Colony construction and You!

Today you're embarking on the exciting new adventure known as 'plodding along with construction', also known as 'XTREEEEME! Colony Investment'. In this you will need to learn how to do a few things a little differently than you'd expect.






1) Construction is speed, speed is compounded power!
Building, like any investment is all about compounding your success with new ones - you need to make sure you know why you building something, and if you'd be better off investing in something else with your limited construction time. Try to have basic plan for your actions

2) When planning your colonies consider the following: What do you want to do with it?

-Is the system the far flung, exposed world of an overreaching empire?
>>>In which case, a spaceyard, followed by a spaceport city, then cargo facilities to fill it with troops/fighters/weapon platforms

-Is it a core defensible system
>>>Then you may look to build the expensive Megaplex facilities that take a long time to complete.

-Is it on the border with a potentially hostile empire?
>>>Then you may look to build cheap economic items, so that construction is not wasted if planets need to build up combat ships, or to build bases.

-Is it a shared colony with another trusted empire
>>> In this case you may look to what you think is necessary for economic production, whilst keeping safety in mind.

3) What is the composition of the planet?
-High minerals, or Research only - try the Cities.
-High organics or radioactives - try the Agrarian cities.
-Want to waste time? Build a Rock, Ice or Gas Settlement facility.





Compare the above figures, you can see that construction rate dramatically improves with little investment, then drops off fairly quickly. My best advice would be to aim for at least 3m immediately after colonising a planet (so a single 2m Starliner, or 2x 1m Starliners), to a 'maximum' of 6m. After this the benefits drop off significantly - if it can be afforded then fine, otherwise wait until other settlement is well in hand.

Yet how does this compare to the upgrading of Space yards? Compare building spaceyards with a relatively high population of 20m - you can see at every stage it is better to build the lowest level of yard, then upgrade to the maximum, instead of building the latest version possible:

Lvl  1: 14 turns + 6 upgrade = 20 turns total to lvl 15 spaceyard
Lvl  5: 19 turns + 4 upgrade = 23 turns total
Lvl 10: 25 turns + 3 upgrade = 28 turns
Lvl 15: 32 turns

Speaking of Starliners, do not forget you need to research Starliner Modules, and use the Starliner mount to make them fit on Starliner hulls.








Each of these facilities continue the tradition of space yard upgrades. Now, at the lower levels the differences isn't that much, but at the max level cities you'd be better off building the low tier facility & upgrading - a Megapolis take 79 turns to build fresh, by building a 6 turn Minor City you can then upgrade to the Megapolis in only 40 turns, saving of 33 turns overall.

However you should also take note that colonies do not progress is a straight line, they're in fact comprised of separate groups which can only upgrade within their own little group.

Settlement facilities
-Settlement
-Colonial Community   

(Mineral) Cities
-Minor City
-City
-Major City
-Metropolis
-Megapolis

Agrarian Cities
-Agrarian Settlement
-Agrarian Community
-Agrarian Society
-Agrarian Ecosystem

Spaceport Cities
-Minor Spaceport City
-Spaceport City
-Major Spaceport City

These last 3 a separate groups, and do not share an upgrade path between themselves, or between others.
Arcology
Agrarian Cultural Centre
Colony World Cultural Centre


Here is the 'City' comparison file, with better explainations!

Table structure is as follows MORS Extra boost (% extra) ->  MORSI (Base production) -> Shield pts -> System boost to research -> Extra functions
^How much it increase the base resource of all facilities            ^Base production            ^Shields        ^How much of a system 
                                                                                       of this facility only                                wide boost to research
                                                                                                                                                   this gives


Now, let's review the city 'lines':

Settlement/Colonial Community: Worthless, doesn't upgrade to anything else, and all are inferior to the city or agrarian 'lines'

Cities: Fantastic for mineral production, best planetary science boost outside of 3 last facilities. Final levels also give spaceport and resupply functions, making it a more advanced version of the Spaceport City line

Only unfortunate item is that the last lvl is bugged - Megapolis has less radioactive boost than the Metropolis before it. If you have a fantastic rad planet you may still be inclined to build the Agrarian line, and then separately build the Arcology  (so you have a boost for the 80-110 turns of boosted radioactives whilst building the Arcology).

Agrarian: Fantastic for organic production, good for radioactive as well (due to the Megapolis bug).

Spaceport Cities: I used to think these were good, but I realise that these are only really good for systems with many small planets or if you want a cheap city that still can resupply, but even then a Minor City -> Megapolis would be better in the long term.

Arcology: A Megapolis, only better (it even fixes the radioactive boost issue), which is saying a lot. The one fly in ointment is that you can't upgrade to it, making it very expensive to build.

Colony World Culture: Absolutely wonderful facility.... if it could be built in a reasonable time. You'd only start this after everything else is built (megaplexes, other boosting city while construction is continuing), and then you'd be waiting 400-550 turns without that planet being able to do anything... which effectively takes it out of the game as construction site for bases, ships or units.

Agrarian Culture: Ditto, except 100-150 turns shorter to build.