball the yards. My prefered strategy is almost centred around construction bases and I gain the edge by having LOTS of yards and out-producing everybody else. In fact the very first item on my "end turn check list" is to make sure that every yard is building something, and they only go on hold when I run out of resources.

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Aren't you better off mothballing the ships themselves?

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Not to reply for Geo, but I would use his method of a "mothballed construction center" as the back up in case things go wrong (like one of the front lines collapses, etc.). The mothballed bases would be located in a backwater area, unlikely to be probed by others, and so it's whereabouts would be unknown (the only change I'd make is to have 10 - 15 in a storm, with two unmothballed).

The majority of construction would still happen on my front lines and out of my home planets, but woe to those whose front lines collapse with no recourse! (it's always easier to reinforce from a central position than around the perimeter).

As to mothballing the ships that are constructed... I'd do this in a high cost research game, but in normal and low cost games the ships are improving to rapidly, and I couldn't be bothered to retrofit hundreds of ships every 10 turns. If they're old, scrap them for the resources (or mothball with the intention of scrapping them later) and only retrofit the experienced ships.

IMO

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Watch how often you do that. Taking ships in and out of mothball is something like a 30% cost in resources. If your Maintenance is 5%, you need to mothball them for over 6 turns before you have really saved anything.

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I thought retrofitting removes ship experience.

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

[quote]Originally posted by LGM:

Quote:

Watch how often you do that. Taking ships in and out of mothball is something like a 30% cost in resources. If your Maintenance is 5%, you need to mothball them for over 6 turns before you have really saved anything.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">True enough, but getting you maint down to 5% is pretty expensive I believe. I don't often do it. By default it's 25%. The absolute minimum you can have is 5% and that takes a LOT of racial points.

And yes, mothballing ships does cause them to lose their experience.

Geoschmo

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

And retrofitting does not affect experience http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Yea so if I build some basic hulls, I can train them cheaply and then start to retrofit in the expensive stuff.

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

except that you can only retrofit a certain % of the cost of the ship. Otherwise you get a message saying "...can't doit, yer tryin' to build a new ship bub..."

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Yes, only 50% of all resource costs above the current cost. I sometimes do a refit series. There are some service charges added to the refit, so I find it easier to only do 45% of the cost. Thats what they make hand calulators for.

I generally refit to save a build turn or 2, or to benifit from a local training facility.

In one game, I'm upgrading many minning facilities and adding bonus facilities. So the refit series will keep me in ships while my space yards are busy expanding my resource base.

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Thanks. Most of the times, i only build 1 shipyard on the main planet of a system and 1 in the spacestation protecting the planet. I really don't see a point in building much shipyard vessels. I have a few but i use them to build stations on warppoints mainly and sometimes around planets. They are very expensive and since i play with limited resources i don't like vessels very much that are resource hungry http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

A nice thing to do with bases is mothball them. Build 10 or 15 over a huge planet with a land based space yard that is in a quiet part of your empire and mothball them. Then if the situation changes and the enemy starts harrasing that area you can quickly unmothball them and have them cranking out units or ships to fill the holes in your defenses. Just In Time Inventory, SEIV style. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Geoschmo

Re: Cool tactic: Retrofitting on the Fly
 

Don't forget that retrofitting designs with new engines eats supplies, and can be disastrous if you don't have a QR ship or a lot of supply ships in the fleet. (Sorry to refer to the original topic. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif )