YokoZar wrote:Besides, if you scrap your t1 shipyard, you can make a naval engineer and have him build conboats.
True - but you can't let the conboats assist the production of more conboats. (Ok - you could, if you tell each new conboat to assist the engineer - but lets face it, thats alot more micro intensive.)
Llamadeus wrote:The conship takes so long to open and close its arm thing that it's rarely worth it to have more than, say, two working on a single thing unless you're building a fusion or something. Practical limitations are often the most important.
I've been testing this in SP now.
5 Engineers vs 8 Conships - each one making his own row of tidals
Test 1:
Rows where too close together and 2 conships blocked each other for a good while because they decided to build in the same line. I did not interfere.
After 2 minutes:
Conships: 61 Tidals finished.
Engineers: 70 Tidals finished.
Test 2:
A engineer blocked itself, because I put the first tidal on his space. Again, I did not interfere.
After 2 minutes:
Conships: 72 Tidals finished.
Engineers: 69 Tidals finished.
In both tests 2 minutes seemed to be a favourable stop point for the conships, since at that moment they had several new tidals at 0% - so they just finished theyr last ones while the Engineers had several tidals at 50-60%.
To me, the Engineers seem to be the slightly better Tidal constructors overall since they are less likely to block each other, but in total the Conship might still be the slightly better economical choice.
Though what you mentioned - the arm taking too long to open and close is not as much a problem, due to its slower buildspeed - this not only applies to fusions, but also to tidals. Ofc it would become a problem if we had several conships/engineers each working on the same tidal.
I ran another 2 tests, this time with MMM's:
First one where sixpacks of MMM's.
Can't remember when i started the test, but here are the results:
Conships: 19 MMM's finished.
Engineers: 17 MMM's finished.
The Engineers blocked each other several times, only making 5 and 4 of the planned 6 MMM's. I even stopped the test at a favourable point of time for them, where they had just finished theyr last MMM.
The reason for this blocking not happening with the T1 cons might be the slightly higher builddistance of T1 cons (250 vs 200).
Secound test were MMM's with the space of 1 MMM between each of them.
Conships: 18 MMM's finished.
Engineer: 19 MMM's finished.
I have a hard time drawing conclusions from this, since the differences between the two are so miniscule in the end, it hardly matters.
On UW fusions: UW fusions have one thing going for them: most units can't attack them.
Theyre also easier to protect, since you'll have less space to take care of.