That satcab is sleazy as hell.  Especially if someone (not me) decided it was the cheapest way to have a long duration sensor platform on a jump point.

But it got me thinking, if you want a ship type to conduct first contact, a cheap long endurance fighter that can support a diplomacy team while the launching ship stays back at the jump point might be the way to go.

Especially if, with no military systems, it shouldn't require any maintenance.  Of course, that would mean no engines.

I really enjoy the idea of hangars being standard on fleet units and survey fleet, so that a fleet built for peacetime exploration can quickly transition to becoming a battlefleet, without needing much refit, just a different fighter load out.  I love the RP potential of the survey fleet coming back for vengeance, "You shot down our peaceful survey shuttle, now see its brethren armed and out for your hide!"

I also like Larry Niven's stories of peaceful humans, going out into the galaxy, and having to turn tech into military purposes.  Perhaps meson weaponry developed as a way of getting emergency power to isolated areas.  Precision is important in that, so yeah, the whole planet has a bunch of point defense PDCs called "emergency power narrowcast units" or some such euphemism.

How often do you build 250kt ships?

All my civilian ships are 250kt platforms that gets tugged around, just need to scrap/upgrade the tug when new engine tech comes around.

I see all these real ship designs and I raise you my civilian blueprint class:

BP: C255000 class Blueprint    251,450 tons     9420 Crew     97193.2 BP      TCS 5029  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-354     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/940     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 242    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2   
Tractor Beam     


Geological Survey Sensors (940)   940 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

It can build any 250,000 ton civilian ship using this blueprint on day 1, the shipyard never has to be retooled.

Your BSPDC-1 provides 136 PPV for 433.6 BP, or 0.314 PPV/BP.  Good, but I think we can do better.

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PDD Dummy x24 1 class      1,500 tons     4 Crew     36.6 BP      TCS 30  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-11     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 24
Intended Deployment Time: 0.0001 months    Spare Berths 103   
Magazine 24   

ICBM Silo (1)    Missile Size 24    Rate of Fire 43200


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections


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Components
ICBM Silo x1
Conventional Armour x5.8
Crew Quarters - Tiny x1

11.85x Duranium
0.75x Mercassium
This design provides 0.656 PPV/BP, or slightly more than twice as cost efficient.  It also doesn't require any Tritanium or research in its construction.  This means it is available at turn 0 even on Conventional start.  I am not sure about the consequences of not having a Bridge, but it is buildable.  The ~4 minute deployment time should prove entertaining too. 

I'm going to have to flag this one for being illegal on two fronts.  First, it has no bridge and it's over 1000 tons.  Second, it has no fire control.  If it is buildable, that's only due to the way PDCs are built.  Nice try, but not quite.  And your other effort suffers the same problem.  However, using ICBM silos is a good idea.  A legal (lockable) 32-ICBM PDC built in the same game as my previous efforts is:
BSPDC-3 class Planetary Defence Centre    38,750 tons     108 Crew     883.9 BP      TCS 775  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 5-102     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 768
Intended Deployment Time: 0.0001 months    Spare Berths 107   
Magazine 768   

ICBM Silo (32)    Missile Size 24    Rate of Fire 43200
Hughes FPG-501 (1)     Range 8.5m km    Resolution 50


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 16 sections This comes in at .8688 PPV/BP, which is very nearly what you managed.  (The total cost of my added components was 11 BP, which is negligible at this scale.)  So I will concede that this is the best way to go about this.  Although fitting it with a better fire control wouldn't be terribly expensive, and would result in a platform that is not totally ineffective if you fill it with outdated missiles.  This does, of course, assume that the deployment time is possible.  A quick check shows that going to .25 month (enough to make sure there aren't any problems) costs 40 BP, which is bad for efficiency, but still leaves it well ahead of my design.

Grav sensors are supposed to flag the ship as military.

So it's an unenforced rule, and I'm "cheating" by using civilian jumpdrives.

So, am I cheating by having grav ships use civilian jumpdrives?  Or is it as sublight said, the rule about military jumpdrives only applies to ships with military engines?

sublight is correct, military jump drives are only required for military engines.

I assume there's a design flaw with the program.  Perhaps Steve intended grav ships to be commercial ships like geo ships are, and they shouldn't be having maintenance issues.  Or he intended them to be military and the game simply allows me to break the rule.  Either way I think geology and gravimetric ships are meant to come down on the same side of the fence, so I'm designing mine to be basically identical whichever way I make them.  That tends to be simple commercial designs in the early game, military designs with sensors and stuff in the later game.

Actually no. Geo are supposed to be civilian and grav are supposed to be military.

Fun Trivia: Only military engine components require military jump drives. Any military ship design that happen to use civilian engines is free to use commercial jump drives.

Of course, that doesn't help anyone trying to design a 1,000 ton grav survey craft.