A Question About Similar Ship Classes

[Execrated1 (OP)]

So, I was wondering what makes two ships similar enough for them to be built by the same shipyard? That's it, just the one question.

[HaliRyan]

It is solely based off of the cost of the ship that the yard is tooled for vs the cost of the ship you want to build. You can check in the ship design screen which other ships will be eligible for construction in a shipyard tooled for that design.

[Execrated1 (OP)]

Yes, I know all of that, I was looking for specifics. How close in cost do they have to be?

[Nathan_]

the cost to refit has to be within 20% of the ship class cost. so even equal costing ships can be barred from being additional classes if their components are too different.

[Execrated1 (OP)]

Perfect, thank you. That's exactly what I needed to know.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

keep in mind that means that sometimes ships of wildly differing sizes can be refit. its only cost it cares about.

Some ships that are otherwise quite similar are typically outside refit range, i.e. identically configured passenger ships and troop transports.

[Conscript Gary]

And often the tooling for one ship can produce the other but not the reverse, i.e. cargo and colony ships

[Paul M]

Plus sometimes one generation of ships will work while another will not.  I could build the Bauxites and Colossus's interchangably but by the time I got the to the HP versions only one or the other could be built.

[Execrated1 (OP)]

I was asking because I'm gonna try to design variants for my Littoral Combat Ships. Currently they're just for keeping Mars and Europa happy about their protection level, but I'd like to be able to design a new series that can all be built by one or two shipyards.

[Paul M]

Mars at least will use the protection value for Earth and so too likely does Europa.  You might think about shipping over PDC components as well.  I can only say that so far (through 3 upgrades) my Terrier-Edmonton-Guardian-London's have all been interchangable to build.  So I would think you have a fairly good chance if the ships are relatively similar.

[Conscript Gary]

I would say smaller ships are harder to tool for interchangeably, actually. With their lower build cost you can hit the maximum refit percentage cost a lot quicker.
As for actually designing them, plot out the one with the most expensive systems first.
Also the DAC tab can tell you what can be built from what tooling, as an fyi.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

There are a few tricks for keeping refit costs similar, namely you have to standardize equipment and try to insure that the differences between the ships are in low cost items.  Standardized sensor suites helps, as does having a relatively high proportion of engines/fuel. (Relatively less space for 'mission' gear).  For combat vessels it can help to have a standardized point defense suite of some kind but that only really works for larger vessels. 

[LucidHito]

Hi, this is my first week playing this game and I'm lovin it but I can't figure out why my grav and geo survey ships cant be built at the same shipyard when they have the same BP and are identical in every way except for the sensors.  Am I missing something here?

[Black]

Grav survey ship is military vessel and geo survey is commercial vessel, so if you try to build your grav ship in commercial shipyard you will not be able to do it.

[metalax]

Hi, this is my first week playing this game and I'm lovin it but I can't figure out why my grav and geo survey ships cant be built at the same shipyard when they have the same BP and are identical in every way except for the sensors.  Am I missing something here?

The fact that the two have the same total cost doesn't mean that you can build both at the same shipyard. What is important is the refit cost of going from one to the other, if that is more than 20% of the cost of the ship that the yard is tooled for you won't be able to build it there. If the geo/grav survey is a big component of the cost of your ship, it is easy for it to exceed that limit.