How long does it take to unlock more ships?

[Ruffy7k]

I've played for about 4 hours and I'm just wondering when I will start to unlock more military ships?

[crgzero]

Depending on research choices and how much you're focussing towards research you should be well on your way to battleships by the 4 hour mark.

[Red Dox]

If you want to rush it, you can just push engineering (free thought & engineering policy) and everytime a space station upgrade shows up, you choose that.

But I would only advise it if you see your neighbors with stronger fleetstrength outclass you.

[Ruffy7k]

Originally posted by Red Dox:

If you want to rush it, you can just push engineering (free thought & engineering policy) and everytime a space station upgrade shows up, you choose that.

But I would only advise it if you see your neighbors with stronger fleetstrength outclass you.

wait so i get it through the tec, because I need to try and get it quickly cause their a enemy fleet of 1450 power 1 solar system away

[Red Dox]

I guess you are a newbie and further guess, what you see one system away is just some NPC crap which will not attack you (they just block that system until someone kicks them out). So if it is not an enemy Empire AI controlled fleet (no fallen empire, since they steamroll you anyway) you do not have to worry about it. There could even be a 50k skull Leviathan and he would not invade you.

In early game you can stick to corvettes. If you can have 30 of them and reached that limited with build ships you should be able to build destroyersand add them to your corvs. Or you have at last seen the tech once but ignored it for the time being. You can probably survive with corvs & destroyers until the year 2300 if you are not crowded in enemy AI Empires who hate your guts. lets just say you have 20 destroyers added to your 30 corvs, then you probably have already the cruiser tech in research or finished. And with cruisers you can stick around even longer, since battleships are to expansive for "younger" empires.

If you still want to "rush" it because you feel you are left behind by the rest of the universe, change your policies to get engineering faster done and as said, everytime you see a spacestation tech come up, pick it until you have lvl6 and all ship unlocks.
Of course, such a rush will slow the other two research categories and both policies demand a certain Influence upkeep which can be a handicap itself, depending how early we are talking for your empire.

[Ruffy7k]

ok, so i should just upgrade the ♥♥♥♥ outta my corvs then try and get destroyers?

[Red Dox]

I think you have the wrong ideas about research in general ^^
You will use Corvettes even in the late game, so you will constantly upgrade them as new tech comes along. Since the shown techs are everytime random, you can't also really "rush" your way to something specific. You can speed up the process to lances of course if you know which tech you need, but you have to pick every laser upgrade anyway. And since you can't force them to show up in a chain and maybe have to wait 4 other techs to get finally gamma-laser, you can just take your time anyway.

Pick the research that you deem best in the situation as they show up. Even if you get maybe kinetic weapon#3 and shields#4 super fast, you still need the reactor tech to use them. Don't worry to much that you still hav kinetic weapon#2, even if you see an enemy neighbor with weapons#4. If you have a good fleet and good ship builds you can still bring down bigger and slightly more advanced fleets. Of course that is depending on how advanced and how much stronger your neighbor is. If you have destroyers & corvs, while he has already 5 battleships and 50 cruisers, you are doomed ;) But then something went horribly wrong anyway.

You can delay "bigger ships" to some degree, but you can't hold them in your que forever. I had matches where my corvs&destroyers wrecked cruiser fleets and I had games where I waited to long with destroyer research, while my militaristic neighbor declared war and steamrolled my corvs with a huge destroyer fleet. That is just something you have to learn by experience as you go along with the game.

If you really are a complete newbie, for starters try the standard fleet pattern until you get more experienced in what works better for you.
1 Battleship = 2 Cruisers =4 Destroyer = 8 Corvettes.
So if you have 32 corvettes reached, you should look that you get 16 destroyers next, then 8 cruisers and 1 battleship. With fleetlimit and building costs, you will see that this will take time enough, so that the research has a good chance to keep up while you expand your empire and sometimes replace casualties in your fleet. Such a composition is for endgame purpose no real fleet, but it guides you along. A endgame fleet (and you got probably 2 or more of them some day) could consists of 15-20 battleships, 50-70 cruiser, 0-80 destroyer and 40-XXX corvettes. It is kinda depending on what shiptypes/builds you favor and what your Empire can support.

And I point out, that I use the assumption that you (as assumed newbie) play the vanilla version of the game and did not mod already a trillion new techs and shiptypes into it ;)

[Ruffy7k]

ok thanks