Mechanics

[Tubularburn]

When you choose the upgrade "everything costs 10% less"... will it convert what you already placed on the map to build that hasn't been built yet? Or do you have to cancel the build order and make a new one ?

How does the "build 20% faster" work? The packets go faster ?

Thanks !

[knucracker]

Everything becomes 10% cheaper immediately.  So if something is already being built it will finish sooner.  No reason to cancel and restart the build.

As for the 20% faster upgrade:
Say that you start a game with plenty of energy in your reserve.  Then you build a single collector.  Nothing more than a single collector.  This collector will take X seconds to build.  It doesn't build instantly even though you have plenty of energy.  Now if you didn't have enough energy it would take X + Y seconds (some time longer than X seconds).

For everything in the game there is a minimum build time.  Another way to think about it is that when you build that first collector, the little nanobots that will build the collector can only process build packets at some finite rate.  So they request build packets at regular intervals (about once a second).  The 20% build speed upgrade makes these little nanobots process faster and therefore build faster.  They will ask for packets about every 0.8 seconds after the upgrade.

So this upgrade doesn't make packets move faster on the network, it just means that structures will build faster than they otherwise would (energy permitting!).

I like to invest in this upgrade on some conquest maps since you can build a line of collectors faster with this upgrade.  It lets you expand to a point quicker.  It can also come in handy when you assault a hill with an unattached assault force.  The assault force may take a hill but they will only be able to hold it for so long (they will run out of ammo).  Being able to build faster a collector or a relay on the hill to hook them back up to the network can be a benefit.