AI War:Build Time and Constructors (including Repair)

This page is updated for game version 5.035 and should still be correct

Constructors

Your mobile units are constructed at fabricators such as the Space Dock or the Starship Constructor.
When you select a fabricator, the ships it can build will be shown in the bottom left corner of the screen.
Left-Click on a ship icon to add to the queue, Right-Click to remove. Holding down ALT will add or remove 5 ships to the queue, CTRL will add or remove 10 ships.
There is a maximum of 50 ships of the same type and Mark level in the queue.
Powering down the fabricator will stop construction without removing ships from the queue. (The Play/Pause button).
You can build the queue a single time or loop the queue with the queue control button. (The Left arrow for a single time or Looping arrow to cycle through the queue).
If a ship in the queue is already at cap and can not be built, the queue will skip over it.
If there are insufficient Metal or Crystal to build a ship construction will slowly proceed as resources flow in.
If there is insufficient Energy to add the ship to your fleet, the ship will pause at 100% construction until there is sufficient Energy, effectively pausing the queue.

Structures Built as Stand Alone

Immobile structures and some ships are built as stand alone structures in space.
When these are selected the mouse cursor will have a ghosted image of the structure to be built underneath it, Left click to place the structure and begin construction.
If the ghost image is outlined in red, the structure can not be built there, most likely due to proximity to another structure or a wormhole.
ALT and CTRL clicking to build multiple structures also works when placing stand alone structures, the multiple units are placed as close together as possible to your mouse cursor.
When zoomed out all the way, the smaller, green, dashed circle is the build limit for the system, no structures can be built outside this circle.
Structures under construction have a self-build Construction Rate of 1.

Construction Rate (Ship Ability)

All fabricators have a Construction Rate 1 ability even though their ship detail pop-up does not show it.
Engineers and similar ships have their Construction Rate listed as an ability.
Construction Rates are linear. Construction Rate 2 is twice as fast as Construction Rate 1, Construction Rate 3 is three times as fast, etc.
Note that a higher Construction Rate is not more efficient. Construction Rate 2 will build a ship twice as fast as Construction Rate 1 but the finished ship will consume the same amount of resources to build.

Build Time

The unassisted build time for a structure is show in the pop-up details box on the first line in light gray.
Metal and Crytal are linearly consumed during the build process so that at 25% construction progress, 25% of the Metal and Crystal the unit requires have been consumed.
This unassisted build time is shown in the details pop-up window and assumes only the fabricator is constructing the unit (or not being assisted for stand-alone units).
When you select a fabricator the build times listed on the ships it can build reflect the number of currently assisting engineers.

Assisting Construction Queues

Engineers can assist both fabricators and stand-alone structures to speed up their construction.
The Construction Rate ability that allows them to do so also indicates how much they assist.
A Mark II Engineer with Construction Rate 2 provides the same assistance as two Mark I Engineers that both have the Construction Rate 1 ability.
To determine how fast units will be built with Engineer assistance add up all the Construction Rate abilities (remember that the fabricator is worth 1) and then divide the unassisted build time by that.

For example: A Fighter Mark I has a built time of 2 seconds. An unassisted Space Dock with an effective Construction Rate of 1 will build 1 Fighter every 2 seconds. (2 Seconds / 1 Construction Rate = 2 Seconds per Fighter)
If the Space Dock is assisted by a single Mark I Engineer, the effective Construction Rate is now 2. The Space Dock will now produce 1 Fighter per second. (2 Seconds / 2 Construction Rate = 1 Seconds per Fighter)
If the Space Dock is assisted by 7 Mark I Engineers, the effective Construction Rate is now 8. (7 Engineers + 1 Space Dock). The Space Dock is now producing 4 Fighters per second. (2 Seconds / 8 Construction Rate = 0.25 Seconds per Fighter)
There is no limit to how many Engineers can assist a fabricator, however the fabricator is limited to producing no more then 4 ships per second.
So for our Fighter Mark I, adding any more assisting Engineers would be a waste as with the 7 already present the fabricator is working at maximum speed.
However, as build time increases more Engineers would still help. For a Fighter Mark IV with a 10 second build time, an effective Construction Rate of 40 would be required to produce Fighters at the 4 ships per second maximum, as opposed to the effective Construction Rate of 8 that the Fighter Mark I requires.
Note that regardless of how fast a ship is built, it still consumes the same amount of resources. As Construction Speed Increases so does the rate of consumption of Metal and Crystal.

Repairing Ships

The Developers have stated that Repair is currently not working as intended and will be changed in a future patch. Repairing a ship is much cheaper and faster then building a new ship.
To repair a ship from zero health back to full health costs 1/4 the resources and 1/4 the time as it does to build a new ship for a ship with the Ability: Repair Rate 1.
You can repair a ship from multiple sources to speed up the repair and you only repair the damage a ship has taken.
Additionally, a Ability: Repair Rate greater then 1 is more efficient and reduces the resources required to repair a ship.
The base cost per second to repair a ship is 1/4 the resources required to build the ship divided by 1/4 of the ships build time.
As a higher Ability: Repair Rate decreases the time to repair a ship but does not increase the resource cost per second, a ship higher with a higher Ability: Repair Rate can repair a ship with fewer resources.

Take our Example Ship with a build cost of 400 metal and 400 crystal, and a built time of 400 seconds, being repaired by a ship with the Ability: Repair Rate 1
The base repair time of this ship is 1/4 the build time, so 100 seconds, and 1/4 the resources, so 100 metal/crystal to repair our example ship from zero health back to full.
The repairs a ship actually requires are linear based on the health it has lost.
If our Example Ship has taken 25% damage it would require 25 seconds and 25 metal/crystal to fully repair.
If our Example Ship has taken 50% damage it would require 50 seconds and 50 metal/crystal to fully repair.
At Ability: Repair Rate 1, this gives us a repair cost per second of 1 metal/crystal per second.

At higher Ability: Repair Rates, the time to repair a ship is the base repair time (1/4 of the build time) divided by the Repair Rate.
So a Repair Rate of 2 would repair a ship in half the time, a Repair Rate of 3 in a 3rd of the time and so on.
However, the repair cost per second does not change so by cutting the repair time in half, the Repair Rate of 2 only requires half as many resources to repair a ship, a Repair Rate of 4 which repairs the ship in 1/4 of the time would only require 1/4 the resources.

Take our Example Ship with a build cost of 400 metal and 400 crystal, and a built time of 400 seconds, being repaired by a ship with the Ability: Repair Rate 2
The base repair time of this ship is still 1/4 the build time, so 100 seconds, and 1/4 the resources, so 100 metal/crystal which still gives us a repair cost per second of 1 metal/crystal.
However, the Ability: Repair Rate 2 means that it would only take 50 seconds (100/2) to repair the ship and because the repair cost per second stays the same at 1 metal/crystal per second, it now only costs 50 metal/crystal to repair our Example Ship from zero back to full health.

Note that repair costs are calculated by the ships doing the repair, not by the ship being repaired.
Two ships with the Ability: Repair Rate 1 would repair a ship in the same amount of time as a one ship with the Ability: Repair Rate 2 however the ships with the Ability: Repair Rate 1 would be paying the repair cost per second twice (once for each ship) and so would cost twice as many resources to repair the ship as the single ship with the Ability: Repair Rate 2 as it only pays the repair cost per second once.

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