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Is Emergency Build useless?
When I first started playing SEIV I used Emergency build a lot. But it's been weakened so much in subsequent patches that I almost never do anymore. Does anyone else uses it anymore? If not, does that mean it's too weak now?
I just don't think the extra 50% you get during emergency build is worth the 75% hit you take during the slow period afterwards. Opinions? [ October 06, 2002, 14:27: Message edited by: geoschmo ] |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
I still use it a lot. Depending on the game, I can use emergency build and churn out one colony ship or one base space yard per turn at the game start. It gives you a good base to build an empire on.
It is well balanced IMO. Rollo |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
I agree, fast early expansion can be a decisive advantage in any game.
It can backfire for 2 reasons though. The first is what you have already mentioned with the 75% production penalty. the second is that if you expand rapidly and cant find enough mineral rich planets to support you then you are a sitting duck |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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?
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 |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
If i have colonised planets earlier then you who developed slower then i will also have built up the infrastructure on those worlds to
My economy and research potential is bigger then yours by turn 20, and i can have my planets fully outfitted (with max facilities on each planet allowed) and producing WP, ships, whatever but also since those planets are fully outfitted they dont cost me minerals to develop anymore and i can divert those minerals to other uses like further expansion or ship production. Therefore my entire empire is bigger then yours and has a lead in several areas faster by expanding this way. The risk u mentioned is only slight, people using this strategy usually have space base yards built before emergency build wears off so they still have great potential to build ships to defend themselves. They can also retrofit the bases to have weapons to defend the homeworld... Overall i'd say the risk is minimal because my production capacity far exceeds a player who doesnt do that, their one frigate is only an annoyance not the end of my civilisation |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
It is still a gamble though, i grant you that.
The emergency strategy can definately hurt you given the right set of circumstances |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
It's not bad to use with your homeworld at the beginning of a game. Since your planet is already full of facilities, you can build 5 space stations in ten turns where you can build a variety of ships including colonizers, explorers, and transports all at once.
It's also good if you have lots of resources and want to build a lot of units quickly at a planet that's already full of facilities and won't be building anything else afterwards. |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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2) you'll have more spaceyards at the end of 20 turns 3) you'll have been able to establish border colonies up to 10 turns earlier (this is what is most important to me... getting those huge greens before your neighbor puts a domed colony there, or getting to a choke point system before anyone else) Quote:
2) you should have at least 2-3 other spaceyards up and going in your homesystem. 3) if you spent at least one of those ten turns building a base spaceyard, you can emergency build defenses anyway 4) even on slow build, homeworlds can build enough sats or wps to protect from a small attack force I almost always emergency build at the start, and have never regretted it. -Spoon |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
I've been practicing using some variation of EB up through the first 10 turns. (Using FMQ 1.13).
As pointed out below it is a Risk / Expansion trade off. So far I find I'm running out of resoursec within 5 turns. (unless I'm very lucky). By that turn I have reached Applyed Reasearch II. I put the systms on Facility Upgrade. If I get hit at that point I should have at least 3 Space Base Yards to put on EB. They can produce a Weapons Platform in 1 to 2 turns Each. 3 Frigate with early weapons will be hard pressed to survive the WPs. (this is VS the AI set up 2 to 3 systems away) Against humans, it could be ugly. |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
I've found emergency build useful for jsut quickly building some smaller ships and quickly finishing off large projects like dreadnoughts
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Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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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). Quote:
* -- IMNAO = In My Newbie-Arsed Opinion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif [ October 06, 2002, 19:54: Message edited by: Pax ] |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif ) 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 ] |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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.
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Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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 |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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. |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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.
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Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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.
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Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
Is that to me? I dont use EB as much now, only when i need something NOW. Like in emergency war situation.
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Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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.
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Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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 |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
I using EB sparingly; but PvK gave good examples:
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If a colony ship costs 4500 to produce and your standard production rate is 3000, it is quite efficient to use EB... (I believe Pax touched on this as well. But care is to be used and only a small percentage of your worlds should use it at any given time. For the emergency scenario, if you are in a pretty large galaxy and have control of many systems, you can't defend them all, so you would use EB on frontier systems to produce reinforcements a bit quicker ( and pray the threat is squashed within 10 turns!) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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Or a half-dozen early satellites, to augment defenses of the HW and/or park at strategic locations out of the home system. |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
There's also the rotating E-Build strategy that somebody came up with.
Build a factory base by any means. The factory base will Ebuild whatever you want for the next 7 turns. Then it will Ebuild another factory, and then scrap itself. The second factory, built by the first, will Ebuild the first 7 turns making whatever stuff you like. Then build a new base, Then scrap. Continusous Ebuild rates, and no slow build. |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
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You will plant your first colony in year 0.6, and another every 0.3 years after that. By year 3.0, you have planted 8 colonies, one of which is "just born". You also shuld have one more colony ship just ready to depart the HW; thus you have bult 9 colony ships. ... OTOH, I will plant my first colony in year 0.5, and every 0.2 years after that until year 1.3 (0.3 years' travel time after the Last Ebuild turn); this totals 5 colonies. For the next 1.0 years, I will build at 25% rate, IOW, I will get in 2.5 turns of building; I'll use that for an Orbital Spaceyard that fits that general cost level. For the next 1.0 years, both the HW and the Orbital Yard will EBuild colony ships. This should be 0.4 turns build time for the BSY, and 0.2 turns for the HW again. In years 2.2, 2.6, and 3.0, a single colony ship is built. In years 2.4 and 2.8, two colony ships are built. That is 7 more colony ships; of those, 4 will arrive (in years 2.5, 2.7, 2.7, and 2.9, respectively). The others are (2 ships) 1 turn away from their respective destinations, and (the Last ship) just ready to depart. The Last 2 years of Ebuild on the station, I would either (a) turn Ebuld off and let the BSY go idle and recover sooner, or (b) build something that 2 years of BSY Ebuild can just finish, perhaps an early frigate or destroyer. In total, to your 9 colony ships, 8 of which arrived ... in the same span of time, use of Ebuild has built the other side TWELVE colony ships, 9 of which have arrived. On top of this, those first 5 colonies have had well more time to become established production centers in their own right. Alternately, the BSY could build population transports, frigates, or the like, instead of the two colonisers posited above. |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
And to think I was happy Ebuilding stripped down colony ships in one turn (3650 minerals), and refitting engines on them the next turn.
Then first colonizing a close tiny planet or moon (~ about 5 turns later)and building a space yard (in another 5 turns). So it starts building about turn 1.0 when the HW switches to Slow Build. The HW starts to build some basic defenses now, cause you never know... This second yard does not get the HW population bonus so it builds colony ships in 2 turns. I may have to refit more engines or fuel storage. For longer trips I may send it to the HW for fuel and population. At or before turn 1.5 a third spaceyard is up and running. The Tally: Turn 1.0 ~ 9.5 colony ships (1 needs engines), and second planetary spaceyard is up and running Turn 1.5 ~ 12.5 colony ships, Turn 2.0 ~ 17.5 colony ships Turn 2.x ~ rude neighbors want me to go home Now if I could just get 3650 build rate on my HW without using to many points. Lets figure 10% happiness bonus, ??? population bonus, bezerkers, and advanced storage (for extra pop to ship around). [ October 09, 2002, 18:25: Message edited by: Wardad ] |
Re: Is Emergency Build useless?
Talking about colony ship and turns, my 3k (and 2k too) race has only as much as 10% bonus to construction, yet i build colony ships in 2 turns. I dont know, maybe something realy had changed since i have 1.49 only but it is still 150% and the ships easily build in 2 turns or 1 on EB.
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