I was building the GE and SS ships and they were being classified as commercial, guess if I had wanted thermal and em sensors it would have been changed to navy.
see attached gif for the missing date
Thanks for the screenshot. If you reselect on the construction option or the class type, does a date appear?
Edited: Sorry I mislead you with the original reply - updated one is here
Commercial ships build slowly compared to a naval vessel of the same size. That isn't usually a problem because commercial ships are usually much larger and larger ships build faster so it evens itself out. Large but relatively cheap ships are best in commercial shipyards. Small, expensive commercial vessels are very slow to build. Commercial shipyards can be increased in size really quickly compared to naval shipyards and far more cheaply in both money and minerals so very large commercial shipyards are easy to get. The downside is that commercial vessels are are treated as one quarter their actual size in terms of build speed and you can only build 'commercial vessels' in commercial shipyards. That is fine for a 40,000 ton freighter that only costs 400 BP but for a 10,000 ton commercial geosurvey ship that costs 1200 BP, it will be incredibly slow. A naval shipyard can build a military version of the geosurvey ship more quickly but couldn't build the freighter because it is far too big.
The actual formula for build rate is:
Class Size is tons/50
If Commercial Vessel = True Then Class Size = Class Size / 4
BRMultiple = ClassSize / 100
BRMultiple = 1 + ((BRMultiple - 1) / 2)
Actual Build Rate = BRMultiple * Racial SY Build Rate
I guess the bottom line is, if you want a commercial geosurvey ship that uses little fuel and doesn't require maintenance, you can get one but it will be slow to build and probably slow in tactical terms. A military version will be smaller and faster and will be built much quicker but it will require maintenance and it will use more fuel.
Steve
