About the capital ship factory...

Frick, I can't edit.

EDIT: on a side note, I don't play 1v1's, so all my experience comes from 2v2, 3v3, and so on.

I would tend to agree with you. However, how long does it take to get your second capital ship up and running? 10 minutes? It costs 3000 credits plus metal and crystal to build that second capital ship. Now, if you took the money from scuttling the factory and invested it in your economy, it pays back, like intrest in a bank account. After 10 minutes, the credits from scuttling the capital ship may have gotten your economy up and running and may be worth 5000 credits at the 10 minute mark, or whatever.

I've actually thought about this myself. It would be easy to test really. Just run 2 timed simulations. In one 10 minute run, scuttle the Capital Shipyard and see how long it takes to build a second shipyard + Capital Ship. Use the early income to invest in your economy. In the other simulation, don't scuttle it. In both scenarios, buy exactly the same # of units. Obviously, in the scuttled scenario, you will have extra money, but how much is the question. Use the extra money to reinvest in your economy. You will be able to afford population increases and resource extractors sooner on your 2nd/3rd worlds. And then just compare them.

It would probably be more accurate if you chose not to scuttle first, have less cash, and build your normal fleet, and then go back and run it again buying the same # of ships.

I wish I had more time to play to figure this stuff out. Next weekend, this will definitely be on the agenda because I've been wondering this myself.

edit: And keep track of buildings/uprades too. With the extra money spent on upgrades, you may be making more money, but it may take more than 10 minutes for the extra economy to kick in. Like in the scuttled scenario, you may have an extra planet with 3 extractors making cash, but it hasn't quite caught up to pay itself off yet. Its definitely an interesting question.

Will do. I'll try it over the next few days, and see what I find.

actually by the time u get your second cap ship, u wouldve already researched the reduce cost upgrade that decreases the cost for mines, frigate and captial ship factories and something else. cap ship should be 600ish i believe than

The only reasons I scuttle the factory are: moving it to a better location, or I really need the extra logistics slots on the home planet and I can also move it forward. The economic boost does make some sense, but you get back less than the cost of a colony ship FFS. It'd have to be a fast game to be worthwhile really, in which case rebuilding it makes less sense.

i generally scuttle it after building my 2nd cap ship. i will usually get a 2nd cap ship very early, usually right around the time i've finished colonizing local asteroids and whatever lightly defended terran or desert planets are nearby. its usually so early that i haven't even researched ice/molten colonization. i find that the net gain from getting cap ship #2 early is immense in the extra experience the ship will give you and the ability to easily take out heavily defended terran/desert planets without taking losses. typically there are 2-3 kodiak heavy cruisers defending those planets and they can make mincemeat out of an early game force of light frigates and LRMs, but they hardly make a dent in capital ships.

by the way, if you haven't tried it yet, i highly recommend building a colonizer ship first to grab the asteroids and then building a battleship as your 2nd cap to step up your damage output. in particular this combination is fantastic with the vasari and leads to a very fast and very potent early game.

on the other hand i usually don't try to build a 3rd capital ship for quite a long time and will generally only do so once i'm setting up my forward fleet base, a heavily defended planet with multiple frigate factories and repair platforms.

I scuttled it in a game where my capital ship got destroyed early, boy I wish I didn't. I spent at least an hour playing -without- a capital ship. To tell you the truth, having one is quite an asset.

I think there is an element of risk/gain to scuttling, and that it's really a strategic gamble.

Its hard to say really without running a few simulations because its hard to quantify the effect of having that extra money early on would do for your economy 10-15 minutes down the road.

Infact, the best way to test it would also to start a custom random map, with no pirates, and 1 AI that was the Fortify type so you wouldn't have to worry about it. And then, as soon as the game starts, Save the game, so that the resource distribution is the same for both scenarios. It would only take 30 minutes or so for one complete comparison.

I'm going to do it myself next weekend and test it out and post my methods and results next weekend. And hour and a half running simulations isn't really all that ridiculous when I see myself playing over 100 hours worth of Sins over the next 6 months. Having the most efficient early start early on would definitely be worth it.

