You will also find that on newly colonised systems (before the improvements take place) things show as taking a long time - often by the time the queue gets to them the times are more reasonable.



Also I have found if you have a limited amount of a resource required that can bump up the number of turns (as it seems to calculate how long it would take you to get enough of that resource) - find a planet with the resouce and the turns come down.

mokaiba wrote:
No idea why people want to compare to save games. It is easier to just tell the order people research 99% of the time and what they improve in their systems 99% first. I literally had to harass some of the 30 turn group just to know what they did and why.

Yes, and once you did harrass, I believe you did learn things. You have told one research order, but for example you have not mentioned anything about happiness. IMHO this is almost *more* important than research order. I had the right research order earlier, but I was not maxing happiness so my population was tiny.



The interesting thing about the 30-turn challenges is that you can play it; see your own result; if you find the others' results are way better you can replay. That way, at least for me, I "understood". If I take your research order and pin a printout up next to my monitor, I am not "learning". But YMMV; different people learn differently.

The thing it depends of the map, your home system, your race... You proposed a start, I have one different where I prefer to buy a hero when there is an administrator. At level 3, he will be so useful. I also research different It can depend of the systems I discover, mainly for the colonization techs...



You have to harass, but the savegame can always tell you something else, something complementary.

davea wrote:
I had the same problem when I first started this game. I think you are underestimating the effect of happiness and population. That is, you need more happiness, and more population, before you start building fleets. Please check out some of the "30 turn challenge" results here:



http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/group.php?groupid=80



You can compare your results against these and decide if your feedback still holds.

No idea why people want to compare to save games. It is easier to just tell the order people research 99% of the time and what they improve in their systems 99% first. I literally had to harass some of the 30 turn group just to know what they did and why.

MrDemonic wrote:
Hey everybody,



First post here, after playing a few hours into my first game (which I sucked at, was playing the human race) and I noticed that some of the build times seem pretty over the top. I mean I didn't get that far into the game since it was only a few hours. But I notice that it would take like 100-150 turns just to build one improvement sometimes. Here is an example of what I mean when I had a construction queue built up (turns only a estimate of what I remember seeing):



Planet Improvement: 50 turns (reasonable enough)

Another Planet Improvement: 75 turns (stretching it a bit but okay)

A Defender: 100 turns (um...)

A cruiser: 170 turns (dude really?)



And at times I remember seeing like 200+ turns on some items



I mean I'm still not sure how the building system works exactly, but doesn't it seem a bit of the time? I am still fairly new to 4x games, even though I played a lot of Empire: Total War, but it doesn't seem to sit with me. It would take maybe hours (I think) to get through 100+ turns if you did a lot of fine micro-managing.

I mean thinking about it, it could be because I had build queues like that throughout all the colonies I had. (I had like 5-10 by that time on different star systems.)



Could someone enlighten me here? Is there a reason for a overly long build time? Or is this just because it's still the Alpha?



Thanks,

MrDemonic

Start this way first.









1. Arid Epigenetics (start)

2 .Advanced Machining (start)

3. Soil Xenobiology

4. N-Way Fusion Plants

5. Isolation Shields

6. Xenology

7. Sustainability

8. Compact Fusion Reactor

9. Neural Robotics

10. Nonbaryonic Particles

11. Applied Casimir Effect

12. Particle Scanning

13. Botanical Scanning

14. Xenobotany









While waiting for the first one to be built colonize another system then put both on Ind to Sci (itll lower the turn numbers).



Then build on each system as they come available:





Sustainable Farms

Heavy Isotope Refineries

Public-Private Partnerships

Xenotourism Agencies

Magnetic Field Generators

Infinite Supermarket





After you have done the basics, do whatever you want (turn numbers will be shorter)

Get N-way fusion plants.



Spent 110 dust to build them immediately in a system.



Profit.

BlueSky- wrote:
pretty sure when you start the game you get to pick slow/normal/fast game speeds.



sounds to me like your playing on slow.

