I hate regular factories

I made the mistake of upgrading from basic factories to (regular) factories

You haven't gotten to the worst of it untill you make the misake of upgrading manufacturing centers To Industrial Sectors..

so basically never leave the auto-upgrade governer option on?

You can; you just have to know what you're doing.

Factory isn't even bad. Granted, I play the Yor (modified), who start with Factories, so I haven't seen Basic Factory in some time.

Basically, the way to deal with it is to spend money. Just buy the factory; it's only like 700 or so.

Hi!

You haven't gotten to the worst of it untill you make the misake of upgrading manufacturing centers To Industrial Sectors

I'd like to point to a simple fact, that upgrading buildings is one of two only things that increase your production on a planet. Since there's only a limited amount of tiles, you can't build more factories & labs & markets...

But I agree it would be handy to be able to also build earlier types of buildings.

BR, Iztok

Can someone please enlighten me as to why upgrading from basic to regular factories would cause any trouble? Thanks.

-Brian

I think the problem they are seeing with it is, that in the beginning of the game you will want to be able to produce a cheap production booster. Building a Factory on a planet that does not have any production yet will last quite long compared to the basic one. So the time before the planet can build anything else is much longer that way.

Of course in the long term you will be wanting to get them upgraded.

Yes, because of what AILst has said it is seldom a good idea to research 2 of the same improvement upgrades in quick sucession.

Say you have a factory that is already built, and now you finish researching enhanced factories. The governer starts adding the upgrading of factory to enhanced factory into the queue, but before you can finish upgrading you finish researching manufacturing centers!

What happens is that the governer will now change the factory so it is upgrading to manfu center, which takes even longer, and say before that is done, you actually complete researching indutrial sectors, again, the governer will change the upgrading to that.

In the mean while you will be stuck at the base factorie's production until you finish the full upgrade to industry center!

It would be much more efficient to let the enhanced factory upgrade to complete, so you can benefit from that improvement, which makes the next jump to manufacturing centers even faster, and so on... Bootstrapping your way up.

The same goes for research/economy etc. There is no point in quick researching discovery spheres in a burst of activity, but having your labs stuck at xenolabs upgrading so they only produce as much as xenolabs...

Another problem is that early on, when lack of tile space is not a problem, it makes a lot more sense to build more of cheaper improvement then fewer of the more advanced one.

E.g For the same amount of hammers you can build either two enhanced factories or one manufacturing center. But if you compare the two, the former produces more then the latter!

These two factors combine to ensure that, early on, when you have mostly undeveloped colonies, it is a bad idea to research too quickly up the same plantery improvement tree for factories.

The same goes for rushing up the tech tree of other improvements, with the additional effect that with only basic factories, you will take a long long time to build discovery spheres say.

In summary, generally you should

1) Have a balanced research between labs, factories and economy buildings,

which implies

2) Don't research the same plantery imporvement in quick sucession! Wait until most of the upgrading is done, so you can at least get some of the benefit of the research you have done.

That wasn't even the original problem. The original difficulty is that once you've reasearched an upgraded form of the building, that is the *only* form you can produce!

It takes either massive amounts of cash, or several years to get a freshly-colonized (Or conquored) planet up and running once you're in the MC to IS stage.

Basic to Factory upgrade is reallty minor problem.
And benefits are good (25% more effective).

I usually buy fisrt Factory on every world, so there is no problem with Facories.
I usuallt play races that start with this tech, and I see that as benefit, not penalty.

Enh. Factories are good thing to.


But things to watch are Manuf. Centers (twice more expensive then Enh. Factory).
And Industrial Sector (twice more expensive then Manuf. Center).
These two I almost never research, exemp I'm pretty sure I won't have new worlds that will need quick built up.

That wasn't even the original problem. The original difficulty is that once you've reasearched an upgraded form of the building, that is the *only* form you can produce! It takes either massive amounts of cash, or several years to get a freshly-colonized (Or conquored) planet up and running once you're in the MC to IS stage.

