[Suicide Junkie]

Ah, yes. Multiple spaceyards.

There are two things to note:
1) SE4 does not allow you to *build* multiple spaceyards on the same planet.
2) The restrictions on upgrades are much weaker.

So, what you do is:
a) Add a new facility, with the same family number as your spaceyards.
b) Give it a roman numeral of zero (less than any true space yard)
c) Remove the space yard construction abilities.
d) Name the new facility something like "Spaceyard Expansion Project", and have it cost 50,000 organics or similar.

So, a planet with a normal spaceyard can build an expansion project, since it dosen't count as a spaceyard.
Once the expansion project is complete, the planet can upgrade it to a full SpaceYard, and will have double the resource output.

By repeating the process, you can fill a Sphereworld with SpaceYards in only 300 turns or so.

Using my example:
- it takes 10 turns for the first yard (normal).
- 25 turns for the second yard (expansion)
- 12 turns for the third yard
- 9 turns for the fourth yard
- 7 turns for the fifth yard
- 5 turns for the sixth...
And after 70 turns, you've got a planet with 6x the normal production, and builds dreadnaughts in one turn.

Very much an investment planet, and will be useless while it works on that first expansion.
Once you're past the initial investment, though adding even more spaceyards becomes easy.

Now, as an alternative, you can make a new family of facilities, which contains only:
- Expansion project
- Space Yard Expansion

The SYE can have a production rate of 2000/0/2000.
This should still boost ship production (which almost never depends on organics), and will cause the expansion projects to all take the same amount of time.
(IE: no speeding up as you complete more spaceyards)
Then, you can reduce the organics cost of the expansion to say, 20000 = 10 turns. That way every yard you build, expansion or normal will take exactly 10 turns (ignoring racial & happiness production bonuses)

Another good thing to try is to make three sets of dedicated expansions, one for each resource.
You could then have a SYIII plus two mineral expansions and a radioactives expansion; the player can tailor the spaceyard to their needs.

[ June 24, 2002, 14:50: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]