Building slowdown (newbie questions)

[InaB77]

Me again,

having dived straight into the game starting my 3rd now i came across a few pressing questions:

In the last game i realised slowdown of ship production / retrofitting and i cant understand why this is so. I have all the ressources (steel, aculon, ...), a large space station and a couple of smaller ones at almost all my colonies but still, ships take ages to repair / retrofit / build and there is a lot of backlog at the LSP. What can be done about this ?

Is it possible to build a science or minig station at a established colony with a spaceport ?

I earned a space station from pirates in the midst of nowhere, when trying to build ships there it took ~ two years for a frigate ?!? That cant be right can it ?

I found a few "battle leftover" sites with lots of defective ships, now my constructors keep repairing those taking ages doing so. Normal ?

---
I made a experiment with the editor, trying to recreate the building problems by making a system with settlable planets, all resources (incl. gasses) and luxuries but also found to get very slow building progress after a few months / years passed. I'd really like to know if this is intended.

[Gelatinous Cube]

Resources take time to get where they are going. Literally every unit of every resource in your empire is accounted for--either as part of a ship, base, or in the cargo of a ship, base, or planet.

Construction slowdowns are almost always due to either not having enough resources, or having so much going on at once that your freighter network can't handle it all. Everything will usually get done eventually, but by trying to do too much at once you ensure some kind of resource bottle-neck.

[Registered55]

yeah, turn off auto build for starters, this kills the economy at the very beginning of the game, added to the fact that the freighters are not very efficient, and no building priority system in place.

build very slow at the beginning, this will help alleviate the stupidity of the freighters, but due to the fact that the empire (the player) can't prioritise building constructions, economy stalls will always occur.

Build slowly, and stay away from issuing large number of construction projects simultaneously.

P.S.

design the construction ships with extra cargo space in case they need to carry extra,

Starports/stations also need extra cargo space to help out aswell.

[DasTactic]

As the others have said, you might have access to the materials you need but they may not be getting to specific planets. Usually I look at cargo manifests on specific planets to see if actual stocks have fallen below reserve stocks. The civilian network is quite a complicated system and any break in the chain can lead to delays. My understanding of this sort of goes along these lines:

1. Building things requires components.
2. Components are made from resources.
3. Resources (and the components) need to be at the construction site - be that a planet, spaceport, or construction ship.
4. Freighters deliver resources to construction sites (including construction ships if required).
5. Freighters pick up resources from cargo stockpiles.
6. Cargo stockpiles can be stored on mines, planets, or spaceports.
7. The larger your infrastructure the more freighters are built (spaceports etc).
8. If a construction ship can only access some of the required resources it will take these and start construction relying on freighters to deliver the shortfall.

So if you have a shortage of a single required resource due to lack of mining, lack of proximity, lack of discovery etc then everything being built at that location will grind to a halt. Usually you then need to rely on independent or other race freighters to deliver the goods to you before you can start to correct the issue. A break in freighter construction leads to further delays in deliveries and it all snowballs.

[Grisha]

I agree with everything the previous posters have pointed out. I'd like to add that in the beginning with one space port, a player starts with quite a bottleneck. As soon as another world is colonized and a space port started there, you'll see a rush of private vessel orders at your homeworld's space port. Be aware of that. Also, time retrofits to occur in shifts, such as by ship class. You don't want anything clogging the works when you've only a single space port in use. Always be aware of what's needed by your Empire too and assign construction ship missions accordingly--though, again, in manageable quantities. Think of putting things out in spurts, rather than continuous streams. Once you have a few good space ports going, it'll ease up, but it can't hurt to keep practicing doing things in bits.

[Gelatinous Cube]

On the other hand, if you are the kind of person who likes to let the AI control ship design (which might, in fact, only be me and Woodman) then having as many small spaceports as possible is necesarry to refit a large spread-out navy with a bunch of small fleets every time you hit "Approve" on the retrofit suggestion.

I would recommend building a Small Spaceport on every world, even if you don't design your own ships. Just remember that the fees associated with a Small Spaceport are MUCH smaller than those associated with the bigger varieties.

[balto]

G Cube, you and Woodman (both grizzled DW veterans).., I cannot believe you still do not design your own ships yet. Buddy, that is the best part of DW. Are you also saying you do not not design your own Spaceports? That is also a huge FUN PRODUCER of DW.

[InaB77]

Thanks for the tipps so far, i managed to improve the situation by constructing some small space ports across my colonies. Still one question remains: Is it possible to build a science / mining / sightseeing station at a colony with a spaceport ?

[Trifler]

ORIGINAL: InaB77

Thanks for the tipps so far, i managed to improve the situation by constructing some small space ports across my colonies. Still one question remains: Is it possible to build a science / mining / sightseeing station at a colony with a spaceport ?

I was able to build Science stations at my starting colony that already had a spaceport in Rise of the Shakturi, but I find that I cannot now in Legends. Most likely it was never intended to be possible. You can *only* build Resort bases at locations that have a Sightseeing bonus. You can't build a Mining station at your colony, but you can add a Mining Engine and potentially also a Luxury Resource Extractor to your spaceport. These will speed up the acquisition of the resources available on your colony's planet. Be aware that there is a maximum rate at which resources can be gathered from a single location. Once you reach that, any additional mining/extraction components won't provide any additional resources per day.

[Okim]

You can build research, monitor, defence stations anywhere except for enemy territory. If for some reason you can`t (which is strange) - you can always design a generic starbase and put whatever you want on it. Just remember that to mine smth or construct smth you`ll need supplies and freighters like when a base has a commerce center.

