Earliest possible way to build first Colony Ship?

[rgp151]

I've playing around with various approaches trying to maximize the time to build the first Colony Ship. I haven't settled on a definitive answer and was wondering if anyone else had already figured this out? 

I used to go for max production first, then build the first ship after maxing factories and pop. But I've discovered that this isn't the best way to get a colony ship as fast as possible. So, assuming that you don't need any tech to reach your 3rd planet (first is home, 2nd is from starting ship), what is the best balance of ship vs factory building? I know this will differ by race as well.

[haphazard1]

A lot of factors can affect this. Do you need only one colony ship, or have your scouts found multiple habitable planets? If you know you need several col ships then pushing factories first can reduce the total time to the second or third col ship even if it delays the first one a bit. Also, completely maxing factories and pop first is usually not the best approach since you will need to send some of the home world's pop to seed the third planet and that would leave factories idle for a while. (You might be able to seed the third world from your second world, but usually the second world will not have grown enough unless the third world is pretty small.)

I usually build factories at the home world until the col ship build time drops to something reasonable like 6 or 7 turns. Sending off seed pop for the third world then usually does not leave factories idle. You can also have the second world send small groups of pop back to the home world when it reaches the mid point for maximum growth. This involves some micro management but keeping all your worlds growing in order to get the most free pop growth can be useful.

As you already noted, this can vary by race. Sakkra will have less trouble with pop, while Silicoids will have much more. The rocks do have more production since they do not spend on clean up, which helps off set the pop issue a bit.

[Cyneheard]

If you're literally only worried about the time to the third colony ship, and nothing else matters, then:
1) You don't send any pop to World #2. This is a terrible idea. I generally keep the capital at 40 pop until the 2nd world will hit 1/3 of its pop cap.
2) A factory at the start pays for itself in 15t for non-Silicoids and 10t for Silicoids. So when you'd finish the col ship in that length of time, switch from factories to the colony ship (including the impact of population growth - 16/11t on the build order is probably about right). But that massively slows you down for any future production - I'm usually looking at decades of the capital spitting out colony ships. 6-7t usually works fairly well for me for the colony ship. This is usually around 120-140 factories or so. I'm also much more willing to send pop that are over the factory cap than under, for obvious reasons. If you're regularly sending pop that would be working factories early, you probably built too many factories.

My micromanagement trick for colony building is this:
Let's say the capital would take 5t to build a colony ship. I'll set the shipbuilding to be one tick BELOW 5t to build (so the highest 6t option), and the rest usually on factories that I'll grow into (although sometimes research makes sense). This has to be adjusted every turn. Then on the last turn, I make sure to move the production back to finish the ship in the original 5t timeframe - usually that's a 1-2 tick move back. Basically, this ensures that the world develops as much as possible without delaying the next colony ship.

Note: The 15t/10t payoff rule (which changes as you get cheaper factories and better cleanup) is very relevant when you're stuck building a Huge Colony Ship because you need Reserve Fuel Tanks and don't have the minimum techs to do that on a Colony Ship - it can be better to spend a turn on factories because they'll pay for themselves before the ship is done. Usually when you are forced to build a Huge Colony Ship, getting that done ASAP is a huge priority as the last thing you want is to spend tons of resources only to lose the world by a turn or two.

[SpaceOWL]

You can speed up even more if you get the first Planetologgy tech before finishing the colony ship. It will reduce colony ship costs (sensibly) depending on the tech level. It will also increase pop production by a little, which also helps to anticipate.

For T10 or Barren, it's quite easy to seed from the homeworld and then use part of colony production to ride the bonus, and finish in time to cut down the first colony ship costs.

For ER3 it's more expensive / complicated to manage the investments, maybe it's not effective if your goal is to simply anticipate the first colony ship.

[rgp151]

Hmm I hadn't thought about that. I usually go for ER3 if its available, unless I find a Rich Barren planet early.

[RefSteel]

Yeah, the points others have made here are good ones. Strictly speaking, the way to minimize the time to founding your third colony is basically, "Switch to all-out colship spending as soon as you see a colonizable planet within your range," but that's almost (not quite, but almost) always a very poor long-term strategy.

In other news: Any interest in joining us for another Succession Game? We've been talking about playing as Meklar with a light diplomatic variant over in the OSG-38 thread, and hope to get started soon!

[rgp151]

Yeah, the points others have made here are good ones.  Strictly speaking, the way to minimize the time to founding your third colony is basically, "Switch to all-out colship spending as soon as you see a colonizable planet within your range," but that's almost (not quite, but almost) always a very poor long-term strategy.

In other news:  Any interest in joining us for another Succession Game?  We've been talking about playing as Meklar with a light diplomatic variant over in the OSG-38 thread, and hope to get started soon!

Thanks for the invite, but no. The thing I like about turn based 4x games is that I can play at my own pace in my own time. I don't typically have time to sit down and dedicate to playing games, but I can just take a turn here  and there when possible at my own pace.