Yeah, I usually play on normal speed in these types of games.

pretty sure when you start the game you get to pick slow/normal/fast game speeds.



sounds to me like your playing on slow.

How it works :

Your systems have a production value. that's how much "labor" they can do in one turn.

Each improvement need an amount of production. When you have enough production (it stacks each turn) you've build the thing.



For instance : you have 10 production and you try to build something that need 100 production. It'll take 10 turns. If you have only 1 production, it'll take 100 turns. If you have 50 production it'll take 2 turns.

Or are the turn times all the same throughout your empire?

They are specific to the system you are building something on, though that's not to say empire-wide things (happiness, bonuses etc) don't also have some effect on said system.

Ah ok then, does the turn times depend just on the star system you've colonized in? Or are the turn times all the same throughout your empire?

Hey everybody,



First post here, after playing a few hours into my first game (which I sucked at, was playing the human race) and I noticed that some of the build times seem pretty over the top. I mean I didn't get that far into the game since it was only a few hours. But I notice that it would take like 100-150 turns just to build one improvement sometimes. Here is an example of what I mean when I had a construction queue built up (turns only a estimate of what I remember seeing):



Planet Improvement: 50 turns (reasonable enough)

Another Planet Improvement: 75 turns (stretching it a bit but okay)

A Defender: 100 turns (um...)

A cruiser: 170 turns (dude really?)



And at times I remember seeing like 200+ turns on some items



I mean I'm still not sure how the building system works exactly, but doesn't it seem a bit of the time? I am still fairly new to 4x games, even though I played a lot of Empire: Total War, but it doesn't seem to sit with me. It would take maybe hours (I think) to get through 100+ turns if you did a lot of fine micro-managing.

I mean thinking about it, it could be because I had build queues like that throughout all the colonies I had. (I had like 5-10 by that time on different star systems.)



Could someone enlighten me here? Is there a reason for a overly long build time? Or is this just because it's still the Alpha?



Thanks,

MrDemonic

Not exactly, I've played games with 4x elements, such as the Total War series, mainly Medieval II: Total War and Empire: Total War, though those aren't nearly that complicated as this aha. So I have some small experience in 4x elements. Just nothing nearly as complicated as this. Though I think I'm getting used to it not, it's just hard figuring out what is best to research at the beginning, I usually go for the research that let's me colonize different worlds, while doing some small research into Science and military.

100 or more turns? Never taken so much time for me. Your first 4x game?

Righto, so concentrate on the people. Which seems a bit odd as UE since aren't they just corporate assholes? haha.

The number of turn depend of your industry value. Your industry value depend of your population in your system, their hapiness, their devotion. To have lot of people, you need food and to have hapiness, you need dust generated by people.



In fact all is about the number of people in your system at the beginning. After you success to have your population growing regularly, with the industry upgrade, you can build almost everything in few turns. After it depend of the system, number and type of planets... but this... you can't change it at the beginning so focus population.

Ah so a lot of it is about food, population and production mainly? Those need to be high in order to have decent build times?

Your construction time is based on how much Production the system is making.



Three things you can do to give your system a major production boost

• As the United Empire, you have immediate access to Heavy Isotope Refineries. Build this in your system right away. +10 production plus a bonus per population point on various world types.
• As soon as you can afford a hero, buy one with the Administrator skill tree. For your first level-up pick Director-1 and it unlocks a second level-up called Civil Engineer. +25 Production.
• It seems a little counter-intuitive, but go for the Food bonus on new systems. You'll end up getting production for each population point in system, so the more the better.

For me it is usually 3-6 turns for anything, so you must be doing something wrong, like not improving agriculture or production.

I had the same problem when I first started this game. I think you are underestimating the effect of happiness and population. That is, you need more happiness, and more population, before you start building fleets. Please check out some of the "30 turn challenge" results here:



http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/group.php?groupid=80



You can compare your results against these and decide if your feedback still holds.

you need to match planet exploitations to planet types, you need to pick the right hereos and use them as sys governors.... it's tricky but planet improvement should be about 10-6 turns... try colonizing in-system with out-system ships