The effect of colony population on build times

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The effect of colony population on build times - 6/5/2013 11:22:14 PM

Osito

Posts: 875
Joined: 5/9/2013
Status: offline

Bingeling explained to me that population affects colony build times, a fact I was previously unaware of.

Out of interest, I decided to test the effect more closely, and this is what I came up with.

Update 2014-05-01

Since I ran the tests described below I have done further tests which established that:
1. Planet population also effects the build time for planetary facilities, i.e., the higher the population (up to around 10 billion), the faster the build time.
2. Planet quality does not have any significant effect on colony build times. Planet quality does affect the rate of population growth (higher quality >>> higher growth rate), so there is an indirect, but relatively small, effect on build rate from planet quality.

Preliminary

I started a new pre-warp game playing as the humans, saved the game, then instructed my sole colony to build a large space port. I noted the starting population of the colony (2639m) and the build time. I then reloaded the save game and repeated this test with different population sizes, using the game editor to adjust colony population.

I performed a similar test, but instead of building a space port, I built a constructor at the colony.

I performed another similar test, this time building a destroyer at the newly constructed space port.

In no case did the planetary leader have any traits affecting construction time. The colony at all times had an ample supply of resources, so resource supplies had no influence on the results.

Results

The results were as follows:

Starting Pop/million��Build Time/Days��Relative increase compared with lowest build time
500��819��405
1000��588��291
2000��423��209
2639��371��184
3000��353��175
4000��310��153
5000��279��138
6000��254��126
7000��237��117
7500��230��114
8000��224��111
9000��213��105
10000��202��100

[Edit: I amended the table slightly as it was presented incorrectly. The lowest build time I could achieve was actually at 10 billion, so I think that's the cap, but it might be a little higher.]

I found that 11 billion population resulted in the same construction time as 10 billion, so the effect is capped somewhere from 10 billion to 11 billion.

When I repeated the test, building a constructor instead of a space port, this yielded the same relative percentage results as shown in the above table.

When I repeated the test, building a destroyer at the space port, I found that the colony population had no effect on space port build time.

I've also added a chart displaying the results in the table above (I hope this has come out the right way up; had problems with this in the past).

Discussion

Colony population has a significant effect on colony build time (but not space port build time). For example, a colony with about 2 billion population will take over twice as long to build something as a colony with 10 billion population.

Draw your own conclusions!

Attachment (1)

< Message edited by Osito -- 5/2/2014 11:42:47 AM >

Post #: 1

RE: The effect of colony population on build times - 6/5/2013 11:42:49 PM

Bingeling

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
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Very nice. It seems like you may be one to figure out a lot of finer details in this game.

My memory was correct, but the belief that 3 or so billion is enough was wrong. It seems that around 2 billion is a key point where construction is of decent speed.

The 3000M bump in the chart looks a bit odd, but the finer details hardly matters.

(in reply to Osito)

Post #: 2

RE: The effect of colony population on build times - 6/6/2013 5:51:16 AM

peddroelm

Posts: 41
Joined: 5/18/2013
Status: offline

Colony and Space port Construction speed values are showN in game: its called "SPEED" in the UI.

For colonies is population based (with cap) that I believe is ~~900~~600 SPEED . (my homeworld in the sample picture has 1800 because of a wonder that ~~doubles~~triples it..)
New colonies start with 30 SPEED (can drop lower if they lose pop)..

Space_port & constructor ship construction yArD speed are research based .. There are techs that increase it ...

< Message edited by peddroelm -- 6/6/2013 6:13:53 PM >

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 3

RE: The effect of colony population on build times - 6/6/2013 10:15:02 AM

Bingeling

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline

Aaaw, don't make things so simple

(in reply to peddroelm)

Post #: 4

RE: The effect of colony population on build times - 6/6/2013 12:59:56 PM

Osito

Posts: 875
Joined: 5/9/2013
Status: offline

Thanks for the compliment, Bingeling, and thanks for the information peddroelm; I hadn't noticed that build speed was shown in a report.

It would certainly have made it easier to produce the report had I known about the build speed readout. On the other hand, I am now in a position to confirm that the build speed readout is accurate

Peddroelm, I assume the wonder you're referring to is the Bakuras High Speed Shipyard, which adds +200% to construction speed. This means that the max construction speed is 600, rather than 900. That also matches my findings which are based on a colony at the start of the game: the maximum build speed I could attain on that colony was 600 (I tested up to 20 billion population). I can reconfirm that 10 billion seems to be the population at which build speed is capped (at speed 600).

