NOTE: The shipbuilding process at Planets.nu uses four different systems, each briefly described in the Build Queues page. Check your game's Settings to make sure you are in a Planets Limit Ships (PLS) game before going on.
In the Nu Year 0090 the Nuniversal Council declared to the Starship Builder's Guild that a new build system would be made available in selected sectors. The purpose of this new build system is to replace a sector-wide build limit with a per-player build limit, based on the number of planets the player controls. It is hoped that this new build system will reduce the unemployment rate of starship builders. This system is called Planets Limit Ships (PLS) and works as follows:
Each player has an individual ship limit based on the number of planets the player controls. In order to increase the number of ships a player can build, it will be necessary for the player to conquer more planets. If a player is at or above their ship limit, the following will occur:
It should be noted that the above checks are made as they happen, in the order specified by the Host Order. As an example, a Privateer player at their ship limit won't be able to tow-capture other ships by using the Land and Dissassemble mission to release ship slots, but they can if they recycle ships.
If a player's empire is shrinking, it is possible for a player to control more ships than their ship limit, but they will not be able to acquire additional ships until such time as the number of starships they control is less than their ship limit.
Each player's ship limit can be determined from the number of planets the player controls and these parameters from the game's settings:
A player's actual ship limit is the larger of "PLS Minimum Ships" and the computed ship limit. The computed ship limit is as follows:
(Player planets) * (Ships per planet) + (Extra ships)
Here are some examples of how the above parameters and the number of planets combine to determine a player's ship limit:
Game Settings Planets Controlled Min Ships Per Planet Extra 1 10 20 50 100 200 40 1 0 40 40 40 50 100 200 0 1 10 11 20 30 60 110 210 20 1.2 10 20 22 34 70 130 250
There is a hard limit of 999 total starships that can be built in any game. This limit is imposed to prevent the game from becoming too big and to force players to begin fighting in order to build more starships. Once there are 999 starships in the game it is not possible to build ships. Careful setting of the PLS game parameters will keep the global game limit from being reached.
The absolute maximum number of starships that can be reached in a game with specific settings is the sum of the following items:
If the above sum exceeds 999 then it may be possible to hit the hard ship limit.
It is possible to exceed the above calculated value through two mechanisms:
In the other queue systems, PBP (Priority Build Points) or PP (Priority Points) may be necessary to build a starship. In the PLS queue, there's nothing comparable to PBP or PP. This is because a player isn't competing with other players for a chance to build starships. Each player has their own allocation of ship slots, and can use or not use those ship slots as they desire.
In each Priority level, the starships are built randomly. To clarify, all PB1 starships are built in random order, followed by all PB2 starships in random order, until the build process gets to normal builds, which are also done in random order.
As in the other build queue systems, when a ship is built, it uses the lowest Ship ID that is currently available.
Starships can be built at several different times during the host order. The relevant steps are as follows:
(Please note: The above is approximate, and based on the Simplified version of the Host Order. For more information, please see the page on The Host Order Of Shipbuilding.)
Additional information on the PLS build queue may be found in the announcement.