BUILD SYSTEM: QUEUE VS MASS

[Lavarn]

option 2 would be alex's queue system except the way it works is:
say you have 5 planets in your system, you tech on your main home planet, then you house on 3 planets, and you use 2-4 people quick build marine barracks upto 1 turn left on 5th planet, then quit building and switch to housing, and move to next colony in system and repeat saving production with marine barracks.

I like this system best, at least as a production race. It makes sense that to maximize population growth, you want to store production in as few turns as possible because the rest of the time they can do housing. But you also would like to be able to build your research labs, auto factories, etc on all your colonies as soon as you get the technology.

So in my mind, the optimal solution is to store just enough production on each colony so you can build or buy all of them the turn after you finish researching the tech. It doesn't necessarily have to be one at a time, as long as each colony is storing production for as few turns as possible. And the closer the storing happens to the time you get the tech, the better, since housing for more population earlier is better. This is my line of thinking anyway.

As you point out, sometimes you won't have enough time to store production on every colony before you finish researching the tech. I guess in this case you want to store on as many colonies as you can beforehand.

Side note - would the mass build system be more effective than the queue systems if you have +growth?

[KFizzle]

Side note - would the mass build system be more effective than the queue systems if you have +growth?

the mass build system looks nice in the idea that you can build everything everywhere in one turn. but i think: the mass build system is only effective upto autofacts, after that its not really that useful anymore.

maybe after autofacts, id switch to regular queue build.

reason is:
before autofacts, all your regular housing is 100k per turn. after autofacts regular housing is 200k per turn. if you use mass build after autofacts, and you use half pop housing with regular races, youd only be making from anywhere 40/60-100k housing per turn while saving production depending on planet size. which is less than regular housing with autofacts.

but yes, with +growth races, mass build system works better, since the +growth isnt affected by the population size in a colony. if you have 10 out of 12 pop for example, youre regular housing will be low, but if you get +growth, the +growth will still always count and boost up housing.

same thing with cloners. if you choose to do mass build, cloners will help a lot since cloners give +100k pop boost per turn on every colony with cloners built even if theres only room for one pop left to be built on colony. and cloners and +growth both work the same way.

but at the same time, if you do get +growth, with regular one man housing, youll be popping faster than other races without the growth.

in conclusion:
mass build is more effective when combined with +growth or cloners, but it's not necessarily more effective as an overall strategy than queue build. but at the same time, to use queue build effectively, you have to constantly expand to new systems to utilize and grow pop most effectively, but without any good or new systems to expand to, cloners or +growth will work better if you are in closed systems or when you run out of housing planets.

[ALEX|D]

I´ll take later a deeper look at this thread later ... but u should remember ur research too. It makes usually sence to save prod for rlabs or afacs if u have already a chance for a breakthrough. I always have an eye on the research bar.

That means

It´s better to save prod when u have a breakthrough chance

than

u save prod before u have already a breakthrough chance !

[KFizzle]

ooh, i forgot to mention this.

there's a 4th build system, the starve build system.

step uses this system a lot, ive used it before as well, i dont know who else uses it, but basically the idea is, you use the farmers to do either teching or building while starving the pop.

the reason why im mentioning the starve build system, is because you mentioned +growth.

starve system works best with +growth races.

example: with +100 growth, your regular housing planet will make 200k per turn without autofacts. you can starve your pop on that planet, all the way down to 3k per turn if you wanted, all the 200k housing you can starve, and use the farmers to do other stuff like teching or building.

most times people starve their pop most, is when you have to seriously build a bb really fast or get a crucial tech before a certain time. otherwise you can starve pop in beginning as well to tech rlabs faster or build cbases faster.

here's an example race you can use starve system with: unitol +50gro large.

you could have like 5 colonies, and starve pop all the way down to -7/8 food if you wanted or something, and it wouldnt kill any of your pop at all.

only problem with starve system, is that if you use starve system too much, your growth race will grow like regular races. but with growth races, you can use the starve system as you wish whenever you need to, and use regular farming and do regular housing when you dont need to starve them.

like you can turn off and on the starve system mode.

another nifty system, if you ever wanted to try it out

[siron]

@ alex
Jupp, save prod on housing planets when the opportunity costs are low. Simple economics. And thats IMO the most efficient way for all races. Even the growth picks shouldnt matter. Just the build order is different in some cases.

