Wow, I got a reply from the Man. Thanks, Steve 
As long as I have you here, any idea why the NPRs aren't building ships in a TN-tech start? Do I just need to wait more? (I haven't had much time to play lately. )
I haven't messed with their shipbuilding capabilities except by modifying their shipyards (should be OK) and deleting their ships in the "Ship" table (which I guess is the cause of the issue).
Unfortunately I have no idea. As soon as you change anything in the database, you can end up with errors or strange behaviour. This is because there is no UI preventing you from removing or changing something critical to the game, so something that an NPR is relying on. You can even screw the entire installation so that future games will have errors and you have to re-install. That's why I password the DB
Steve
