Shipyard

The Shipyard is the building that lets a planet build ships and defenses. Every hull and every turret in the game comes out of one, and it only works for the planet it sits on. Ten planets means ten Shipyards if you want all ten of them building.

You build and upgrade it from the Buildings page. Once it is up, ships go on the Shipyard page and defenses go on the Defense page, but both pages are driven by the same building and share one queue.

Your homeworld starts with a Shipyard already at level 3. Every colony you settle starts at zero and needs its own, and it needs a Capitol at level 2 before the Shipyard shows up at all.

Build time

The level of your Shipyard sets how fast everything in the queue is built. The price of the unit sets the rest.

Time (hours)	(Ore cost + Crystal cost) / (5,000 × (Shipyard level + 1) × 2^{Foundry level})

Hydrogen is part of the price of a lot of ships but it never counts toward the time. Only ore and crystal do.

A worked example from the game. An Athena Class Battleship costs 45,000 ore and 15,000 crystal. On a level 7 Shipyard with no Foundry that is 60,000 / (5,000 × 8), which is 1 hour 30 minutes each. Take the Shipyard to level 15 and the same hull takes 45 minutes.

Nothing else touches the number. Your Capitol speeds up buildings and mines, not ships, and there is no alliance perk for ship building.

Cost and effect

Every level costs exactly twice the one before it. The last column is how long a unit takes at that level compared with a level 1 Shipyard.

Level	Ore	Crystal	Hydrogen	Build time %
1	400	200	100	100.00
2	800	400	200	66.67
3	1,600	800	400	50.00
4	3,200	1,600	800	40.00
5	6,400	3,200	1,600	33.33
6	12,800	6,400	3,200	28.57
7	25,600	12,800	6,400	25.00
8	51,200	25,600	12,800	22.22
9	102,400	51,200	25,600	20.00
10	204,800	102,400	51,200	18.18
11	409,600	204,800	102,400	16.67
12	819,200	409,600	204,800	15.38
13	1,638,400	819,200	409,600	14.29
14	3,276,800	1,638,400	819,200	13.33
15	6,553,600	3,276,800	1,638,400	12.50
16	13,107,200	6,553,600	3,276,800	11.76
17	26,214,400	13,107,200	6,553,600	11.11
18	52,428,800	26,214,400	13,107,200	10.53
19	104,857,600	52,428,800	26,214,400	10.00
20	209,715,200	104,857,600	52,428,800	9.52
21	419,430,400	209,715,200	104,857,600	9.09
22	838,860,800	419,430,400	209,715,200	8.70
23	1,677,721,600	838,860,800	419,430,400	8.33
24	3,355,443,200	1,677,721,600	838,860,800	8.00
25	6,710,886,400	3,355,443,200	1,677,721,600	7.69
26	13,421,772,800	6,710,886,400	3,355,443,200	7.41
27	26,843,545,600	13,421,772,800	6,710,886,400	7.14

There is no cap. The pattern carries on for as long as you can pay for it, and the last column is always 2 / (level + 1) as a percentage. The saving is big at the bottom and small at the top: the first four levels cut build time to 40% of what it was for 5,600 ore all in, while going from level 19 to level 20 shaves off half a percent and costs 210 million.

The build queue

Ships and defenses go into one shared queue on the planet, in the order you added them. The Shipyard works through it one entry at a time. Finished units land in your fleet or on your defense line as the queue reaches them, so you do not have to wait for the whole list to empty before you can use anything.

A few things about it are worth knowing before you start filling it up.

You pay when you press Build, not when the unit is finished. The full cost of the whole quantity comes off the planet the moment you submit it. The Max button fills in the largest number you can currently afford, and if you type in more than that the game enqueues what you can pay for and tells you how many it dropped.
You cannot cancel or rush a build. Once a unit starts there is no cancel button and no credit rush on it. That is the one real difference from research and buildings, which can both be cancelled for a full refund. It also means the Shipyard is a bad place to park resources when a raid is inbound, because you can never get them back out.
You can reorder what has not started. Each entry in the queue has an up and a down arrow. The unit being built right now has already left the queue and shows in the Tasks panel instead, so it cannot be moved.
The queue holds up to a year of work. If a Build would push the total past that, the game trims the quantity down to what fits and says so.

There is a clear link at the top of the queue. It is not an undo.

Clearing wipes every entry that has not started and destroys the resources that were spent on them. Nothing is refunded, which is why it asks you to type DESTROY. It does not stop the unit already building.

