Are there good ways to exploit that? The best I've been able to do is make Freighter designs that could be built in shipyards tooled for colonizers, presumably because cargo holds are so cheap. Apart from tooling the shipyard for the most expensive components and making my designs use the same engines, crew quarters, armor and basic sensors, what tricks can I use? Have you managed to tool shipyards in such a manner that they were able to produce, for instance, a freighter, colonizer and troop transport without retools, or can I only ever get any "specialist"+freighter? Would it be possible to tool a yard for a hilariously expensive and big ship that has all the parts, and use that to be able to build everything else, or is reducing the tonnage during refits too costly for it to work, or is building smaller shipyards cheaper anyway?
I seem to end up building one or two of every type of commercial ship that I need and constantly retooling inbetween, and I'm cheaper than free beer. Maybe I simply don't keep enough shipyards on hand. How many commercial shipyards should I be looking into building from a conventional start - three, four?
Final question: How many goats do I need to sacrifice to the Prophets to make Steve release 6.2? I've asked around and the most I could round up is about fourteen, and only one of them is even a virgin.