Construction costs and times
Each building is constructed level by level on a planet.
The cost increases with the building's level. Production buildings scale more gently; storage buildings use the standard progression for advanced buildings.
The three mines retain their base costs and original cost coefficient of 1,5. The Mining Engineering technology reduces the remaining cost of upgrades to these mines by 5 % per level, across all your planets in this universe: the multiplier is 0,95^level, or −64,15 % at level 20. It stacks multiplicatively with other reductions, without changing production, energy, duration, or costs already paid. Infrastructure points remain based on undiscounted catalog costs.
Construction time depends on the building, the target level, the universe's building speed, and active bonuses. The final result never falls below 5 seconds.
Each universe can configure six duration speeds separately: buildings, research, shipyard, population, defenses, and specialized devices. Shipyard speed applies to components as well as ship construction, assembly, transformation, recycling, and repair. Population speed applies to recruitment, training, and healing. Device recycling follows specialized device speed; dismantling follows building speed.
Some specialized buildings, such as the Barracks or the Coalescence Matrix, have their own base time before bonuses are applied. Two buildings at the same level can therefore have very different durations.
Construction queues and duration bonuses
The construction queue can only be expanded with the appropriate bonus.
Without a bonus, you can start 1 building construction at a time.
With the Monarch pack, the building construction queue increases to 5 slots.
The bonus reduces the duration of items that start after it is obtained, but not that of the item already in progress.
The duration of a batch already in progress remains fixed, including for all its remaining units.
When a queued batch starts, the server recalculates its duration using the current speed for its category and all applicable bonuses: buildings, technologies, engineers/scientists, artifacts, alliance, faction, packs, and galactic catch-up.
This can shorten or lengthen the duration without changing the costs paid, quantities, or reservations.
This rule covers buildings, dismantling, research, recruited population, components, ship construction and assembly, defenses, specialized devices, recycling, repairs, and healing.
Even after an absence, the server uses the state available when processing occurs, without reconstructing old bonuses.
Older ship batches whose construction/assembly origin was not recorded keep their duration.
Research and the research queue
Research is global to the player.
Research started from one planet benefits the entire empire once completed.
The cost increases with the level. Time follows a level-based curve, with the first 0 → 1 tier intentionally doubled, then adjusted by the universe's research speed. The final result never falls below 5 seconds. Some research unlocks components, missions, bonuses, or additional abilities.
The research queue can be expanded with the Emperor pack.
Without a bonus, you can start 1 research project at a time.
With the Emperor pack, the research queue increases to 3 simultaneous research projects.
Canceling research
A cancellation refunds 75% of the committed resources.
If the cancellation concerns an intermediate level, dependent higher levels still in the queue can also be canceled.
Dismantling a building
Dismantling reduces the building by 1 level and returns part of its cost.
It returns 40% of the cost of the removed level and takes 40% of the corresponding construction time. Once started, it cannot be canceled like a standard construction.