Production
Introduction
Very few states are powers without industry. The ability to construct weapons, supply soldiers and export goods is vital. In practice, a nation's Industrial Infrastructure determines how much it can construct in a given month - its IP, or Industry Points.
Industry at the end of the 22nd century is far more powerful than anything pre-singularity. While still nowhere near matching the nearly magical nanotech fabrication of the posthumans, modern manufacturing is massively automated and very rapid, though not instantaneous.
Production Rules
- All Infantry Battalions take 2 months + 1 month per upgrade, as this has more to do with training time than actually constructing the weapons.
- All Vehicle Battalions, Aircraft and Ships with a base cost of less than 100 IP build at the rate of 25 IP/Month.
- All units with a base cost of 100 or more IP build at the rate of 50 IP/month.
- Fortifications build at 2x speed.
- Experimental units use their unmodified base cost for build speed calculation.
- Strategic Resources do not modify build times.
- Mass Produced units have the appropriate (normally 15%) reduction in build times.
Round all build times up.
Mass Production
Nations may also take advantage of Mass Production by producing identical units month after month. If a Nation builds the same amount of a given unit design for two or consecutive months, the price for every month after the first is reduced by 15%. Unfortunately due to the inherent size and complexity of capital ships and other expensive vehicles, anything that costs 40 or more IP cannot be Mass Produced. The exception to this is ground Battalions which, as they are made up of a large number of relatively cheap vehicles, can always be Mass Produced.
Finally, a power may start a building project even if it does not have the available IP to complete it in one month. It must start spending the requisite IP and Strategic Resources; construction is considered to begin the month that 100% of the requisite IP and strategic resources were spent.
Refits And Upgrades
Military units often include the ability to be (substantially) upgraded after construction. For units with unused Upgrade slots, the cost difference is all that's required to add an upgrade. There are however two exceptions:
- As Monopole Cores require a complete rebuild of the ship's primary power systems, they have an IP cost double that of a standard upgrade.
- As Aerospace is a root design decision, it may not be added to a unit after construction is complete. The amount of work to rebuild such a unit would essentially equal to making an entirely new one.
Refitting an Upgrade with a Strategic Resource costs a bit more, due to the reworking required; half the upgrade's cost must be paid in IP, in addition to the normal Strategic Resource cost.
Upgrades calculate their build time based on their IP cost, save Strategic Resource upgrades which take double.