The Building engine:

1000 production, item 1 costs 400, item 2 and 3 both 100, then #4 500.... in one turn, items 1, 2 and 3 are built and most of 4...
400
500 (+100)
600 (+100)
1100 (+500)

... That's the downside to Botf. you know no matter what, everything will take near-forever, in comparison.Have 20+ mass replicators becomes useless when 5 T9 would do the same job (or 1... when there's 10,000+ industry per t9 building as I have in Botf.)

It's even better than that. Ships are built in a separate build queue, and are built with a duplicated proportion of system industrial capacity, (The shipyard efficiency rate = the % of system industrial output) so industrial output always totally focuses on both buildings AND shipbuilding - without either being adversely affected.

So say you have 1000 industry. You build the structures listed in your above example, plus you also build an Icarus class Surveyor I, which has a build cost of 740. You build it in a shipyard with a 25% efficiency rate.

You would get:

Construction
100% of 1000 Industry.
1000 Building Production available.

Building #1 =400 build cost.
-400 for building #1. Construction complete. 600 production still available.

Building #2 =100 build cost.
-100 for building #2. Construction complete. 500 production still available.

Building #3 =100 build cost.
-100 for building #3. Construction complete. 400 production still available.

Building #4 =500 build cost.
-400 for building #2. Construction 80% complete. 0 production still available.


Shipyard @ 25% Efficiency
25% of 1000 Industry.
250 Ship Production available.

Ship #1 =740 build cost.
-250 for ship #1. Construction 34% complete. 0 ship production still available.

Total production for the turn therefore actually equals 1250.


The build costs vs output are yet to be balanced though, and should not be taken as final. They've been balanced on paper, but obviously things rarely work out in real life as expected on paper. Each of the Empires have their own unique build rates, with the Dominion having the highest efficiency rates. The efficiency rates also increase with larger shipyards, so basic shipyards may have a 25% efficiency rate, but the fleetyard may have a 125% efficiency rate.

Please also note that the shipyard efficiency numbers in Dafedz's Database are incorrect.

I hated that aspect of BotF too, glad you like the "work-stealing" build queue .