I know that even some veterans play different...but it is imo inferior.

[siron]

Starve trick sucks generally. Missing food kills always 50k pop if you have +growth or not doesnt matter at all. There are only very few cases where you have an advantage using this method.

[Matthew]

I´ll take later a deeper look at this thread later ... but u should remember ur research too. It makes usually sence to save prod for rlabs or afacs if u have already a chance for a breakthrough. I always have an eye on the research bar.

That means

It´s better to save prod when u have a breakthrough chance

than

u save prod before u have already a breakthrough chance !

So what you're saying is build housing until you're getting close to a breakthrough then start saving production. Once you build the new tech switch back to housing until the next breakthrough chance comes.

This is a good strategy. If you just keep storing production between research goals then you will grow slower and will waste some production.

[KFizzle]

thats what i always used to do when i used to use mass build.
whenever i was close to say a certain amount of turns to getting a tech,
i always saved prod on all planets.

normally i would save prod all the way till i got autos, and id save 8 turns worth of 1 pop production for rlabs/autos, and when im about to get supers/robos, id use 6 turns of 2-3 pop production. 6-8 turns of 1 pop production for cloners, and 4 turns of 1-2 pop production for pol procs using robos. when you have robos you require lesser turns of prod saving.

the best way to pace yourself, is figuring out the equivalent production you need for rlabs/autos/supers/robos etc and building that much prod before youre about to get the particular tech.

rlabs/autos require 60pp which is the equivalent of a marine barracks.
supers/robos require 150pp and you can save that much prod by designing a destroyer with nukes.

i think the best time to save prod would be, when youre in the percentage stages of getting the tech. when it shows the percentage completion to getting the tech. but thats typically less than 3 turns, its hard to mass build all the production for all the colonies in 3 turns with limited pop, which is why you require more time of prod savings.

like i said, it all depends on race and gameplay style. each player has their own style, and i just felt like mentioning some of the styles of saving prod and making buildings here in this thread.

whats funny is that i stumbled on this whole queue build system when observing alex's gameplay, except the queue system i devised was very different in detail techniques. i used to follow the queue build system back when i first started here, but then after 6 months to a year, i moved onto the mass build/save production build style. but back in those days when i used to use queue build system, i just used to pop all the way and not save any prod till i got tech, then id mass build the tech everywhere.

the queue system works in the idea, that even though as a system in whole, building all the lab/factory techs one by one on each planet (or two at a time) takes forever. so if you got 5 planets in system, and it takes 3 turns to build rlabs, it will take you 15 turns in total to get everything built in the system.

there's just one catch, while you build the rlabs single planet at a time, you house everywhere else, and the payoff is the extra pop you make from all these housing.

compared to queue build pop payoff, mass build payoff is building all lab/factory techs rlabs/autos/supers/robos in 1 turn when you reach the tech. you choose.

queue build works all the way thru out the game, queue save would be trickier once you get past autos. but until you get autos, queue save is extremely effective. with queue save, you can build autos faster, and house at same time, and after building autos in 1 turn, you can pop even faster using housing with autos.

well ill talk later for now!

[KFizzle]

here's another save i made, using the unisubaqua map.
http://www.geocities.com/kfizzle/unisubcrea.zip

even though that map doesnt have any rich planets in it, its still a great map because it has lotsa pop space especially in the home system. especially the gaia.

this time: i used unisubcrea, turn 100, pop = 95
i would had prolly hit 100 pop easily by turn 100, if expanded a little bit more and made a 2nd cship to land 4th system. but i wanted to get autolabs/cybertronics on time, because thats how i pace myself when i play creative.

and guess what? i got autolabs turn 96/97.

[KFizzle]

you know what that was an extremely bad test with the unisubaqua map using unisubcrea race, considering there was a gaia right there, and i didnt notice it, but having a gaia is the same thing as being uniaqua crea, so that was an extremely bad test.

nevertheless i tried unisubcrea on different map using same techniques, and it didnt work. i was good in pop, but i was low in tech.

but, it seems like all different races require different techniques or methods.

[ALEX|D]

I think with unisubcrea u cant build a cship after afacs ... u need to tech up for cloners/soil supers robos fast.

After u´r getting robos and a poll tech u should try to beat a monster to be able to get a good prod planet ... then teching c3/planiShield is important to have enuff defence power.

