Is Emergency Build useless?

[Gimboid]

It is still a gamble though, i grant you that.

The emergency strategy can definately hurt you given the right set of circumstances

[Captain Kwok]

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.

[spoon]

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?

1) you'll have more resources at the end of 20 turns
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)

Originally posted by geoschmo:

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

1) few people rush
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

[Gryphin]

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.

[disabled]

I've found emergency build useful for jsut quickly building some smaller ships and quickly finishing off large projects like dreadnoughts

[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 ]