Is Emergency Build useless?

[Stone Mill]

I using EB sparingly; but PvK gave good examples:

* 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.

I don't want to give away any BIG secrets of my strat but it has very much to do with maximizing construction rates by building designs to meet current production output. The colony ship example:
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!)

[tesco samoa]

Kwok..

[Pax]

Originally posted by LGM:
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.

Funny, I'd put in an orbital shipyard FIRST. If EBuild gives you the orbital yard in 2 or 3 turns net, the restof the 7 or 8 turns of the planet's EBuild, the ORBITAL spaceyard can also pop out a coloniser, or else a couple population transports to move pop to the new colonies.

Or a half-dozen early satellites, to augment defenses of the HW and/or park at strategic locations out of the home system.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by 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.

Actually... I build 3 BSYs per HW, not 5. 5 is too many, and I often find that I can't afford to pay for all of them.

Originally posted by 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

Geo, Hardy Industrialists + 120 Construction Aptitude (or 122, if you take Berzerkers) is one of the most useful traits in the game. I usually research Propulsion 2 on turn 1, because it lowers the cost of a Colony Ship from 4850 to 4750 minerals. That means an entire turn less for those BSYs that get a build rate of 1200.

[Suicide Junkie]

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.

[Pax]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
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

Okay, let's look at a setup where the Colony ship takes 0.3 years to build ... or 0.2 years on EBuild. Let's assume the ships take ... oh ... does 0.3 years average travel time sound good, this time? Now, picture a rolling EBuild program:

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.

[Wardad]

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 ]

[Taera]

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.