[Crusade] War ships take too many turns to build?

[Ed]

Really enjoying Crusade (beta version 2.14). But have some concerns about ships:

- Takes too long to build even medium-sized ships? Have for ex. 12.5 in ship construction on one planet but still takes 18 turns to build one medium ship. Will take hundred or more turns to build any kind of fleet. AI also apparently not building fleets so far as I've seen.

- Makes no sense that a medium war ship takes longer to build than a giant colony ship (though for gameplay reasons I understand why this is).

[Mc'doge]

Have you tried multiple sponsors on a shipyard? You can have up to 5 per shipyard, with some slight penalties if the planet is to far away.

[Astasia]

That's an extremely low ship construction number. I think you jumped too far in military and haven't dealt much with infrastructure. I mean just a space elevator and starport with a few basic factories should get you much higher than that. Add a bunch of asteroids and a few engineers, and you can hit 50 ship production on a single planet fairly early game. A shipyard can be sponsered by 5 planets, and there's no longer any reason to not have a planet sponser a shipyard because otherwise its ship production is just going to waste (it's no longer added to social production when not sponsering a shipyard).

[cwayne59]

You need to have 5 sponsors on your shipyard. For each sponsor, be sure to build both the space elevator and the starport. If you can, build them next to each other for adjacency bonuses. You can even stick a factory beside one. medium ships really shouldnt take long to build, at least earlier versions. I haven't played a game to later tech to see how that changes yet.

[Ed]

Thanks guys. But shouldn't each colony be sponsoring only its own shipyard and not those of other colonies?

With most of my colonies I can't get shipbuilding above 10 even with space elevator and starport built next to each other. I take the point about using engineers globally or locally.

[Red Earth]

Originally posted by Ed:

Thanks guys. But shouldn't each colony be sponsoring only its own shipyard and not those of other colonies?

You're not supposed to have one shipyard per colony. Pool the production and it goes faster. Why have three colonies producing one ship each every 18 turns when you can have one shipyard sponsored by those three colonies build the same ship in 6 turns?

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Ed:

Thanks guys. But shouldn't each colony be sponsoring only its own shipyard and not those of other colonies?

No. You don't need that many shipyards and it's easier to manage a smaller number of them. Try to get as many planets to sponser a shipyard as you can without losing too much production from distance decay.

Originally posted by Ed:

With most of my colonies I can't get shipbuilding above 10 even with space elevator and starport built next to each other. I take the point about using engineers globally or locally.

You have to take advantage of adjacency levels. Every level a space elevator or starport gets is +1 production, if you stick a basic factory next to them thats another +1 production. Cluster them with factories around them and you can hit 10-15 from just those buildings. Things like pop, and asteroids add on to that, and get multiplied by bonuses from the factories. Local engineers are the big one though, stack 3 or so on a production planet and you should be able to get close to 50 early game, or over 100 if you really want to go all out and stack like 6 engineers.

[amaruakx]

Well building and dispatching warships is pretty expensive and can take a
long amount of time

0. take malevolent productivity branch
You get + 10 social and military construction on your homeworld, + 100% military production on homeworld and finally +20% raw manufacturing everywhere.

1. build infrastructure, asteriods, deploy citizens
Space elevator + factories (research first) , connect to shipyard build starport + factories

2. connect colonies of 5 for shipyard if possible
a - 10% penalty is ok

3. build economic starbases

You also have to think about what you need the ships for anyway. If you want to destroy starbases in the beginning, -> forget it, only possible without losses way mid -late game

To take planets you don't need to kill every ship the enemy has to offer. Just kill a few and take the world by invasion.

Use mercs if you have the money. Their tier 2 military vessels are really good and can wipe any fleet other players have to offer at that time.

If you have engineer trait + pragmatic 2nd branch you get -100% penaly to shipyard decay. So you need only to upgrade a few worlds and direct their sponsoring to worlds of the front line.

[Ed]

Thanks for the tips. Where should you build your shipyards then, at the edges of your empire/borders with the AI or in your heartlands?

[Airmaster]

Originally posted by Ed:

Thanks for the tips. Where should you build your shipyards then, at the edges of your empire/borders with the AI or in your heartlands?

Build as close to your sponsoring planets as possible taking advantage of all production from each sponsoring planet.

[Ed]

I'll give it a try, thanks

[Galactic Origins]

my medium ships take 2-6 turns to build

add more planets to your sponsor list
increase your population per planet
concentrate closest planet (owner of shipyard) on population and ship sonstruction

[cwayne59]

yeah, it seems like Economy Starbases don't really help as much comparatively. And you cant really afford to spam them now. They also seem to have nerfed the little supply anomalies...you know the little colored gems. They don't seem to help as much anymore. And that is iff you can afford a starbase to mine it.

[CyPunk]

Originally posted by cwayne59:

yeah, it seems like Economy Starbases don't really help as much comparatively. And you cant really afford to spam them now. They also seem to have nerfed the little supply anomalies...you know the little colored gems. They don't seem to help as much anymore. And that is iff you can afford a starbase to mine it.

Agreed: I only use econ starbases if there are several planets in range (preferably 4) and one is a core super planet. Vigilant ability helps with that.
Same with relics: very nerfed. Of course they were overpowered. But I will only take them if there are other resources in the area.

[Astasia]

Econ starbases are still great and you can and should spam them wherever possible. Production was nerfed pretty hard on them, but they still boost economy and research a lot. Since you can't zero-out financial or research on your production planets anymore, getting +100% or more bc/research on your planets from the starbases helps a ton, and they more than pay for themselves. A single econ starbase is better than pretty much any citizen, so getting a large amount of administrators so you can drop starbases everywhere is well worth it.

[cwayne59]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Econ starbases are still great and you can and should spam them wherever possible. Production was nerfed pretty hard on them, but they still boost economy and research a lot. Since you can't zero-out financial or research on your production planets anymore, getting +100% or more bc/research on your planets from the starbases helps a ton, and they more than pay for themselves. A single econ starbase is better than pretty much any citizen, so getting a large amount of administrators so you can drop starbases everywhere is well worth it.

I may try droppping a few more on this current test game to see how it works out.