Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: August 20, 2020, 01:27:05 AM »Recently I found out it is easier than I thought to fit a few (vastly) different designs into the same shipyard (without exploiting the game mechanics), especially for ships shares the same engine. So the advantage of needing fewer shipyards for the generalized designs is not as important as I thought to be.
Yes, it depends very much in how many components that you share among your different classes and how big your mission tonnage and costs really are. If the engines are really expensive and take up a very large space, you share the same fuel, engineering, crew and basic sensor types, ECM, armour and shields and the like, perhaps you only have about 30% actual mission tonnage left which also is more like 20-25% of the cost. Usually the ship with the bigger sensors cost the most so that one is what you tool the yard from.
In most of my designs I can usually fit whatever I want as long as I keep the main beam weapons, BFC and a small hangar, the rest can be configured to be whatever I want the ship to do. I basically want all ships to have some beam self defence capability and some hangars for scout crafts. I can even fit extra engines if necessary for a faster ship type. It is even easier if the engines are thermally reduced as that raises the cost of the engines to provide more leeway for mission tonnage to be different as the engine takes up a larger portion of the cost of the ship.
It also is very easy to refit ships between versions, especially if you have many of the components available, refitting them is very quick and cost very little.