Increasing Facilities Construction Times

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Emiricol
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Increasing Facilities Construction Times

Post by Emiricol »

Facilities Construction Times

Building giant government facilities in a month or two is just not realistic enough for my tastes. But, I don’t really want them to take years on end to build, either. Thus, I am applying the extended construction rules for ships to Facilities. They now take (cost/2 RU) turns to construct. For example, a spaceport (cost 30) takes 15 turns to complete.
I've been using this rule for my Aloft campaign, and it really adds some nice flavor. I recommend this for any long-term campaign.
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Ever since you added it to your previous campaign (there was one before this one, right? Or maybe it is the same campaign...) I have taken to using it. It does help to slow down the placement of large facilities, and require adequate time be taken to build up a nation's infrastructure.
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Post by Emiricol »

I did have one (actually two...) before Aloft, but I only started using that rule with my current campaign.

EDIT: Aloft has been going on since about early October a year ago, though. (I took 6 months off of it though for other projects).
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Post by murtalianconfederacy »

I've been thinking of something that would allow larger ships to build quicker with the Extended Construction times.

A normal shipyard has a number of dock spaces equal to productivity and can build as many EP of ships as the world it orbits. More shipyards allow more ships to be built.

But how about merging shipyards?

Lets say you had a single shipyard over your homeworld (Prod: 10, Output: 60). You could build 10 ships with 6EP cost each. But lets purchase another shipyard, but instead of creating another shipyard, it adds to the existing one. You now have a shipyard (2), that can build 120EP of ships, but only 10 dock spaces. But here's the best bit. The rating of the shipyard is applied as a denominator to the time it takes to construct a ship.

Lets say I had a 32 EP ship and constructed it in the standard way. It would take 16 turns to construct. But now lets say that it was in a shipyard (2). Then this behemoth would take only 8 turns to build. In a shipyard (3) it would take 6 turns (16/3=5.3 recurring, round up)

Thus you can build more of your behemoths, like if you're the Scarrans and want more dreadnoughts.

Each shipyard rating acts as a normal shipyard for determining maintenance. So that shipyard (3) would still require 6 EP to maintain (only three in my campaigns, but thats my personal taste)

What do you think?
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Post by nimrodd »

murtalianconfederacy wrote:But how about merging shipyards?

Lets say you had a single shipyard over your homeworld (Prod: 10, Output: 60). You could build 10 ships with 6EP cost each. But lets purchase another shipyard, but instead of creating another shipyard, it adds to the existing one. You now have a shipyard (2), that can build 120EP of ships, but only 10 dock spaces. But here's the best bit. The rating of the shipyard is applied as a denominator to the time it takes to construct a ship.
The only thing I would change in this scenario, is that I would still limit the shipyard to 60 EP. You just move the ships through there almost twice as fast.
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

murtalianconfederacy wrote:But how about merging shipyards?
That does have merit, though I would tend to agree with Nimrodd that it should probably have the same construction capacity and dock spaces and just decrease construction times (at additional cost).

I can see these being very handy if built in strategic ship construction zones, as it would allow you to have a yard that could quickly crank our new heavy warships while leaving the rest of your yards to be used for lighter ships.
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Post by nimrodd »

Another option for speeding up (or slowing down) construction is allocation of capacity.

A normal 12 EP Ship takes 12 EP capacity of the yard and 6 turns to build. By dividing the EP of the ship by the capacity allocated at the beginning of the build, you can speed up or slow down the construction.

Ship Cost / CC Allocated / Build Time
12 / 4 / 18
12 / 6 / 12
12 / 8 / 9
12 / 12 / 6 Normal
12 / 15 / 5
12 / 18 / 4
12 / 24 / 3
12 / 36 / 2

This allows you to get your ships out faster if needed, even using a normal shipyard. You still get the same throughput, i.e. three 12 EP ships still take 6 turns using 36 EP of construction capacity, whether they come out on turns 2, 4 & 6 or all 3 come out on turn 6, you just now have a choice about getting some out quicker.

Again, you have to allocate the capacity at the beginning, or it is assumed to be normal capacity and build time.
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Post by MarkG88 »

nimrodd wrote:Another option for speeding up (or slowing down) construction is allocation of capacity.

A normal 12 EP Ship takes 12 EP capacity of the yard and 6 turns to build. By dividing the EP of the ship by the capacity allocated at the beginning of the build, you can speed up or slow down the construction.

Ship Cost / CC Allocated / Build Time
12 / 4 / 18
12 / 6 / 12
12 / 8 / 9
12 / 12 / 6 Normal
12 / 15 / 5
12 / 18 / 4
12 / 24 / 3
12 / 36 / 2

This allows you to get your ships out faster if needed, even using a normal shipyard. You still get the same throughput, i.e. three 12 EP ships still take 6 turns using 36 EP of construction capacity, whether they come out on turns 2, 4 & 6 or all 3 come out on turn 6, you just now have a choice about getting some out quicker.

