This is a repost of various posts in the fiction forum regarding some changes to shipyards for v3.3. Kurt raised the question of whether shipyards were orbital or ground based. After a brief discussion, I decided that orbital would be easier and would add some new possibilities as well. Therefore I made the following changes:
Shipyards now show up as a separate contact type for active sensors and can be targeted and fired upon. All the shipyards for one race in one location show up as a single contact. The size of the contact is based on the total capacity of all the shipyards with the assumption that a single slipway is twice the size of the largest ship it can build. So a single slipway of 4000 ton capacity would have the same sensor signature as an 8000 ton ship. Two shipyards at the same population, one of which had two slipways of 10,000 tons and the second with four slipways of 6000 tons (total capacity 44,000 tons) would appear as a single contact of 88,000 tons.
With regard to damage, rather than get into slipways being reduced in size, with the complexity involved if it is trying to build a ship larger than the reduced size, I have stayed with a similar model to planetary bombardment where slipways are either destroyed or unharmed by a hit. However, given it will be a lot easier to hit shipyards now I have made it harder to destroy them.
Each time a shipyard is hit, there is a chance the hit will destroy a slipway. The percentage chance of destroying a slipway is equal to:
(Damage / Capacity ) * 10000
In other words, if a shipyard with slipways of 5000 ton capacity is hit by a missile with a ten point warhead then the chance of one slipway being destroyed is: (10 / 5000) x 10000 = 20%
If the last slipway of a shipyard is destroyed, then the shipyard itself is also destroyed.
In v3.3, you can also tow shipyards. On the misc tab of the Ship window where you connect tractors, there will be a list of shipyards if you are in orbit of a planet (assuming you have a tractor beam of course). Once you connect to a shipyard it is removed from its current pop and is detected (and can be attacked) separately. It also shows up in the Fleet window on the list of ships. Connecting a tractor will stop any tasks or shipyard improvements. For the purposes of movement (and detection) a shipyard is twice the size of its capacity. So a shipyard with two 6000 ton capacity slipways will be 24,000 tons. If you break the tractor link while in orbit of a pop, the shipyard will then be added to the shipyard list for that population.
Steve
