The Foundry is the biggest build-speed building in SFC2. Every level halves how long everything on that planet takes to build: buildings, mines, power plants, ships and defenses. It is the last building to unlock, it is by far the most expensive thing on the Buildings page, and it is the difference between a fleet that takes a week and a fleet that takes an afternoon.
It only helps the planet it stands on. Every colony you intend to build on needs its own, and each one has to earn it separately.
Requirements
A.I. Tech is researched once and counts everywhere. The Capitol is per planet, so a fresh colony has to climb all the way to Capitol 10 again before the Foundry even appears in its building list.
What it speeds up
Everything that gets built on the planet it stands on:
- Buildings, mines and power plants, from the Buildings page
- Ships, from the Shipyard
- Defenses, from the Defense page
It does nothing at all for:
- Research. That is the Research Lab and ARCNet.
- Fleet travel, missions, or anything that happens off the planet.
- Moons. A moon cannot have a Foundry. The only buildings a moon will take are the Lunar Base, the Capitol, the Oracle, the Lunar Dock and the Warp Gate. That is why moon jobs are the slowest in the game and why a Warp Gate on a bare moon runs fifty days.
Build times
Buildings, mines and power plants:
| Time (hours) | (Ore + Crystal) / (5,000 × (1 + Capitol level) × 2Foundry level) |
|---|
Ships and defenses:
| Time (hours) | (Ore + Crystal) / (5,000 × (Shipyard level + 1) × 2Foundry level) |
|---|
Hydrogen is part of the price but never part of the time. Nothing on the Buildings page ever finishes in under five seconds, however small the numbers get.
An Athena Class Battleship costs 45,000 ore and 15,000 crystal. On a planet with a level 12 Shipyard:
| Foundry level | One Athena | One hundred Athenas |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 55m 24s | 3d 20h 18m |
| 3 | 6m 56s | 11h 32m |
| 5 | 1m 44s | 2h 53m |
| 10 | 4s | 5m 25s |
The two rules that catch people out
You cannot build or upgrade the Foundry while ships or defenses are being built on that planet. The Upgrade button greys out and the row tells you why. Everything has to be finished, not just paused. You can wipe a queue you no longer want with the clear link in the Build Queue box, typing DESTROY to confirm, but you get nothing back for what was already paid and the unit currently under construction still has to run out. Tearing the Foundry down is blocked by the same rule.
You cannot build ships or defenses while the Foundry is upgrading. Same coin, other side. Every hull and every turret on that planet is locked out for the whole upgrade.
Put together, a Foundry upgrade is a full stop on military production for as long as it runs, and that is normally a day or more. Start one during a quiet spell, not the night before a war. Buildings and mines are not blocked by it, but a planet only runs one structure job at a time anyway, so nothing else on the Buildings page moves either.
Cost
Every level costs exactly twice the level before it. The last column is what your build times get divided by once that level lands.
| Level | Ore | Crystal | Hydrogen | Build time divided by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,000,000 | 500,000 | 100,000 | 2 |
| 2 | 2,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 200,000 | 4 |
| 3 | 4,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 400,000 | 8 |
| 4 | 8,000,000 | 4,000,000 | 800,000 | 16 |
| 5 | 16,000,000 | 8,000,000 | 1,600,000 | 32 |
| 6 | 32,000,000 | 16,000,000 | 3,200,000 | 64 |
| 7 | 64,000,000 | 32,000,000 | 6,400,000 | 128 |
| 8 | 128,000,000 | 64,000,000 | 12,800,000 | 256 |
| 9 | 256,000,000 | 128,000,000 | 25,600,000 | 512 |
| 10 | 512,000,000 | 256,000,000 | 51,200,000 | 1,024 |
| 11 | 1,024,000,000 | 512,000,000 | 102,400,000 | 2,048 |
| 12 | 2,048,000,000 | 1,024,000,000 | 204,800,000 | 4,096 |
| 13 | 4,096,000,000 | 2,048,000,000 | 409,600,000 | 8,192 |
| 14 | 8,192,000,000 | 4,096,000,000 | 819,200,000 | 16,384 |
| 15 | 16,384,000,000 | 8,192,000,000 | 1,638,400,000 | 32,768 |
| 16 | 32,768,000,000 | 16,384,000,000 | 3,276,800,000 | 65,536 |
| 17 | 65,536,000,000 | 32,768,000,000 | 6,553,600,000 | 131,072 |
| 18 | 131,072,000,000 | 65,536,000,000 | 13,107,200,000 | 262,144 |
| 19 | 262,144,000,000 | 131,072,000,000 | 26,214,400,000 | 524,288 |
| 20 | 524,288,000,000 | 262,144,000,000 | 52,428,800,000 | 1,048,576 |
There is no level cap. Past level 20 the pattern just carries on doubling. There are a shade under 3,000 Foundries in the game right now: half of them are level 5 or lower, about 350 are past level 20, and the highest anyone has built is 41.
Every upgrade takes the same time
This surprises people. The cost of the next level doubles, and the divisor the Foundry applies doubles with it, so the two cancel out exactly. A Foundry upgrade takes the same number of hours at level 30 as it did at level 1. Only your Capitol changes it.
| Capitol level | Time for any Foundry upgrade |
|---|---|
| 10 | 1d 3h 16m |
| 12 | 23h 4m |
| 15 | 18h 45m |
| 20 | 14h 17m |
| 25 | 11h 32m |
So the thing that decides how painful your Foundry climb is, and how long your shipyard sits idle each time, is the Capitol underneath it. Push the Capitol past 10 before you start stacking Foundry levels.
Teardown
The More Info panel has a Teardown button at the bottom. Teardown drops the Foundry one level, hands the field back, and costs a third of what that level cost to build. The time is a third as well. It runs like any other structure job and uses the planet's one build slot while it goes.
Everything on the planet gets twice as slow the moment it lands, so it is a last resort when you have run out of fields and have nothing cheaper to give up.
Worth knowing
- Every level takes one field, the same as any other structure.
- Finishing a Foundry upgrade does not shorten a job that is already running. The clock is set when you press Build and it does not move after that.
- The Foundry discounts its own upgrades. The game uses the level you have now, not the one you are buying.
- The quest Speed Things Up pays 96,000 ore, 171,700 crystal and 82,300 hydrogen for getting your first Foundry up. See Quests.
- Any job with under five minutes left finishes free, and longer ones cost 1.12 credits a second to finish early. A high Foundry drags almost every ordinary job on the planet under that five minute line, so they all become free.
Required for
- Hephaestus Class Attack Platform, which wants Foundry level 3 and a level 13 Shipyard on top of six technologies.
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