Again, you have to allocate the capacity at the beginning, or it is assumed to be normal capacity and build time.
Nice suggestion Nimrodd, I like this flexibility in building time but you temper it with your allocation rule so it's not subject to player abuse.
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Post by jygro »

nimrodd wrote:Another option for speeding up (or slowing down) construction is allocation of capacity.

A normal 12 EP Ship takes 12 EP capacity of the yard and 6 turns to build. By dividing the EP of the ship by the capacity allocated at the beginning of the build, you can speed up or slow down the construction.

[snip]

This allows you to get your ships out faster if needed, even using a normal shipyard. You still get the same throughput, i.e. three 12 EP ships still take 6 turns using 36 EP of construction capacity, whether they come out on turns 2, 4 & 6 or all 3 come out on turn 6, you just now have a choice about getting some out quicker.

Again, you have to allocate the capacity at the beginning, or it is assumed to be normal capacity and build time.
This is an interesting concept, but I'm worried about the fact that most homeworlds sit around Prod 10 and 60 EPs so you can rush a decent amount of ships in a single turn for no 'extra cost' (most turns I have capacity to spare).

For Example: you could produce four 6EP ships in a single turn (6/15x3 = 1.2).

I guess you could say that you always round up, but then you could still create three 6EP ships a turn and still at the cost of 18 EP. An empire could feasibly recreate most of a destory fleet in a couple turns if being pressed...

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Post by Emiricol »

You know, I kind of had the same concern myself, just thinking to how rarely my shipyards are at full capacity. Charging 1.5 normal for the extra contractors and all that overtime might solve that?
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Post by nimrodd »

jygro wrote:This is an interesting concept, but I'm worried about the fact that most homeworlds sit around Prod 10 and 60 EPs so you can rush a decent amount of ships in a single turn for no 'extra cost' (most turns I have capacity to spare).

For Example: you could produce four 6EP ships in a single turn (6/15x3 = 1.2).

I guess you could say that you always round up, but then you could still create three 6EP ships a turn and still at the cost of 18 EP. An empire could feasibly recreate most of a destory fleet in a couple turns if being pressed...
Yes, you always round up just like in the standard rules (i.e. a 7 EP ship takes 3.5 turns rounded up to 4).

Taking your example of a 6 EP ship with a standard homeworld shipyard (10 bays, 60 EP Construction Capacity), you can NORMALLY produce 10 ships in 3 turns. By paying 18 points per ship, you can build 3 ships in one turn, with capacity to build 1 ship at normal speed (3x18=54, leaving 6). Thus if you go this route, on turn 1 you get 3 ships, on turn 2 you get 3 more and on turn 3 you get 4 for a total of 10 ships.

As Game Admin, you can always throw in the stipulation that you can only double the speed of production by using this rule. Using this rule, your 6 EP ships could be sped up to a max of 2 turns build time at a cost of 9 EP CC.
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Post by nimrodd »

nimrodd wrote:As Game Admin, you can always throw in the stipulation that you can only double the speed of production by using this rule. Using this rule, your 6 EP ships could be sped up to a max of 2 turns build time at a cost of 9 EP CC.
Or another option is that you could allow them to more than double the speed, but at a cost of 1 point of DV, AS & AF per extra sped up turn beyond double. This could simulate the fact that you are pushing your workers beyond what they can safely do.

It would allow you to get out substandard ships at an increased speed.

Supposing you had maxed out your homeworld and now had a 12 bay, 72 EP CC shipyard, you can get that 1 Jains Super Dreadnought I (Cost 12, DV 12, AS 10, AF 5) out in 1 turn as a substandard ship (DV 10, AS 8, AF 3) if you absolutely needed it (Example Jains SD from p 140 of the Campaign Guide PDF). Normal build time being 6 turns, you could push to 3 turns at a cost of 24 CC, but pushing 1 turn is 2 extra turns and thus -2 to the stats.
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Post by murtalianconfederacy »

How about this:

There are two options for reducing build time. One is more expensive but allows you to spend more EP, the second is less expensive but only the standard EP expenditure is allowed

Option 1: Extended shipyards

Extended shipyards essentially cost the same as a normal shipyard to maintain and to construct, and doesn't increase the number of dock spaces. Each Extended shipyard adds one to the ECT denominator (the default ECT denominator is 1, for a standard shipyard) and increases the EP you are available to spend at that shipyard by 50%

Example: A shipyard around the homeworld has 10 dock spaces and can construct 60EP of ships. One Extended Shipyard added to the normal shipyard increases this to 90 EP and allows ships to be constructed at twice the normal rate

Option 2: Shipyard Modules

Shipyard modules cost half as much to construct and maintain as a normal shipyard, and are added to normal shipyards as above. They increase the ECT denominator by one as above, but do NOT increase the EP construction at a shipyard

Example: A shipyard around the homeworld has 10 dock spaces and can construct 60EP of ships. One Shipayrd Module added to the normal shipyard allows ships to be constructed at twice the normal rate
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Post by murtalianconfederacy »

Just to say that for anyone looking at my Rise of the Kingdom campaign, the above rule is what I will be using.
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