This is a realism argument, which we don't consider relevant if there is any more important reason, eg. gameplay, which there likely is. And even if realism was important, there's more to building a ship than building the parts... you've got to bolt them together and integrate the systems and such.artos_boxcar wrote:From the way I see it it would be better to use the first method. Since (from what i can understand) production of ships is distributed across the empire, it makes more sense (to me as the player) that all the components of my new Mark VI Titan of Death, the engines, computers, etc. are being built on different factories on different planets, but at the same time.
This makes some assumptions I don't think are valid...What's to stop me from building a basically empty hulls (ie Huge hull with 1x laser and engines), at a low build time, then sending it back to a shipyard and "refitting" it for whatever role i need it for? In peace time I just stockpile empty hulls, and when i go to war I upgrade them with the latest and greatest weaponry, and BANG, instant fleet. With method 1 it takes me basically the same amount of time wether I have a bunch of fancy weaponry or not.
* We will balance the game at some point, and wouldn't allow obvious abuses such as this. An example of the wrong way to do something isn't a reason to not do that thing a better way.
* Even if one could bang out an instant fleet, there's be some cost or tradeoff to doing so.
* "refitting" as you suggest won't be possible. You'll be able to upgrade the existing parts in a ship, but you won't be able to add new parts or remove parts.