Early game shipyards organization

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

Hi,

Can people share a bit their thoughts on how they organize / split by tasks, their shipyard? First, in the initial stage of the game (say when you just started to colonize a few extra solar planet), and then when moving to the 2nd stage, say where you are able to form a real warfleet?

I find myself often in trouble by lack of available SY for new classes... I solve that by building many, and concentrating mostly on smaller ships, as SY can be retooled fast for them.

TIA.

[ardem]

This really depends on your ship designs, if you aim for lots of small craft with special functions, or large ships that have a one fit all type of design.

Also you need to look at your ships having common components so a single shipyard might be able to produce one or two type of ships.

I end up with about 5-7 shipyards with the majority under 7000 ton and a one or two shipyards used for building bigger ships. Also tack on a couple of civilian shipyards as well, but try to minimize these as they are needed at first but as time goes on less and less.

[voknaar]

I tend to be a slow explorer and almost pacifist unless NPR's get wise and start invading causing mischief. I take the ship yards i get at start and then add enough to get about 4 of each type. I build one naval yard up with a big capacity so I can build a large military ship up as demands dictate. The other two i build up to about 6-7kt and then add a few slipways to each I use these as for surveys scouts and early support warships. The last is kept more for reserve and remains untooled if can be helped. I tend to move it first to the first naval world I acquire.

I follow a similar pattern to commercial yards with the largest one building the bigger ships for long term projects like terraforming & mining ships.

[jseah]

At the start, I had 2 6kton naval shipyards for my fleet as well as a commercial one for jumpships and a large 10kton naval one for a sensor ship. 

As the game goes on, I added a 6kton naval shipyard for a dedicated size 1 sensor frigate.  Expanded the 10kton command ship to 12ktons.  Created a shipyard at 16ktons for FAC carriers once jumpdrives got good enough (expanded the commercial yard for jumpships to 16ktons)

Tankers, satellites and tugs get one commercial shipyard.  Freighters, colony ships and terraformers get another shipyard.  Jumpgate construction and whatever huge thing gets another one. 

Now I also have a laser frigate 6kton naval shipyard, 10kton destroyer shipyard, 16kton light cruiser shipyard, with plans to add another 10kton escort destroyer shipyard as population permits. 

Plans: Once I have my second industrial planet down somewhere else (ie. at population 2.5billion or so), I will build a new series of shipyards for that planet and have my capital + new industry planet start looking in different directions, as well as split the fleet. 
But that's all some 20 to 30 years down the line. 

[Cassaralla]

If you plan on building small FAC/Corvettes then it's worth investing in a 1000 ton yard with a lot of slips.  In my current game I have a 10 slip yard at Earth and a 5 slip yard at my forward naval base.  Helps churn out those corvettes in a hurry.

[Peter Rhodan]

I usually go for big yards on earth - 2 Naval and 2 Commercial - and set them to grow whenever they are not re-tooling or adding slipways - I find 4-6 slips the max here - I have found that down the track you need to keep shipping so many minerals into Earth to keep everything going it is better to build others at colonies.
For instance - my commercial yards on earth are 205,000T (5 slips) and 135,000t (5 slips) respectively - one is building my Mk III colony ships and the other refitting my Troop Transport/Salvager/Tanker combo ships - and the 2 Naval are at 36,000 (5 slips) (building up to 48k which is the largest Jump engine although that is still researching) and 16,000 (6 slips) - heading for 30k the size of my battleships.
I have 2 at another colony - one is at 9,000T (5 slips) building to 12kT which is the size of my Frigates and the other at 6,000 T (3 slips) which is the size of my Corvettes and is adding slips.
I have another at a 3rd colony of 12,000T (3 slips) which I am building minelayers at and adding slips. Another at 1000T (4 slips) which will be for FACs and which I am adding slips to.
I have 2 more building - one as a reserve in a dead end system and another as a forward fleet base.
I have 2 other commercial yards - 1 at 45,000T which is growing and at which I am currently re-fitting my old Mk 1 cargo ships to the new Mk III version which is like 3x as fast.
The other is around 40,000T and adding slips - I am building Fleet Maintenance ships here and then intend to build more astroid miners here.
Hope this helps