Space Docks Are Cheap.

[Remagen]

And I am an idiot for only building 2-3 at a time...

[Buttons840]

They use a lot of energy.  It's better to have one and use lots of engineers on it.  Build them in different places if you like, but keep some of them paused to keep energy use low.

[keith.lamothe]

There is an upper limit on how fast units can be cranked out of a space dock, as you may notice when building mk I fighters with 20 engineers helping as opposed to 200 engineers helping (though you'd have to cheat for the latter).  In such cases adding parallel docks and splitting the engineer staff is the only way to get the stuff out faster.

[x4000]

I tend to find that a cluster of of 2-3 docks at a construction planet, plus 2-3 engineers on each, matches my resource outflows the best.  I can only support one planet like that in the entire galaxy, but I tend to have 1-2 other inactive planets to match that.  Thus if the front lines get breached and my docks are lost, I just recall the surviving engineers and/or build new ones on the fallback construction planets, and my fleet keeps cranking out from a different location.

Moving this to strategy discussion, it's a good one.

[Remagen]

Well, when i've built my 10 docks, I just turn them on.

When I start getting low on energy, I just turn them off one by one.

Should I be using 3 docks and 3 engies each or something?

[Saan]

Okay, think about it this way:
Each dock uses 10,000 energy.
Each Engineer uses 4,000 energy and doubles the production speed of a dock.

So,
3 docks use 30,000 energy.
1 dock with 3 engineers uses 22,000 energy and produces ships just as fast.  Also, you only have one build queue to manage rather than 3, so less micro on your part.

and remember, energy costs a lot of resources.  

[Kjara]

Yeah... I never have more than 1 dock active at a time(unless I need 2 in vastly different areas).  Its much better to have a large engineer force assisting your dock that can also run around and say, rebuild any lost resource nodes(for less downtime on them), switch over to a starships constructor to push out new just unlocked starships, quick heal a forcefield or move to a new forward base to build up for the next push.

[Ruges]

When you have all 3 tech levels of enginers assisting the space docks, you need to have 3 space docks to get the max output. Meaning if you have all those engieres assisting one space dock it will produce less units then those enginiers assisting 3 space docks. Now if you only have 10 enginers assisting a single space dock your not going to notice a difference between one or two space docks.

[TheSilverHammer]

In the long run, I just make a bunch of space docks.  I can also have engineers assist them if I want.  However that doesn't usually help much because if I loose a good chunk of my fleet, the real limit is my metal or crystal.

When I start out, I stick with 1 or 2, but usually will climb up to 7 or 8 as energy permits.  I build them all at my home planet for easy access (to turn them off if power becomes an issue).  Later one when I have a new defensive point far away from my home world, I build a bunch of new ones closer to the front lines.  I either power down or destroy the ones at my home world at this point.

[soMe_RandoM]

more space docks i preffer if you have them offline then it cost little. and the added reason that if you see ships or think it going to attack your planet you can yust especialy electric shuttles or vampires. it quicker depending on where they ships are and what they have to get through to get thier it some times cheaper to scrap ships then relocate them vai space docks. having all your engineers on 1 space dock near ur home planet leaves you vunerable. if you have to send extra renforcement  to intercept ai forces that are chasing your planets and defences down it be to late or slow acting that it might cause problems or major lost of entire planets or majority yust an small costly fleet