Incidentally, the readout for your colony Mortalu 2 has a build speed of 621, which is above the 600 maximum. In my own tests a 8896m populaton colony gives a build speed of 566. Do you have a governor in place at this colony (or a leader) increasing build speed?

When you say my "findings indicate only 400%", keep in mind that was with a colony pop of 500 million, whereas a colony usually starts with a pop of 30 million. Due to time constraints (and not appreciating the existence of the build speed readout), I didn't test below 500 million, and made no claims about what happens there. As you say, % relative build time increase for a new 30m population colony is higher: 2000%, in fact, based on a max speed of 600.

In fact, it doesn't stop there: a 10m population colony has a relative increase in build time of about 3000%, and the figure increases to about 10,000% for a 1m population colony.

For what it's worth, I can add two other facts, in case they're of interest to anyone:

(1) Planet quality does not affect the build rate.
(2) Planet size does not affect the build rate.

< Message edited by Osito -- 6/6/2013 1:01:15 PM >

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 5

RE: The effect of colony population on build times - 6/6/2013 3:10:43 PM

Plant

Posts: 418
Joined: 4/23/2013
Status: offline

Very Nice! Don't trust anything the game says, testing it out is much more preferable.

Could you tell us the spaceport size/ total components/ cost, that you used as point as comparison?
Is it faster to build with a smaller Spaceport?

(in reply to Osito)

Post #: 6

RE: The effect of colony population on build times - 6/6/2013 4:36:26 PM

peddroelm

Posts: 41
Joined: 5/18/2013
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Osito

Thanks for the compliment, Bingeling, and thanks for the information peddroelm; I hadn't noticed that build speed was shown in a report.

It would certainly have made it easier to produce the report had I known about the build speed readout. On the other hand, I am now in a position to confirm that the build speed readout is accurate

Peddroelm, I assume the wonder you're referring to is the Bakuras High Speed Shipyard, which adds +200% to construction speed. This means that the max construction speed is 600, rather than 900. That also matches my findings which are based on a colony at the start of the game: the maximum build speed I could attain on that colony was 600 (I tested up to 20 billion population). I can reconfirm that 10 billion seems to be the population at which build speed is capped (at speed 600).

Incidentally, the readout for your colony Mortalu 2 has a build speed of 621, which is above the 600 maximum. In my own tests a 8896m populaton colony gives a build speed of 566. Do you have a governor in place at this colony (or a leader) increasing build speed?

correct on the wonder

and mortalu 2 gov

Should shuffle him away and see by how much % colony shipyard speed drops .. Probably 10% ..

< Message edited by peddroelm -- 6/6/2013 4:37:27 PM >

(in reply to Osito)

Post #: 7

RE: The effect of colony population on build times - 6/6/2013 4:40:42 PM

Osito

Posts: 875
Joined: 5/9/2013
Status: offline

Hi Plant,

Thanks - the space port was a large one. It's the one the game designed automatically for a human pre-warp start. Screenshot below.

Note that the relative build rate remains the same regardless of what you're building on the planet. So, if you build a small space port, it would take over twice as long to build it with a population of 2 billion as with a population of 10 billion.

Clearly the size of the thing you're building is significant. If you're building something big that takes 7 months to build at 10 billion pop, then you're looking at more than 14 months to build it at 2 billion. On the other hand, if it only takes a month to build it at 10 billion pop, then you're looking at only 2 months at 2 billion.

Out of interest, I looked at how long it took to build a small space port with 10 billion pop and the answer was 86 days, in other words about 43% of the time it took to build a large spaceport. For the medium space port it took 135 days at a pop of 10 billion (67% of the time to build a large one).

In fact, thanks to peddroelm I think I can now form a hypothesis about the formula for calculating the build rate.

Relative Build Rate = 100 x Square Root[(Actual population in billions)/10]

where Relative Build Rate is the percentage of the build rate you would achieve if your population were 10 billion.

For example, if your actual population is 2 billion, then you will be building at 100x square root(2/10)% = 44.7% of the rate you would build at 10 billion. Obviously, this formula is only good up to the 10 billion cap.

Irritatingly, this formula does not match the figures in the table in my first post, and the discrepancy becomes larger as the population gets lower. However, the formula does match the figures you get from the build speed in the game report. I believe this discrepancy can be explained by the fact that in my tests the population was naturally increasing as the space port was being built. Thus, the longer it took to build the space port, the larger the population building it. This means that in my test the space ports were built a little more quickly than they would have been if the population had remained constant.

Osito