TIL that you should pre-build components

[Jumpp (OP)]

Holy cow.  Ships build a LOT faster when you pre-build the components.  This is not a small effect.  I will never build another warship using shipyards alone.

Does it work for refit too?  If I (foolishly) wanted to replace the drives on some ships, would pre-building the drives make the refit faster?

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes, building components in your factory will reduce time for refits to ships just as it reduce time to build new ships.

In my case I build ship components with planetary industry as war production when I need to produce as many ships as fast as I can. Using planetary industry for ship components are in my opinion not efficient if I have no real need for the ships in the immediate future.It will detract from the industries capacity to build more useful things (such as mines, factories and other planetary installations) which would expand my empire .

As with everything in this game, it is always a fine balance between what you need and what you have available.

[se5a]

do the components have to be available before you start construction/refit of the ship?
or does it rejigger the time as components become available?

[Jorgen_CAB]

They have to be pre-built and in the planetary stockpile before you start the construction/refit of your ship.

[metalax]

Note though that if you queue up several ships for building, it will grab all the components available for its design when the ship actually starts building. This can be useful with a new design as you can build the components for the second and later ships while the first is building normally.

[se5a]

you can queue ships?

[metalax]

Apparently not now that I checked, although I seem to remember it being possible in the past. The previous point still stands though even if you need to manually start each ship building.