Purpose to building ship components

[Paul M (OP)]

As the topic says what is the purpose to the ability of building ship components with planetary industry?  Does this speed up construction or refits of ships if components are pre built?

[ollobrains]

i read somewhere that u can build ships a lot cheaper by building all the components first and then shipping, the other thing is on planets with not all mineral types u can build bits here and bits there and then move to a final planet for build, or reuse stuff off enemy ships

[TheDeadlyShoe]

SYs automatically deduct the time and resources required to build the component from the build time/cost of the ship, if said component is present in stockpiles when construction begins. It's not any cheaper to build components with industrial capacity; the only advantage is that it speeds up your shipyards at the expense of other construction. Of course, you could just build more shipyards.

That said, economically there can be an advantage in terms of retooling.  A 1 slipway yard supported by factories could build fast enough to compete with a 2 slipway version of the same yard, while having much lower retooling costs.

[Paul M (OP)]

At the moment I am at a serious duranium&neutronium crunch (the bane of conventional starts everywhere) so being able to use my currently idle industry to build things like launchers or sensor systems that use no duranium/neutronium would be a huge advantage to me.  I thought it might be the way it worked but was reluctant to invest time and effort into something blindly...thanks guys.

I can pre-fab the jump drive for my upcoming jump freighter plus its civillian thermal sensors and then see what else I can bang out as I have 220 idle factories while I wait for the duranium to trickle in.

[Jorgen_CAB]

As said above, industry just make it faster to build your ships.

I use this when I need to speed up my ship building/refits. It is not always wise to invest in more shipyards just because you need to build faster sometimes and then have them idle at other times. My shipyards are often not 100% in operation.

[Falcon]

It can also be used to prebuild components while waiting for other parts to be researched.  Let's say you've developed a new engine, but you still need a few months to finish the new missile launchers and guns.  No problem, build the engines for your future fleet now, then let the shipyards take over when the final design of a ship is complete.

[Paul M (OP)]

Yes...though given my current stockpile of Duranium and Neutronium building things that require them is out of the question.

But I have produce a pair of MAN engines and NorTEL IR telescopes for the newest jump freighter class that is being tooled up for.

As for idle that describes most of my economy at the moment duranium production is now down to 550 or so tons per year, and the stockpile is 250 tons.