I have no idea what the numbers are going to turn out being, but I really want to find out though. I don't like the idea of scuttling the factory if I don't have to.

Yeah just ignore that, and well most of that boom order. It was just a copy/paste from Hardcore rush pretty much. I doubt it was tested at all with any seriousness. The 2nd Capital adds a valuable resource, time. The faster you clear and colonize the better.

If I know the map very well, I skip scouts in favor of a 2nd Capital and do the Colonizer+Battleship combo. When the Battleship is badly bruised, the Colonizer goes in first to soak up some damage, otherwise the Battleship goes in first. The colonizer gives you free extractors, and if you research lower cost extractors, expansionism is a cakewalk. You can even capture a pirate raid target, only put 150 resources in it and leave it for the taking. Much easier than to actually deal with them or getting into a bid war early on. You can eventually get a colonizer ship to hang out in a world near the pirate raid target and retake it once they jump out. This lets you reclaim it for 300-450 credits. Also, instead of building up the asteroid, just build a Tradepost in a protected area, this wont get raided, so it'll cover the cost of the asteroid.

Once I research more cap limit for fleet I'll get scouts. On random maps though, I wont do this.

Aquiantus, I'm not sure if I'm reading your post correctly, but it seems you posted under the wrong thread.

as a TEC player I never scuttel the cap yard I usaly get 3 caps erly and i like to get all 16 cap slots as sun as posibul

The economy boost from scuttling doesn't have to be that great, it just has to make up for the 1000 credits minus the recovered resources by the time you would normally have gotten your second capital ship up and running.

I'm not giving specifics, because the costs and economies are slightly different for each race. It may even turn out that the difference is close enough so that it might benefit TEC in scuttling, but it may be better for Advent to leave it constructed. I'm going to test Advent when I try it next weekend, and then TEC if I have the time.

Xeno, we're just debating the efficiency of it. By scuttling your shipyard you MAY be able to afford to rebuild the shipyard and get a 2nd Capital ship faster than if you didn't scuttle it because of the early enhancement of your economy. I'm looking forward to getting the results.

This actually may change a lot of build orders...

I scuttle the factory so that I can max my trade ports on my HW.

I've learned that while having an extra cap quickly is okay, it's better to have more supporting little ships. Think in terms of real naval fleet compositions -- you never sail just your battleships -- you need escorts to draw fire and distract the enemy.

I once faced a guy who was running 9 caps to my three ___nine___ I nearly quit right there. But I noticed he had no supporting frigates or CAs. So I built up a force of nearly 50 LRM and focus fired his caps to death, one by one. I could have teched for more caps, but I had the fleet supply on hand.

Same game, little later, dude's partner rolls in with 60 avent carriers and three advent caps carriers. All bombers.

I get blown back, switch to flak and mass my own carriers with fighters, and overmatch him -- flak screen the fleet, fighters intercept, and pretty soon I hunt down his carriers and wipe him out.

I'm not saying go purely caps, but I just think the time/res wasted on the second CSY (capital shipyard) is a bit much.

Its moving the capship yard that can be the tipping point on some maps. Ever have your homeworld 4 or 5 jumps from the star on an interstellar map? You want your caps to get built close to the action because they take so long to jump / cross systems.

Yes, early resources are magnified over time, but can you really predict the impact of a paltry early scuttle? There's too much variation, unless you play a very strict build order for some map you are familiar with, IMO. I can definitely see the point on a small MP map where its fairly predictable for you as to when/where you'll need to build a second capship yard.

I guess the question wasn't where to put the 2nd Cap Shipyard, just purely cost over time. You could even rebuild the 2nd shipyard in your home system, if the economy boost is worth it, which it may or may not be.

There is definitely a strategic advantage of rebuilding the 2nd shipyard a couple jumps out which that alone might be worth tearing the old one down in favor for extra slots.