[KFizzle]

you know what?

we need to poll housing rates on planets, like regular housing, with autos, with robos, etc. cloners add +100k so thats easy.

particularly on uni races:
unitol +1prod
uniaqua +2prod
unisub +2prod
& unisubaqua +1prod

these races prolly will have best growth rates, especially unitol and unisubaqua. unitol cause they make no pollution so all prod gets used on housing, unisubaqua cause they got the most space to expand to.


also:
i thing i noticed is:
maybe its better not to build all cbases first but just build one cabse and tech rlabs/autos. if you tech rlabs/autos first, after 1cbase, your 2nd system will develop faster for one thing. also youll be able to build faster with all the cbases.

what would you lose? if it takes you 20 turns to get rlabs/autos, youll lose two pop on each housing planet that you have. or average 1 pop per 10 turns of teching on an unbuilt cbase.

i think if you have a 5 planet system, its optimal to build only 2 cbases, and build rest with autos. if youre a slow builder race, id prolly only build 1 cbase, then get autos, such as creative races, or non uni races.

but at the same time: races such as unitol, it builds cbases in 6-7 turns, it might be good idea to build all cbases, since unitol pops at 150k per turn on abundant planet without autos... or 130k ish. but still.

ya unitol is just scary.

let me know what you guys think

[Matthew]

you know what?

maybe its better not to build all cbases first but just build one cabse and tech rlabs/autos

This might be right. Today I played stem. I played UniTol+1prod. I only had a large, barren, poor planet in my home system. I could only build one cbase before rlabs/autos. I still managed to get about 95 pop by t100 using the Queue build system.

This may have partly been because there were several rich planets in nearby star systems with no monsters guarding them.

UniTol+1prod is a powerful race pick. Stem was not playing UniTol and by the time there was first contact I had almost double the pop of his empire.

[ALEX|D]

we need to poll housing rates on planets, like regular housing, with autos, with robos, etc. cloners add +100k so thats easy.

Housing is too powerful ... check out

viewtopic.php?t=28&highlight=housing

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maybe its better not to build all cbases first but just build one cabse and tech rlabs/autos. if you tech rlabs/autos first, after 1cbase, your 2nd system will develop faster for one thing. also youll be able to build faster with all the cbases.

hmm do u tested it in saves that it´s better ?!?!

With demolith arti its better to tech instead of building cbases first.
With unitol its better to build all cbases first.

But I´m unsure which is the point where its better to build 1-2 cbases instead of all ... depends on planets etc I think.

[KFizzle]

i think i prefer building at least 2 cbases then teching rlabs/autos and building rest of cbases.

sometimes with slower races ill only build one.

one thing i adopted, with races that either absolutely cant build, like demolith arti, or dict races where you gotta have marine barracks to build anything without a 20% penalty, is that i tech rlabs/autos first then build cbases.

with dict races it takes forever to build marine barracks on own without autos, so i think if youre playing dict lith, id rather choose tech first.

actually not even that, its all race dependent. there are really 4 good dict races, tolvore, sublith, subaqua +100gro, and tol +1food +2prod.

with races that can tech, id get autos first, with the growth race, i can either tech, or i could also build cbases and pop with the +100 gro, and with the tol +2prod its easier to build marine barracks so i wouldnt mind building cbases first.

whats funnier, is that some people who play dict races, dont ever build marine barracks on their housing planets.

anyhow, back to the track,
the cbases theory:

if build 1cbase, tech rlabs/autos and build rest of cbases:
a) you tech faster cause you have rlabs
b) you can build 1 cbase at a time and develop them better, and using queue build you can house while doing this
c) you can build cbases faster with autos obviously

if you build all cbases first, then tech rlabs/autos:
a) you pop faster while you tech rlabs/autos
b) you can save prod and mass build rlabs/autos in 1 turn everywhere
c) you catch up in tech by producing more pop from cbases

the funny exception to either one of these tactics:
is that by turn 45, certain production races will have same amount of tech or pop using either one of these methods.

and depending on race, and marine barracks and what not, if its better to tech first then build 1st cbase then by all means go ahead.

one rule of thumb i always use:
if you can build cbase in 10 turns or less, go ahead and build cbase/s. if it takes longer than 10 turns, its prolly better to tech, maybe build 1 cbase first.