New scout ships with no guns, or armor (scanner, reactor and lane stabilizer, smallest hull possible) for a very low cost hammer/metal ship
Once solar panels is researched, pull reactors out of station design for a lower cost orbital
Once shipyards are researched (assuming solar power is researched also) design the shipyard with 1 construction yard and NO reactor for a MUCH cheaper hammer/metal cost. For maximum discount you will want 2 up, and with 2 you can produce all hulls in game at a 49 % hammer discount.
I think these are working as intended, but wanted to verify.

Chasm wrote:New scout ships with no guns, or armor (scanner, reactor and lane stabilizer, smallest hull possible) for a very low cost hammer/metal ship
Once solar panels is researched, pull reactors out of station design for a lower cost orbital
Once shipyards are researched (assuming solar power is researched also) design the shipyard with 1 construction yard and NO reactor for a MUCH cheaper hammer/metal cost. For maximum discount you will want 2 up, and with 2 you can produce all hulls in game at a 49 % hammer discount.
I think these are working as intended, but wanted to verify.

We need to do a balance pass on all the ship/part costs.

As far as the shipyard discounts go, yes, a 49% discount for 2 running shipyards is working as intended.

The Solar-Panels / reactorless Shipyard combo is stronger than I'd intended though. I do want to do something to give you more design flexibility with your stations in mid/late game. But I think the smarter move is probably to have a tech that unlocks bonus design slots for the stations. Giving you a tech that lets you pull your reactors just means it's good to start spamming empty stations, which feels wrong. I should probably pull Solar panels and replace it with something that unlocks a new system slot for many of the station designs.

If you do that, could we get 1 slot for transports and colony ships, to make them a little customizable. At the moment all colony ship and transport ship slots are preset except for reactor and there is no real point to changing the reactor. At the least, perhaps Lane amplifier on colony ship could be made removable (for a short range lower cost colony ship)?