Partially-done work at shipyards

[LizardSF (OP)]

If you change tasks at a shipyard (from "add a slip" to "retool", for example), is the work lost? If I'm 98% of the way to adding a new slip, and accidentally shift to "retool", do I begin again at 0% if I go back to adding a slip?

If so, this seems like something which might be changed. Logically, there's a slip 98% of the way built, consuming a lot of resources; it makes perfect sense I can't use it until it's finished, but it seems odd that I can't go back to it. In the "reality" of the game, it's there. This is how research already works -- if you can cancel a research project, you don't lose the points invested in it. (Presumably reflecting experiments, prototypes, journal articles, etc.)

I can see this idea NOT being applicable for retooling, though... it doesn't "make sense" to have, say, a dozen "retoolings" at 98% done on the same shipyard, though I can see a retooling being stopped, capacity being added, and then THAT retooling continuing... but chancing to a new retooling should start at 0.

[Goron]

I've thought the same thing... but mostly regarding capacity expansion. If I set task to add 10000 tons capacity, but need an emergency retool or whatnot part way through it sucks to have to loose your work so far. But, that's why I always do many serial 500 or 1000 ton expansions now and not 2k,5k, or 10k expansions.

At least the game gives you TWO confirmation dialogs, though... so I don't think it is easy to 'accidentally' shift task.

[LizardSF (OP)]

I've thought the same thing... but mostly regarding capacity expansion. If I set task to add 10000 tons capacity, but need an emergency retool or whatnot part way through it sucks to have to loose your work so far. But, that's why I always do many serial 500 or 1000 ton expansions now and not 2k,5k, or 10k expansions.

At least the game gives you TWO confirmation dialogs, though... so I don't think it is easy to 'accidentally' shift task.

I sometimes find I'm not on the shipyard I thought I was on... sometimes, the various lists and corresponding detail dialogs aren't as in-sync as you'd like.

Mostly, it's REALLY a problem for me with slips. I also tend to expand in small bits, or choose "continual" if my economy can take it, but adding a slip to a commercial yard that's at 80,000 tons or so can take 2-3 years for me (in my best game so far, I'm still only at 2036), and that's a long time to have a shipyard basically locked into a single craft as the game evolves and new technologies become discovered. I'd really like to be able to build 20% of a slip, stop, and make a new kind of freighter, and then go back. I'd even be happy with a "mothballing" cost (say, each month, you spend 5% of the cost of the operation, but make no progress on it) to represent the loss of time/efficiency involved in pulling workers off a task, holding things in a state of readiness, and so on.

[Person012345]

I think interrupting "add 10k capacity" doesn't lose anything - when I did it, the capacity of the slipways still increased, just not by 10k, obviously. Although I didn't do any math to find out whether I'd lost any progress, I assume it didn't. Idk about adding slipways though.

[Brian Neumann]

From previous posts, and a couple of things I saw myself, if you interupt a build order that increases the size of the shipyard then you will get the portion of the build order and go from there.  One note the continous increase will give you more total tonnage over time than the build 1,000, 5,000, ect tons.  This is because as the shipyard gets bigger its build speed increases.  With the fixed tonnage increases however the shipyard does not increase untill you are done increasing the size of the shipyard.  If you interupt an order to add slipways, or change the design of the ship then you are just out of luck and all the work goes away.  This by the way is one of the reasons I most commonly build a shipyard up to a fixed size that I plann on using for quite a while, and then have multiple shipyards of the same size, each with a few slipways.  As I need to change designs that I am building I have a pick of a number of different shipyards and normally will have one that is available to change without losing anything.  When my basic tonnage for a particular type of ship goes up I can work on that between other orders as if I interupt I won't lose the progress.

Brian

[metalax]

If you interupt a capacity expansion of any type, you get the percentage of that expansion that has been completed added to the shipyard. I believe that if the ship yard is doing any other action, slipways/retooling, that you lose it all if you change to another task.

[jseah]

I still wish you can scrap bits of a shipyard.  The most annoying thing about continual expansion is the few ten tons of space lying around. 

I often just SM mode to round my yard size numbers for aesthetic reasons.  I want the nice neat zeros. 

[dgibso29]

I wouldn't mind a "Continual Capacity expansion to XXX tons" option. I often find myself needing an additional 3000 tons, or with an extra 15 tons that just laughs at me.

[sloanjh]

I wouldn't mind a "Continual Capacity expansion to XXX tons" option. I often find myself needing an additional 3000 tons, or with an extra 15 tons that just laughs at me.

Put it in suggestions....

John