Building ships

Building ships is how a side adds capital ships and fighter squadrons to its forces in Star Wars: Rebellion. Ships are built at a system that has an Orbital Shipyard.

Issuing a build order

In the system's Manufacturing and Production window, a right-click on the Ship Construction section followed by Build opens the ship Build Selection window, where the player picks the ship from a drop-down list. Build Ships on the agent droid's menu is a second route: the cursor turns to cross hairs, and clicking a destination system sends the finished ship to a fleet in orbit there. Either route lets an existing fleet be named as the target, which the manual says is faster than building to a system and moving the ship afterward.

When a capital ship is ordered, a new fleet is created in orbit around the system with that ship as its only member. A fighter squadron instead waits on the planet's surface until it is assigned to a carrier capital ship. Some ships are unavailable at the outset, and Ship Design Research missions unlock better designs.

Build menu

The Build Construction menu for orbital shipyards is shared with training facilities and construction yards. Besides Build, it offers:

• Stop ends construction of the current ship.
• Destination sets where the ship goes when finished.
• Rename changes the ship's name, which defaults to the ship type followed by a number. The manual says it is the one option missing for facilities being built and for troops being trained.
• Encyclopedia opens the ship's entry only while it is being built; otherwise it opens the system's entry.
• Status shows how the current project is going and when it will finish.
• Reserved keeps the agent's automated management functions away from that shipyard, though the agent can still use it for Build Ships orders.

The ship's menu and status

Once a ship exists, right-clicking it opens its menu. Move sends it to a destination, and Confirmed Move first shows the transit time in days, with a checkmark to confirm and an X to cancel. Status and Encyclopedia are also available.

The Status window starts with values like those of other units, such as the ship's condition and maintenance cost, then continues with capacity and weapons details similar to the encyclopedia entry. For a damaged ship it shows each system's full capacity beside its current value. Eight systems show two numbers, current level then capacity: the hull, hyperdrive, sublight engine, damage control, weapon recharge, tractor beam power, shield recharge and maximum shield strength. The manual's example is a shield recharge rate of 8 against a maximum of 10, which marks that system as damaged. Further down are ratings for maneuverability, detection and the bombardment modifier, plus weapons arc ratings for turbolasers, ion cannons and laser cannons at the forward, aft, starboard and port stations. See also Damaged ships.