Matrix Games Forums

Has there been any update on how many Manufacturing Plants to use? I just have 4 of each on my large space ports..

has anyone ever figured out if 6 of each makes ships faster? and it it's worth it?

I have like 70 Construction yards on 1 base.. trying to get ships out as fast as possible..

I already know about the bakura speed shipyard thing..

thanks

The information I've seen on the subject suggests that Manufacturing Plants make [capacity]/100 size of components and Construction Yards will install floor([construction speed]/100) components every six in-game days.

I have not personally tested that thoroughly enough to vouch for its accuracy. I can, however, tell you that when I tested two shipyard designs, one with 10 of each plant and 30 construction yards and the other with one of each plant and 30 construction yards, and had both shipyards build 30 capital ships of the design that the computer had generated for my empire at the time (new game, tech level 7 ackdarian empire), both shipyards appeared to be building the ships at the same rate (based on checking the change in project completion percentage for each construction yard in both shipyards at intervals during the project; the test was ended prior to completion of construction as the planet over which the shipyards were built ran out of resources when construction of the sixty capital ships was roughly 50% complete). This test result is not inconsistent with the hypothesis given above; at tech 7, a station with 3 manufacturing plants and 30 construction yards would be able to construct ships at something close to maximum rate as long as the average size per component used in the designs of the ships under construction was no greater than 15. You might run into delays due to insufficient plant capacity while trying to build a fleet of carriers, but you'd probably be good to go for just about anything else.

Under the assumption that the hypothesis given above is correct, the ideal ratio of construction yards to manufacturing plants and the ideal ratio of weapons plants to energy plants to high tech plants will be dependent upon the designs of the ships that you are building. Regardless, if the hypothesis is correct, I would expect that four of each plant will in general be more than sufficient for seventy construction yards to work at maximum rate or something very close to it, as the total manufacturing capacity is such that your construction yards shouldn't be able to install components more quickly than the plants can build them unless the average component size on the ships being built is greater than 17-25 (depending on construction/manufacturing tech).

The information that I've seen can be found here.

Ok thanks,

It sounds like I should just leave the 4 plants of Energy,Weapons,High-tech each..

whether I have 10, 30, or 70 construction yards. the 4 plants will just be fine for building 100 ship fleets.

I hope.

.

yes, period.

> .

The observations I made, gave me the impression that the components were all built instantaneously regardless of how many of each type of plant was installed on the shipyards.

After that I went with 1 plant of each type regardless of having 20+ construction yards.

This of course was a breach of the spirit of the game, and I considered it to be an exploit.

I really liked the concept of having the ship building comprised on many stages. Missing in the game was resource refinement and or processing in order to manufacture synthetic resources required by components.

Game guide says 1 of each for every three construction yds. That seems too many and is.

Someone did test it a long time ago and It'll still be there if you look but the nitty gritty of his conclusion were, 'you don't need that ratio you only need one of each for about 30 or 40 constrction yds'. I've never had a problem with this at the low tech end. Once yard construction speed ramp up to >300 then you might need to have more than one.

He further explained that each plant has enough capacity to build components totalling its capacity/100 over a 6 day period. Apparently this not documented? Take a 45000 capacity plant it can build components totalling 450 in size. This is over a 6 day period. E.g. A standard fuel cell is size 6 so it could build 75 cells in 6 days provided that's all it was doing.


The real problem is the construction speed and I've read and re-read various post but never got to grips with it properly. I don't know what speed actually means? So! I've run some very simple tests as follows. I'm playing a mod so some of the fugures might not tally with the standard game.

A base with 30 construction yards was used to construct 30 ships of the same type and size. The ship was 250 in size with 43 components split almost equally between the three plant types. Although there were 43 components per ship, as soon as a ship started to be build they instantaniously got one component so these timing are for 42.

• At basic tech level construction speed is 100 it took 192 days or 32x6 day periods to complete. Constructing at a rate of appox 1.3 units per 6 day period. Mostly it was one component per period but on occasions it was 2 so I suspect remains were carried over.
  
  At the next tech level construction speed was 200. I now took 96 days or 16x6 day periods to complete. Constructing at a rate of appox 2.6 units per 6 day period. This tallies roughly with what others have said.
  
  Up again the next tech level construction speed was 300. I now took 60 days or 10x6 day periods to complete. Constructing at a rate of appox 4.2 units per 6 day period.

Using the last test you therefore get 4.2/300=0.014 components per unit of speed if that makes sense. Put it another way if you multiply 0.014 x the current build speed of your yards you'll roughly get how many components a yard can construct in a 6 day period.

If anybody comes up with something else, answers on a postcard.

interesting analysis - very useful - thanks for posting