If you read closely, that was actually the same problem I mentioned in the first part, just in another disguise. Because you cannot build lower stage improvements, if you advance quickly and research 2 or more stages (say stage 2 and 3), you are stuck at the first stage improvement until you fully upgrade to the 3rd stage or more level.

The one you talk about is just an extreme example of jumping from NO stage to say 2nd stage.

The part about inefficiency is a seperate issue i agree, but i mentioned it to point out that there is no need to go deep into the tech tree early on... and to further emptahise that early on it makes more sense to fill up empty tiles with cheaper low tech factories then to build a high tech one.

This can be a problem later in the game but I find that if your econ isn't weak, that is you put out a good number of stockmarkets and tax fodder worlds, this becomes an almost non problem. Use your huge banking power and buy that first Industral Sector, which should provide enough IP to make everything else other wise buy a second Industrial Sector. Just make sure to keep tabs on your colony manager screen. If you see an Industrial Sector that is going to take 67 turns to build, buy it when you can afford it. If you set up the colony queue right after the first 2 I.S. that colony should do well on it's own with all the building if you put the colony on Social Focus. Then when you notice a colony in the summary screen that says "Next building: Nothing" check it and adjust it to what you want your colony to do from then on.

Really it's annoying but not that much of a problem. I'd much rather have it autoselect that best possible building then not. I suppose you could stick in a GUI for selecting a non-default building type but it would be more of a pain to come back later and upgrade that one building on that one planet someplace.--- IMHO.

I research improvements in the following order to take care of this problem:

~Xeno Research (Allows you to build Xeno Labs and takes very little time, and clears the way for Stellar Cartography if you don't already have it)

~Stellar Cartography (Allows you to see planets on your minimap, if you don't already, so you know where to send your initial colony ships)

~New Propulsion Techniques (Allows you to get the HyperDrive Plus, though it is more practical to wait until you get the Ion Drive)

~Ion Drive (Allows you to get the Ion Drive and greatly improve your speed)

~Planetary Improvements (This seems to be a given, because it both increases production/research and clears the way for the next series of improvements)

~Impulse Drive (Gives +1 to all of your ships' movement speeds, and allows your colony ships to move at outrageous speeds for ships built this early in the game. You should have no problem grabbing the planets near you after you upgrade your ships)

~Xeno Communications/Universal Translator (This doesn't take very long and allows you to establish communications with neighboring civilizations, who you will probably have encountered by now. You may want to wait on this, because it is doubtful your diplomacy will be great enough to secure a meaningful exchange of technology, and their economy is usually deep in red or will be soon)

~Xeno Economics (Gives me basic economic facilities so I can begin to control my deficit spending)

~Xeno Industrial Theory (By this time, I should have most of my basic factories up and running, so the transition will be smooth)

~All the rest of the Economic Improvements (They take the least amount of time to research and build, and the Stock Market is outrageous! It gives a bonus to your economy, influence, and morale If you can get these up, then your economy should florish, at least as soon as you can get enough of a taxable population to get out of deficit spending)

After this, your economy should begin to stabilize and your Factories should be completed, so you can start the next round of upgrades or whatever else you want. You usually have sufficient research capabilities to complete Research Academies in a few weeks.

Shadow's opening is the way to go. Like I said get your econ squared up ASAP and the costs for the upgrades and new advanced factory buildings isn't a problem.

The simple way around this problem I find is to buy the buildings u need.

Also its better to develope every tile on a planet before upgrading, u get more production, research, money, etc....

Never demolish, upgrade its cheaper, also it lets u upgrade any basic building to another type ie.... market to farm etc...

I would however like the option of building the old tech buildings, it would be useful on the higher levels like suicidal, where u need every advantage u can get. Also in developing planets u get later in the game. So if yr listening stardock?

Yes, if there is any plantery improvement line that i would consider 'rushing up', it would be to stock market, but even then, it depends on whether your economy is strong enough to exploit it.