[Trifler]

ORIGINAL: Okim

You can build research, monitor, defence stations anywhere except for enemy territory. If for some reason you can`t (which is strange) - you can always design a generic starbase and put whatever you want on it. Just remember that to mine smth or construct smth you`ll need supplies and freighters like when a base has a commerce center.

Okim you can build them at any vacant planet, but you can't build them at a planet that already has a Spaceport. Likewise I can build a research station at any vacant planet, but I can't build two research stations at the same planet. The only time I can build two stations at the same planet is when I use a research station and a mining station.

[Jeeves]

ORIGINAL: Das123

As the others have said, you might have access to the materials you need but they may not be getting to specific planets. Usually I look at cargo manifests on specific planets to see if actual stocks have fallen below reserve stocks. The civilian network is quite a complicated system and any break in the chain can lead to delays. My understanding of this sort of goes along these lines:

1. Building things requires components.
2. Components are made from resources.
3. Resources (and the components) need to be at the construction site - be that a planet, spaceport, or construction ship.
4. Freighters deliver resources to construction sites (including construction ships if required).
5. Freighters pick up resources from cargo stockpiles.
6. Cargo stockpiles can be stored on mines, planets, or spaceports.
7. The larger your infrastructure the more freighters are built (spaceports etc).
8. If a construction ship can only access some of the required resources it will take these and start construction relying on freighters to deliver the shortfall.

So if you have a shortage of a single required resource due to lack of mining, lack of proximity, lack of discovery etc then everything being built at that location will grind to a halt. Usually you then need to rely on independent or other race freighters to deliver the goods to you before you can start to correct the issue. A break in freighter construction leads to further delays in deliveries and it all snowballs.

Excellent summary. The only thing I can add is : Spaceport queues backlogged? Then stop colonizing and conquering!

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: balto

G Cube, you and Woodman (both grizzled DW veterans).., I cannot believe you still do not design your own ships yet. Buddy, that is the best part of DW. Are you also saying you do not not design your own Spaceports? That is also a huge FUN PRODUCER of DW.

There is two things going against manual ship design.

1: It makes the game easier
2: It is not really well supported by the GUI.

Designing ships are fun, but enemies die too fast when I do that, and updating lots of manual designs is boring work.

Woodman got a very good point about role playing. If you let the AI design you get some racial flavors to work with.

[ASHBERY76]

I made a thread that the default bases do not have nearly enough construction slots and it fell on deaf ears.If you design your own bases you get a huge advantage against the A.I.I am using stock bases to make it fair and the backlogs are huge.My old style of a large base with 20 slots never had any issues.

The A.I not roleplaying base design because they all use the same low slot design.

[Gelatinous Cube]

ORIGINAL: balto

G Cube, you and Woodman (both grizzled DW veterans).., I cannot believe you still do not design your own ships yet. Buddy, that is the best part of DW. Are you also saying you do not not design your own Spaceports? That is also a huge FUN PRODUCER of DW.

Never. Not once. I would love to, but I'm waiting for that overhaul! Although if the Shakturi show up in my current game, I'm just going to say "Eh, screw it" and start designing stuff--because they'll kill me if I don't anyway, probably.

[Evrett]

20 construction slots ? how many factories? That base is going to eat up all your resource reserves...

If your construction slots are all full and you need something built dont be afraid to go in and scrap ships being built.

[Gelatinous Cube]

There's nothing wrong with the AI designs if you build a large empire. Hell, there's nothing wrong with them even if you just take it kind of slow.

I'm not saying you don't get big advantages by designing your own ships--because you do--but the AI-designed spaceports are not bad at all. You can build small ones all over your empire at reasonable cost, pepper middle-sized ones around evenly to help reduce the load, and only build your large ones at worlds where you need a strong ship-building presence, or ones that need that extra bit of defense (although to be honest, Defensive Bases are better for that).

If you have a small 4-slot spaceport at every world, and medium ones (with 8 slots, I think?) peppered about, and those nice 15-slot Large ones at your critical worlds, you won't have any problem producing ships at all unless you try to build them all at one planet, which is silly. If you're making a massive 50-ship order there's no reason you can't distribute it all around your empire via the unified construction screen (the pick-axe looking button) and then go into your F10 Ledger and fleet those ships up while they're under construction. While they're STILL under construction you could give them a home base, and make sure the fleet is automated.. then you're massive 50-ship build order will get done fast and assemble where you want it.

Obviously for smaller orders or situations very close to the frontlines, you might want to concentrade your build orders at one space port, but other than that there is usually enough time to spread it out.

Once again, these are just my observations. There is no wrong way to play.

[Farrels]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

I made a thread that the default bases do not have nearly enough construction slots and it fell on deaf ears.If you design your own bases you get a huge advantage against the A.I.I am using stock bases to make it fair and the backlogs are huge.My old style of a large base with 20 slots never had any issues.

The A.I not roleplaying base design because they all use the same low slot design.

Its a pity that this fell on deaf ears as ive noticed this also

In my last game i had a good war with the Mortalens, but managed to beat them eventually because the had a backlog of 90 ships at their LSP. I would be in favour of a doubling of construction spots on mediuma and large space ports on default AI designs

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: Farrels
Its a pity that this fell on deaf ears as ive noticed this also

In my last game i had a good war with the Mortalens, but managed to beat them eventually because the had a backlog of 90 ships at their LSP. I would be in favour of a doubling of construction spots on mediuma and large space ports on default AI designs

Here is the A.I Dhayut homeworld in my last game.Nothing wrong?

[Erik Rutins]

Not deaf ears, just very busy ears. This is on our list to investigate.

Regards,

- Erik