Full logic for AI ship purchases?

[Baldamundo]

Does anyone know the full details of how the AI decides whether or not to buy ships from a player-owned shipyard, and how many ships, and what types?

• do they only build up to a set number of each specific ship type? or of each ship class?
• in order to maximise sales, do you need to have blueprints for every different specific type of ship available?
• does variety of equipment make any difference? do you gain any benefit from having any more than just the minimum equipment the AI needs to launch a ship?
• how do prices of ships automatically bought from player shipyards compare to prices of ships manually built by the player at the player's shipyard and then manually sold at AI shipyards?
• how are prices for selling ships to AI shipyards determined?

on the last two points, you'd assume that there'd be no difference, but eyeballing it in-game, it seems as if I get better prices and far more money overall by manually building a load of ships and then manually selling them to the AI.
Potentially the higher price per ship is because the AI only orders them with low levels of equipment (??), but it seems like they only buy ships automatically at a set rate, but you can sell them an infinite amount of ships manually - so you can do much greater volume.
And it seems as if selling ships manually to AI shipyards, the prices can vary quite significantly across factions - but it doesn't seem to be determined by relations, so what does affect it?

[Raevyan]

The factions have different ship quotas and try to get to that quota. Until it is reached, they‘ll order ships from you. I don’t think they prefer building at their own wharf/shipyard even if they have resources. Ship quota for factions get higher/smaller with the number of sectors that faction owns.

Terran for example barely loose any ships and won’t order that many from you. HOP on the other side has war on every border and will constantly loose ships and require rebuilding.

[Baldamundo]

The factions have different ship quotas and try to get to that quota. Until it is reached, they‘ll order ships from you. I don’t think they prefer building at their own wharf/shipyard even if they have resources. Ship quota for factions get higher/smaller with the number of sectors that faction owns.

Terran for example barely loose any ships and won’t order that many from you. HOP on the other side has war on every border and will constantly loose ships and require rebuilding.

And the quota is per specific ship? I.e. "Build 20 Demeter Sentinels", not "Build 20 Medium Transports"

[Raevyan]

Don’t know the exacts quotas but I’d imagine something like that.