I'll have the answer from a purely economical stand point when I have time next weekend

Looking forward to it, and to how you calculate it Krauser

oh i dont think there's much of a question that you don't want to leave the cap ship yard at a distant homeworld under any circumstances. you need the ships built close to the front. its obvious that in later stages of the game you scuttle all shipyards (frigate too) in your interior worlds and replace them with trade ports or whatever civilian structures are most useful to you.

the more interesting question is whether or not its worth it to scuttle the yard immediately after getting your free cap ship and the building it again (possibly at the same planet, or a very nearby one) later when you start upgrading your fleet capacity after the early game expansion rush.

my answer was that i nearly always scuttle it (for economic benefit) after getting my 2nd cap ship, but that my strategy may be atypical that i typically rush to a 2nd cap ship in lieu of building up some military labs to start production of LRM's or whatever most people do. in my case the cap ship factory doesn't get rebuilt for another 15-20 minutes most of the time, which is about how long it takes me to find my opponents territory and establish a forward base to attack them from.

edit: sorry, double post

I'm really the first one to bring Capital Shipyard scuttle to the attention of the public, so let's go over the reasons why it's definitely the way to go.

First, you get 30% of the cost back. It's quite significant, maybe 1.5 extra frigates.

Second, you gain a logistic slot. That's really good, it's either another research building, or another trade port, or whatever.

Third, and MOST IMPORTANT, unless you're Advent, you should never get a 2nd cap ship.

Even if you play Advent, your second capital will be very late, since the resource investment is just gigantic.

Final:

More than 1 cap ship lowers exp for all of them, and some capitals have amazing level 6 abilities (Nanites, cleansing brilliance, etc.)

Consequently, I can say that in any 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, unless you have some build rushing for 2 fast caps (and why would you??), always scuttle.

i'm sorry, but that just seems wrong to me. capital ships are the anchors of fleets, and they have abilities that have significant synergy if you pick your ships well. i find it crucially important to have access to a powerful disabling ability like Ion Bolt (on the Akkan) in addition to the raw firepower of a Kol battleship. I find that the anti-matter destruction of the EMP Bomb (on the Dunov) is a critical factor against enemy repair cruisers. i think your missing out on way too much if you only build 1 capital ship.

From your posts, and from most of the posts here, it seem you guys play a very "relaxed" game. By that I mean, there's a very clear sense that you guys "build up," "expand," and "move out." In fact, the game is really, expand to asteroids, fight with your army, and end the game. If you do other strats, you just die normally. It's an imbalance problem, but it's the truth.

This is not true as you play better players, and I guarantee, you won't even worry about getting a second cap if we play.

You really should watch some of the replays I posted, before you make badly reasoned statements as if you knew what you were talking about

look dude, for all your vaunted wisdom and strategy, you seem to have failed to learn to communicate respectfully. you think your ultra-aggressive macho crap gets you any degree of respect?

we get it, you think that the game is all about rushing. i guess you play almost exclusively 1on1 duels on small maps. wow, you're talented, you figured out a way to win on 1 of the dozens of different ways that people play this game.

there's nothing badly reasoned about any of my statements. the only bad reasoning here is your assumption that everyone wants to play the game the same way you do.

go try any of your strats on a 4 player map with 3 stars and 40+ planets and watch as your fleet of 1 cap ship and a dozen frigates gets lost in space as you get torn apart by a pirate raid and 1 or 2 incoming players who noticed your incredibly weak position.

there's no sponsored play or ladder play in this game and the fact is its an epic scaled strategy game designed and balanced for larger maps with multiple players. this isn't Warcraft 3 1v1 on the battle.net ladder. you should stopping making posts as if anyone was impressed by your machismo and your arrogance.

I'm with you on that, transitive. HuntingX is being a bit of a dick.

OT: I'm with the 'don't scuttle it unless I'm moving it' crowd. I do end up getting a second cap within the first 10-15 mins (usually a Kol-Akkan combo), and the scuttle just seems to be unnecessary. Yeah, so I gain x-many credits, but one of my constructor ships is distracted rebuilding the CS yard when it needs to be building something else (tech ups usually mean I'm building other, more important things by this point- broadcast center, trade thing [terrible with names, sorry]).

/my 2 cents
//2 credits?