How about an extension to the shipyard system. To me in the actual system I have two choices how to design my shipyards: I can either have one for each class or I can design only a few for fitting sized of my ship classes and retool as needed.
I am suggesting a third option. Since we are talking shipyards here a lot of work is being done in a very modular way. So a component is constructed in some place and then assembled in the main assemble area. Somewhat components come together isn’t that relevant to what ship can be assembled but rather the size that can be assembled.
Adding production lines to a shipyard might be an interesting alternative then. So when you first design a shipyard you tool it for one class. Over time new classes can be added to that shipyard - as long as it would fit the size of the shipyard. But adding instead of retooling is more expensive than retooling. So one would end with a shipyard that maybe has three sliplines of 17.000t but that one can build/scrap/retool eight different ship classes.
Yeah this idea has alot of merit IMO, but needs careful balancing to not become the default way of playing. 8 different classes also does seem like quite alot so cost for that needs to be quite significant I think.
A way it could be set up in practice is to use the refit cost already in game so that the more different the classes you try to add in retooling the more expensive it will be to add additional ones.
For example like this:
- Each shipyard must still have a "main" assigned class retooled ( similar to now ).
- You can retool additional classes beyond the main class, but adding classes cost is scaled based on how much they differ from the main class
- This is balanced so that a class just barely not eligible to be built in the same shipyard for no additional cost ( refit being less than 20% of the primary ship class cost rule ) is very cheap / almost free to add as additional retooling.
- An additional cost factor to retooling is added based on how many different classes the shipyard can already build ( including free ones ). For example 10% * classes extra retooling cost.
- Removing capability to build an additional class is free ( to reduce above cost and get rid of obsolete classes / revert having retooled to too many ).
Overall I think retooling could benefit alot from an approach of having it's cost scaled by class difference, since It to me makes little sense that a class that miss the "refit being less than 20% of the primary ship class cost rule" by just a few % should be very easy to adapt the shipyard to building instead rather than costing just as much as retooling to a class twice as large and with zero shared components.
