Contiual Capacity Expansion

[Brian Neumann (OP)]

Steve, what do you mean by the "Continual Capacity Expansion"?  It is a choice for shipyards on the shipyard management tab.

Brian

[Beersatron]

A new Continual Capacity Expanion task has been added for Shipyards. This task adds as much capacity as it can during the 5-day increment and always uses the current size of the shipyard for build rate purposes. The new capacity is immediately available. Ending the task at any time has no penalty as the capacity has already been added.

I haven't used it myself but I might create a new naval yard and let this run - if it works the way I think it does then it will be usefull at startup.

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve, what do you mean by the "Continual Capacity Expansion"?  It is a choice for shipyards on the shipyard management tab.

The task continually increases shipyard capacity with a small amount added every 5-day increment. This task will stay active forever unless you cancel it. It's actually a slightly faster way to increase capacity than the regular +1000 or +2000 tasks because the bulding rate for new shipyard capacity depends on the size of the shipyard. If you are adding  a +1000 task to a 5000 capacity shipyard then the building rate throughout will be based on the 5000 capacity. If you use CCE instead then every time the shipyard increases in size by a small amount, the next increase will be based on the build rate for the slightly larger shipyard. It's sort of like compound interest compared to simple interest.

The only downside is that your shipyards will no longer have nice round numbers for capacity.

Steve

[Brian Neumann (OP)]

Thanks, I appreciate the quick answer Steve.

Brian

[James Patten]

Can you retool for a new class of ship while your yard is undergoing continual capacity expansion?

[Steve Walmsley]

Can you retool for a new class of ship while your yard is undergoing continual capacity expansion?

No, you have to do one or the other. The CCE task is functionally the same as a normal add capacity task. You can set the first class for a shipyard though without affecting the CCE.

Steve

[Shinanygnz]

Cool.  I hadn't noticed this option before.
It might be worth adding an option to continually "expand by xyz tons" and/or "expand to xyz tons" (where xyz is a user entry) with this so we don't have to remember to turn it off.  
I can't see any reason not to use it as the default expansion task really as you can abort to retool with practically no penalty.  In which case it might be worth making the expand by 1000/2000/etc options (where you lose out if you abort) cheaper to reflect the commitment to a "long term" contract.

Stephen

[Steve Walmsley]

Cool.  I hadn't noticed this option before.
It might be worth adding an option to continually "expand by xyz tons" and/or "expand to xyz tons" (where xyz is a user entry) with this so we don't have to remember to turn it off.  
I can't see any reason not to use it as the default expansion task really as you can abort to retool with practically no penalty.  In which case it might be worth making the expand by 1000/2000/etc options (where you lose out if you abort) cheaper to reflect the commitment to a "long term" contract.

You don't lose much if you abort as the aborted task still adds capacity to the shipyards, rounded down to the nearest 10%. So if you aborted 62% of the way through a 1000 ton capacity task, you would still receive a 600 ton increase in capacity.

Steve

[Shinanygnz]

OK, fair enough.  That'll teach me to assume  
Here's an idea though.
Change the shipyard options to
   Expand by <insert amount> tons
   Expand to <insert amount> tons
   Add slipway
   Add <insert amount tons>
   Retool for class

The two "expand" options use continual expansion and allow you to abort at any point.  But the "Add" one requires the shipyard to be doing nothing else (including nothing building in the slips), you pay the minerals up front and lose any "unused" if you change the task (keep your existing you get to the nearest 10% completed though), but it's quicker (prob not cheaper to avoid "cheating") than the continual expand method (but they let you use the shipyard while it's going on).

Stephen