Commercial Shipyard Complex

Function
Commercial Shipyard Complexes and Naval Shipyard Complexes are orbital installations that allow construction of ships and gunboats (any ship class with a mass over 500 tons). Each shipyard contains one or more slipways, each one allowing for one ship design to be constructed. Each shipyard also has a maximum tonnage limitation, restricting what designs can be built.

Commercial shipyards are limited to building commercial designs while Naval shipyards can build both. However commercial shipyards require less population to operate and can be expanded at a faster rate.

A shipyard produces the racial shipbuilding rate per year per slipway modified by the planetary and sector governor's Shipbuilding bonus. Each naval complex requires a base of 1,000,000 workers, plus an extra 100 per ton of total capacity (capacity times number of slipways). Commercial shipyard complexes require 10% of the workers as a naval yard. This rate is further modified by the tonnage of the ship being constructed.

Shipyards also have a Mod Rate which is how fast the shipyard can modify itself (see complex activities below). Rather than being based on the size of the ship being built, the mod rate is based off to the capacity of the shipyard. The larger the shipyard, the faster it can modify itself. The mod rate is similar to the construction rate except it is also modified the Shipyard Operations technology as well. Commercial shipyards have a penalty where their mod rate acts as if the shipyard is 10% of its actual size. This brings the growth rate down to a similar percentage based rate as naval shipyards to counteract the larger size of commerical shipyards. Otherwise, the faster growth rate inherit to larger shipyards would allow for commercial shipyards to grow at amazing rates.

Formulas:
 * Adjusted Shipbuilding Rate = (Racial Shipbuilding Rate) * (1 + (((Class Size / 100) - 1) / 2))
 * Where Class Size is the ship's size measured in Hull Spaces.
 * Commercial ships divide by 400 instead of 100.
 * Final Shipbuilding Rate = (Adjusting Shipbuilding Rate) * (Sector Governor Factory Production Bonus * 0.25) * (Planetary Governor Production Bonus)

Examples
A 7,500 ton ship (150 HS) would have a build rate 125% of the base rate.
 * 1) 150 / 100 = 1.5
 * 2) 1.5 - 1 = 0.5
 * 3) 0.5 / 2 = 0.25
 * 4) 1 + 0.25 = 1.25

Likewise, a 2,500 ton ship (50 HS) would have a build rate of 75% the base rate.
 * 1) 50 / 100 = 0.5
 * 2) 0.5 - 1 = -0.5
 * 3) -0.5 / 2 = -0.25
 * 4) 1 + -0.25 = 0.75

A monster 750,000 commerical ton ship (15,000 HS) would have a build rate of 1880% the base rate.
 * 1) 150,000 / 400 = 375
 * 2) 375 - 1 = 374
 * 3) 374 / 2 = 187
 * 4) 187 + 1 = 188

Operation
Shipyards are managed on the Manage Shipyards tab of the Economics screen. Each shipyard has a

Complex Activities
Complex activites are actions shipyards can undertake that are seperate from ship construction. Each shipyard complex can undertake one complex activity at a time.

Retooling
In most situations, before a ship can be constructed, the shipyard must be retooled to the desired class. To do this, first select the desired shipyard from the list of shipyard complexes. Then, in the Shipyard Complex Activity panel, select Retool for Selected Class.

This makes the Ship Class drowndown menu appear with a list of valid classes for this shipyard. Choose the desired class and then click Set Activity.

If the target class can be refit for less than 20% of the class the shipyard is currently tooled for, no retooling is necessary. The DAC / Rank / Info tab of the Class Design screen will display eligible class for construction for any particular design.

Add Extra Slipway
In order to construct more ship simultaneously, extra slipways can be added to existing shipyards. The cost of a new naval slipway is 60 duranium and 60 neutronium (120 BP) per 500 tons. Commercial shipyards upgrade at 10% of the naval cost (6 duranium and 6 neutronium for 12 BP).

Add Capacity
In order to build larger ships, shipyards can be set to increase their capacity. Expanding a naval shipyard costs 120 BP (60 duranium and 60 neutronium) per slipway, with commercial shipyards costing 10% of that.

Capacity can be added in increments of 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 and 10,000 ton batches or set to continually expand. Unlike retooling or adding slipways, you can cancel capacity upgrades without losing your progress.

Construction
If a shipyard has available slips, you may choose the desired class to construction (see retooling above). A default name will be chosen based on the design's theme, this can be changed either by typing a new name in the Ship Name or by clicking the New Name button and choosing one from the design's theme. Finally, a task group can be chosing from any task group currently in orbit of the same planet.

Note: The task group selected as the target for new construction will give errors if the task group is given orders.

Once the class, name and task group are selected, click Add Task to begin construction.

Shutting Down
Shipyards cannot be shutdown in order to free up civilian workers for other industry. Constuction and complex activities can be cancelled or paused in order to save resources however. A work-around is to design a tug and move the shipyards out of orbit, at which point the workers will be freed up.

Note: Breaking the tractor beam link to a shipyard when not in orbit of a colony results in the shipyard disappearing.

Shipyards in Combat
Shipyards show up as a separate contact type for active sensors and can be targeted and fired upon. All the shipyards for one Empire in one location show up as a single contact. The size of the contact is based on the total capacity of all the shipyards with the assumption that a single slipway is twice the size of the largest ship it can build. So a single slipway of 4,000 ton capacity would have the same sensor signature as an 8,000 ton ship. Two shipyards at the same population, one of which had two slipways of 10,000 tons and the second with four slipways of 6,000 tons (total capacity 44,000 tons) would appear as a single contact of 88,000 tons.

With regard to damage, rather than get into slipways being reduced in size, with the complexity involved if it is trying to build a ship larger than the reduced size, I have stayed with a similar model to planetary bombardment where slipways are either destroyed or unharmed by a hit. Each time a shipyard is hit, there is a chance the hit will destroy a slipway. The percentage chance of destroying a slipway is equal to: (Damage / Capacity ) * 10,000

In other words, if a shipyard with slipways of 5000 ton capacity is hit by a missile with a ten point warhead then the chance of one slipway being destroyed is: (10 / 5,000) x 10,000 = 20%

If the last slipway of a shipyard is destroyed, then the shipyard itself is also destroyed.

Towing Shipyards
If you have a vessel equipped with a Ship to Ship Tractor, commonly referred to as a Tug, you can tow shipyards. The easiest way to handle this is to use the Tractor Specified Shipyard order for the task group containing the tug. Once you connect to a shipyard it is removed from its current pop and is detected (and can be attacked) separately. It also shows up in the Fleet window on the list of ships. Connecting a tractor will stop any tasks or shipyard improvements. For the purposes of movement (and detection) a shipyard is twice the size of its capacity. So a shipyard with two 6,000 ton capacity slipways will be 24,000 tons. If you break the tractor link while in orbit of a pop, the shipyard will then be added to the shipyard list for that population.