Building Warships

[Jeeves]

Are your spaceports backlogged ten ships in queue for every yard? Frustrated because your civilians hog the yard time? Design a star base that is a spaceport in all but name. Direct a constructor to build it at a colony which is in a system that has most minerals supplied by BUILT mines. Soon you'll have all those yards to build your warships. I designed a six yard star base for my home world which cranks out a size 1100 capital ship per yard per year, or three destroyers.

You need to PLAN AHEAD. Look at the systems already colonized or near colonies with an active spaceport. In the sector view, click on each star system to find the resources in the system. You need at least 12 of the 19 strategic resources supplied inside the systems with the yard star bases. So make colonizing such systems a priority, and start sending constructors as soon as possible to develop the systems. When colonizing, Ackdarians are best - they get a HUGE yard construction rate bonus.

Speaking of Ackdarians, conquer the Ackdarian independents as soon as you can get a troop ship to them. You don't want any other empire snapping them up.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[TheJian]

Will work on this tonight, sounds like it will work well. How many plants of each do you use?

[Jeeves]

One manufacturing plant of each type per two yards, up to three. I don't see any sense having over three of a type of plant unless you have a huge number of yards (>18).

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[barryvm]

Just a quick (and possibly stupid, i've been playing this game only a couple of days) question:

Does this construction base also accept private build orders or do they only get constructed on bases specifically labeled "space port".
It's just that I usually have trouble producing enough constructors/explorers to sustain expansion after i've colonized a dozen worlds.

PS: please ignore possible spelling/grammar errors, I am not a native english speaker.

[Theluin]

Civilian ships only get ordered on bases designated as space ports.

[barryvm]

Thanks to Theluin for the fast reply!

What I'm wondering is this:
I do build a space port at every colony (a small one, without the research modules) and upgrade these in systems with abundant strategic resources.
The drawback to this approach seems to be that ships could be built far from their desired locations (I've had ships travelling half the galaxy to join a fleet, burning most of their fuel reserves).
But I have also noticed the enemy AI attacking the larger space ports first [:@], so if I build one super construction yard where I'm going to build my entire armada, should I be concerned about the enemy taking it out or disrupting the influx of strategic resources ?
Freighters shipping in the resources seem to jump away at the first sign of trouble so I'm wondering if there is an effective way of stopping an enemy raiding party before it enters the system.
Currently my ligntning fast interceptor fleets seem perfectly content to drift around doing nothing until the enemy enters the system, at which point the freighters panic (taking the resources with them).
I don't know if the AI players would be able to effectively blockade a port this way, but they have seriously disrupted my border colony spaceports to the point where they stalled construction.

[Jerkface]

I generally concentrate all military ship building in my homeworld system.  Its the most likely to have all the resources needed. Its the most likely to have troops my ships need to load, etc.  I use smaller spaceports over colonies for refueling, repairs, and def bases, and eventually long range scanner platforms.  If I play a big galaxy, ill setup a regional capital similar to homeworld.  Hub and spoke so to speak. Make sure that space sports that are building ships have plenty of available resources in that system or very near by.