Classes and Ship Building

[Paul M (OP)]

One thing that is confusing me is the question of when two classes are close enough together to count for being allowed to be built interchangably at a ship yard.

In my game the Colussus and Bauxite classes are interchange-able but the Bauxite Long Range shows up as only allowing the Bauxite to be built rather than the Bauxite and Colussus.

Also the 3 new military classes are all interchangeable yet the Protecteur Mod 2 class doesn't seem to make it.

What determines this question of interchangablity of building the ship without requiring a complete retooling of the yard?

[metalax]

For a class to show up as being able to be built at a shipyard in addition to the class that a shipyard is tooled for, is determined by the refit cost.

The cost to refit a ship from the class the shipyard is tooled for to the class in question, has to be 20% or lower of the build cost of the class that the shipyard is tooled for in order for it to be valid as an additional class.

[Paul M (OP)]

Ah hah, thanks!

[Silfir]

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.

[HaliRyan]

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?

Often times if you're building a two part class (such as an attack frigate with a leader variant carrying sensors) you can design them to both be built from the same shipyard as long as it's tooled for the leader variant carrying the expensive sensors. This tends to come into play more with larger ships I've found; in my current game I have a shipyard which can build both my 100k tonne fleet carrier and also my 100k tonne multipurpose task force command ship.

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?

This is really a matter of personal taste, but I like to keep three commercials in the early game (one large one for freighters/colony/troop ships, another for geological survey ships, and a third for utility ships which I only build a few of like tugs and salvagers). Other people will use fewer with more retooling, or more with none. There's actually a lot to be said for keeping a single extra commercial yard in play to constantly pump out fuel harvesters given the recent changes.

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.

Unfortunately virginity only increases the value of human sacrifices, and 14 goats is likely to be seen as an insultingly pitiful offer by Steve. He is a cruel god.

[strych90]

The cost to refit a ship from the class the shipyard is tooled for to the class in question, has to be 20% or lower of the build cost of the class that the shipyard is tooled for in order for it to be valid as an additional class. 

Geeze.   I didn't even know you could do this.   I've been retooling between builds of essentially identical (size and bp) classes for military and civilian.   All those wasted months.  .  . 

[Jumpp]

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.

In addition to freighters and colonizers, I found quite by accident that shipyards tooled for my current 8,000-ton point-defense frigate were also able to produce my unarmed 8,000-ton colliers.  (Same armor, same engines, some overlap on the magazines.)

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think there are some modification on the chance to build two different ships in the same yard that depend on the size difference of the ship and not only the build cost. In general I found that the larger the ship you build the easier it is to have many different variant in the same yard. Just try and keep the most expensive components the same such as engines and armour. In my current game I have the Vanguard class light cruiser at 20000 tones with five slight different variations, such as sensor, hangar space, magazine sizes. I just make sure each ships are very similar in size and changes are small enough.

[Conscript Gary]

Yeah, the more the ship costs as a whole, the more forgiving of a margin 20% of that cost will be