Building ships from your own wharf

[X-Tie]

Hi everyone,

After taking a break just before player shipyards and wharfs were released, I've now come back to try this new feature out. And I have a few questions about it:

Station modules
1. From what I understood, the shipbuilding and maintenance module blueprints can't be stolen, only bought from faction reps. Is that correct?
2. Can an Argon ship fabrication module produce other races' ships too, or are fabrication modules race-specific?
3. Do you need a maintenance bay as part of that shipbuilding complex?

Ships
3. Can all ship blueprints be stolen? I'm not going to bother with cheap ships but it would make sense to steal carrier- and destroyer-class blueprints as well as a few other pricier L-class ships...
4. Have you noticed any specific ship or ship class getting purchased at higher frequencies than others? I'm only looking to start with a few ship types at first...

Equipment
5. What about equipment blueprints? I'm guessing those can't be stolen?
6. Do you need a specific set of equipment for NPCs to buy from you?
7. Do NPCs favor certain equipments over others? Not so keen on splashing out to buy every single piece of equipment if it isn't useful...

Thanks in advance

[Falcrack]

Hi everyone,

After taking a break just before player shipyards and wharfs were released, I've now come back to try this new feature out. And I have a few questions about it:

Station modules
1. From what I understood, the shipbuilding and maintenance module blueprints can't be stolen, only bought from faction reps. Is that correct?
Yes
2. Can an Argon ship fabrication module produce other races' ships too, or are fabrication modules race-specific?
Yes, they can produce other races' ships
3. Do you need a maintenance bay as part of that shipbuilding complex?
No

Ships
3. Can all ship blueprints be stolen? I'm not going to bother with cheap ships but it would make sense to steal carrier- and destroyer-class blueprints as well as a few other pricier L-class ships...
Never tried to steal one myself. EMP bombs work?
4. Have you noticed any specific ship or ship class getting purchased at higher frequencies than others? I'm only looking to start with a few ship types at first...
Diversity of blueprints really helps in getting lots of orders, in my experience

Equipment
5. What about equipment blueprints? I'm guessing those can't be stolen?
Nope, can't be stolen.
6. Do you need a specific set of equipment for NPCs to buy from you?
It seems that way. They seem to prefer their own race engines, shields, etc. Especially their own ship variant (ie Gorgon Sentinel for HOP, Gorgon Vanguard for PAR)
7. Do NPCs favor certain equipments over others? Not so keen on splashing out to buy every single piece of equipment if it isn't useful...
I think buying diversity of equipment type helps

Thanks in advance

I may be mistaken in some of my answers, folks feel free to correct me.

[Imperial Good]

1. From what I understood, the shipbuilding and maintenance module blueprints can't be stolen, only bought from faction reps. Is that correct?

Yes build modules are brought from a major faction rep.

2. Can an Argon ship fabrication module produce other races' ships too, or are fabrication modules race-specific?

There is only a single set of build modules. They are shared with all major races. Mechanically the build modules can construct any ships you own the blueprints for, appropriate for the individual module.

The exception is the Xenon. They have unique build modules and blueprints. These cannot be obtained by the player or other major factions and the build modules act mechanically the same as the ones available to the player but are appropriate for construction within the Xenon economy.

3. Do you need a maintenance bay as part of that shipbuilding complex?

No a maintenance bay is not required. Both Warf and shipyard modules can operate as maintenance bays but do cost more to build.

3. Can all ship blueprints be stolen? I'm not going to bother with cheap ships but it would make sense to steal carrier- and destroyer-class blueprints as well as a few other pricier L-class ships...

No it should not be possible to steal ship blueprints. There was a bug where hitting a neutral ship with spacesuit EMP and scanning the resulting leaks would allow one to steal the blueprint for it but I think that has been patched with 2.50.

4. Have you noticed any specific ship or ship class getting purchased at higher frequencies than others? I'm only looking to start with a few ship types at first...

HOP ships (paranid sentinel) seem to be brought a lot if the player is friendly with HOP. As long as you have all equipment for them to use they usually order near endless numbers of them.

One can also force all factions to buy from your facilities by causing an artificial shortage of crucial ship parts. For example by buying up as good as all Engine Parts output the factions will not be able to build ships as all ships require engine parts and hence they have no choice but to buy their ships from you.

5. What about equipment blueprints? I'm guessing those can't be stolen?

They cannot be stolen as far as I am aware. They are cheap so this is not really an issue.

6. Do you need a specific set of equipment for NPCs to buy from you?

They can only order ships from you which you have sufficient equipment blueprints for. They will not order based on what is available from you, but instead you need to be able to provide what they want. For example for Paranid orders (HOP or PAR) you will need Paranid engine, shield and turret blueprints.

7. Do NPCs favor certain equipments over others? Not so keen on splashing out to buy every single piece of equipment if it isn't useful...

The equipment they order is based on how the jobs they use are specified in the data files. So ships for some purposes will use lower quality/specification than for others. In the long run you will want to buy everything.

[RodentofDoom]

It is worth getting every ship blueprint you can.
The factions will buy/repair all ships at your stations if you have the blueprints needed to support them.

Someone posted somewhere you can EMP an abandoned ship to obtain the blueprint .. I just bought them over time.

[X-Tie]

Thanks for the replies folks, it will save me quite a bit of expensive trial and error .