Upgrading blocks building, and building blocks upgrading

The Shipyard cannot upgrade while it is working, and it cannot work while it is upgrading. It runs both ways on that planet:

While anything is being built, the Shipyard row on the Buildings page will not upgrade or tear down. The same is true of the Foundry.
While the Shipyard or the Foundry is upgrading, every Build button on the Shipyard and Defense pages greys out to Build Blocked and the rows read Cannot build while Shipyard is upgrading.

The queue itself is not lost while this is going on. It just sits there and starts moving again when the upgrade lands. Only the Shipyard and Foundry do this. Upgrading a mine or a warehouse does not stop your fleet from building.

The two credit-only units are the exception. The Shadow Probe and the Genesis Solar Satellite are bought outright, appear instantly, never enter the queue and are not blocked by anything.

The Foundry

The Foundry is the only other building that changes ship build time, and it is a late one. It needs a Capitol at level 10 and A.I. Tech at level 10, and the first level costs a million ore, half a million crystal and 100,000 hydrogen. Each level halves build time, so a level 3 Foundry builds eight times as fast, on top of whatever your Shipyard level is already doing.

It also blocks the same way the Shipyard does. A Foundry upgrade stops all ship and defense building on that planet until it finishes.

What the Shipyard unlocks

Ships

Most ships want techs on top of the Shipyard level. The level below is the Shipyard half of the requirement only; Ships has the full list.

Helios Class Solar Satellite (level 1)
Artemis Class Fighter (level 1)
Atlas Class Cargo (level 2)
Zagreus Class Recycler (level 2)
Hermes Class Probe (level 3)
Apollo Class Fighter (level 3)
Hercules Class Cargo (level 4)
Dionysus Class Recycler (level 4)
Gaia Class Colony Ship (level 4)
Poseidon Class Cruiser (level 5)
Carmanor Class Cargo (level 6)
Athena Class Battleship (level 7)
Ares Class Bomber (level 8)
Hades Class Battleship (level 8)
Prometheus Class Destroyer (level 9)
Zeus Class (level 12)
Hephaestus Class Attack Platform (level 13, and a level 3 Foundry)

The Shadow Probe and the Genesis Solar Satellite are bought with credits and have no Shipyard requirement at all. They show on the Shipyard page whatever your level is.

Defenses

Missile Battery (level 1)
Decoy (level 1)
Laser Cannon (level 2)
Pulse Cannon (level 4)
Particle Cannon (level 4)
Gauss Cannon (level 6)
Large Decoy (level 6)
Plasma Cannon (level 8)

The two missiles are the odd ones out. Anti-Ballistic Missiles and Interplanetary Ballistic Missiles are gated by the Missile Silo instead of the Shipyard, at silo level 2 and level 4. They still go through the Shipyard queue and a Shipyard upgrade still stops them.

Requirements

Capitol 2

↓

Shipyard

That is the whole list. No techs, no other buildings.

Tearing it down

More Info on the Shipyard row lists what the next several levels cost and holds the Teardown button. Teardown drops the Shipyard one level, hands the field back, and costs a third of what that level cost to build. It takes time and it uses the planet's one build slot while it runs, exactly like an upgrade, and it is blocked while anything is in the queue.

Think twice before dropping one. Ships you have already built stay in your fleet, but anything that needed that level to unlock vanishes from the Shipyard page until you build the level back.

Worth knowing

Every level takes one field, the same as any other structure. A high Shipyard competes with your mines for room.
The Shipyard burns no energy and produces nothing on its own.
A planet builds one structure at a time, so a Shipyard upgrade queues against your mines on that planet.
Any Shipyard upgrade with under five minutes left finishes free. Longer ones cost 1.12 credits a second to rush, and cancelling one refunds everything you paid.
Shipyards cannot go on a moon. Only the Lunar Base, Capitol, Oracle, Lunar Dock and Warp Gate build there, so moons never build ships or defenses. They cannot go on a Hephaestus Class Attack Platform either.
The pin next to a ship keeps it at the top of the Shipyard page for that planet, with arrows to order your pinned ships. Handy once the list gets long.
Four quests pay out for it. Shipped and Ready I wants a Shipyard at all, then II, III and IV want level 3, level 7 and level 12. The last one hands over 175,700 ore, 71,000 crystal and 53,300 hydrogen.
Resources spent on the Shipyard count toward your rank, the same as anything else you build.
Most players push the Shipyard on their main building planet and leave the colonies low, since a colony only needs enough Shipyard to put up defenses.