How to speed up ship construction?

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

Hi,

First, thanks for this nice game!

What can help me improve ship speed building, beside tweaking my race? I believed that a bigger shipyard also meant a ship built more rapidly... say for example there was a streamlining of processes (works cut in chunks) or better installations ... thinking about Liberty ships in WW2 also here ... But no, if you can build a ship in a SY, whatever its size, same speed... That seems a bit unrealistic to me.

So, do you have any pointers if any?

[Maltay]

Hi,

First, thanks for this nice game!

What can help me improve ship speed building, beside tweaking my race? I believed that a bigger shipyard also meant a ship built more rapidly... say for example there was a streamlining of processes (works cut in chunks) or better installations ... thinking about Liberty ships in WW2 also here ... But no, if you can build a ship in a SY, whatever its size, same speed... That seems a bit unrealistic to me.

So, do you have any pointers if any?

Use your industry to build the components used in your star ships before setting a shipyard to build the star ships.  This significantly cuts down on shipyard construction time for star ships.  I find that the star ship construction process goes much faster overall using this method.

[Vanigo]

Also, you can research improved ship building speed. I believe that, percentage-wise, it has the largest impact per tech level of any construction & production tech.

[UnLimiTeD]

And as an obvious solution, more slipways allow you to build more ships at the same time.
I too think there should be a mass production bonus, but I don't think thats going to happen.

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

Maltay trick is a great one though!! Thanks all.

[Brian Neumann]

There are three things that affect how fast a ship can be built.  The first is the size of the ship itself.  The larger the ship, the faster the work progresses on the ship.  It is not a linear equation but it is centered around a ship of 100 hs (5000 tons).  At 300hs the build rate is about twice as fast as the base rate at 100hs.  The second is the reasearched build rate.  Obviously the better the base rate the faster a ship can be built.  You will want to keep it roughly at the same reasearch point cost as most of the components of the ship.  The third thing to speed up ship building is to use your industry to build components of a ship.  I have pre-built most of the components for a beam armed battleship that was 500hs.  Normally this would take almost 3 years to build.  Instead it took about 6 months.

The components that make the biggest difference for me are engines, fire control, large sensor systems, and large weapons, especially tripple and quad turrets.  For example if I have a really large passive thermal sensor that is 15hs large, this is going to be a substantial part of the cost of the ship.  By prebuilding it and the engines I have probably cut the time to build my typical scout ship by at least half, if not one third of the normal time.  Meanwhile it only took up about 1 month for a small part of my industry to build it.  Check the relative build rates.  At the starting tech you need about 50 factories to equal the base build rate of your shipyard.  It tends to stay between 50-55 factories equal 1 years production by a shipyard. 

Brian

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

wow... good! How do I say to a shipyard to pick components? Is it automatic?

[ZimRathbone]

Its automatic - if there are components used in a ship design on the planet where you are bulding the ship at the time that you order the ship the they will be used and your constuction time will be reduced accordingly.

[Brian Neumann]

One of the tricks I use to speed up my shipbuilding is to stager the start of work on a class of ships.  Say I have 3 slipways that are all empty at the same time.  If I tell all three to start building the same ship, which will need the same components, the way it works is the first ship is qued and all of the available components it needs are used imediately.  The second ship uses whatever the first ship didn't and then the third ship uses what is left, ect.  If you want all of them to be completed fairly close together then build 1 each month or two and use the time in between to make more of the critical components.  In this fashion you can get three ships built in 9 months rather than 1 ship built in 3 months and the second in 12 months while the third takes 24 months to build.  If you have enough components stockpiled ahead of time then you don't need to do this, but that is harder to do in the first place.

Brian

[Sotak246]

Don't forget about adding a governor to the colony with shipbuilding.

[jRides]

Use your industry to build the components used in your star ships before setting a shipyard to build the star ships.  This significantly cuts down on shipyard construction time for star ships.  I find that the star ship construction process goes much faster overall using this method.

On Maltay's post - and also Brians post just above, when I build components - is there anywhere I can see what I've actually built, is there a list anywhere? (Maybe its to do with stockpiles - I've not yet figured them out or how to manipulate them which I believe you can. I built a bunch of engines - but the build seemed a tad quick - so did I actually build the number I thought I did?).

Also can I build components and transfer them to another place? (like all my naval yards are at Mars, which in hindsight is kinda silly as the majority of my manufacturing output is still Earth).

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

clicking on stockpile let you see your components yes.

About shuttling them, I wonder too!

[Brian Neumann]

Yes, your ships can pick them up and transport them.  Just make sure that the ship's cargo hold is big enough for the individual component.  If you have a really large item and only 1 cargo hold on the ship it may not be able to transport the item.

Brian

[jRides]

Thanks guys, I just popped back in to say I discovered the load ship components option on the fleet orders list - I surmise having filtered orders set and never having spare components (or actually looking for them) is how I missed that. I also posted earlier in response to Nibelung (saying thanks - found the button and all is good) but I must have screwed up somewhere - hope I haven't spammed another thread!

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

branching on a similar subject, what are the possibilities to speed up retooling or SY expansion? Are some techs existing? I imagine that it will take close to 50 years to have a military shipyard able to build dreadnoughts of 50.000 tons?