Quick Update - Compound Plate Armor Build Time

(12 March: - Today's update suggests that research item build times have been reduced - this graph does not reflect that change, which reduced build time for Iron, Steel, and Titanium armor but not Depleted Uranium)

I was poking around with a nuke cruiser build, and seeing how the new compound armor would do.  I decided to finally confirm the build time with the in-game ship builder.  Some of you who have been reading my blog for a few weeks back might remember my article on Armor Build Time, or my article on Compound Plate, where I theorized that the new plate would have a long build time, much like the Draconian D4-U armor.  

In short, my guess on the compound plate build time (that it would be slow like D4-U) was wrong.  The compound plate has a very interesting characteristic for build time.  I decided a graph would be the best way to show this information:

I graphed "armor points per piece" against the "build time in armor points per hour".  

Larger armors are to the right. 
Quicker building armors are to the top.

The general trends from the Armor Build time article are clear - larger pieces of Forsaken Research Armor build faster, and larger pieces of Draconian and Forsaken Plate Armor build slower.

The cool thing about the Compound Plate is that larger pieces of Compound Plate build at almost the same speed as smaller pieces.  

Compound Plate 2 builds at 98 AP/h, compared to the Draconian D3 armors at 107- 145 AP/h, or the older (single resistance) Forsaken Plate 2 at 145 AP/h.  Not a good deal for Compound Plate 2.

Compound Plate 3 builds at 94 AP/h, compared to the Draconian D4 armors at 47- 68 AP/h, or the older (single resistance) Forsaken Plate 3 at 68 AP/h.  Compound Plate 3 looks pretty good - it builds much faster than the Draconian Armor.

Compound Plate 4 builds at 90 AP/h, which is very fast for the large armor pieces. Compound Plate 4 is a very attractive option if you want to load up on armor points.  Remember the weight on the Plate armors is also better than Drac Armors - 5.88 AP/ton with Shipyard 2 as opposed to 4.5 AP/ton for Draconian armor.  

As a final word, consider mixing large pieces of Compound Armor with small pieces of Draconian Armor to optimize both build time and weight for a given number of armor points.