Why is my shipyard making a 5 turn unit in 1 turn?

Hm, shipyard production spills over so that when you build a couple of small ships that have less manufacturing cost than the shipyard has production capacity the not used capacity accumulates and will be used when you build a bigger ship that is then completed much faster than the numbers on the left state.

Whether that's the case for you I cannot say, it depends on what you built before your first Corvette.

Thanks for the response lyssailcor.  Good point, hadn't thought of that.

I've just checked and the SY produces the same "5-turn" ship every turn, turn after turn.  I've also checked the "2-turn" constructor and 3 have been built in 3 turns. Do you think it's a bug?

That's at least not normal. But I cannot remember that I have seen something like that in my own games so far. It may be a bug, or it may be something else we both don't think of right now. GC3 is a complex game so it's hart to have all mechanisms in mind all the time

Agreed, I've been seeing this as well. I'm building Large warships and carriers in 1 turn quite a bit... it may be due to that construction overflow mentioned. I often build them after a string of simple constructors for starbase upgrades. But it does happen for multiple ships that should take more than 1 turn.

believe this is is proper.

What you need to do is calculate your  totals if you really want to know.

For example a Constructor has  manufacturing cost of 110.

Your shipyard has a manufacturing capacity of 100.

So your constructor (if building only 1) will always cost 2 rounds, This is what is showing when you select a ship to build. What would be nice if when you queue up a ship, you could see your current excess manufacturing total. And even better is it will adjust the next ship in queue based on that.

But lets say you queue up 3 constructors. The first costs 110, your shipyard builds 100 in the first round, the second round your shipyard produces another 100, but your constructor only needed 10 to finish it, so second round your first constructor is completed. Then in the 3 round your 2 constructor is started, which gets 100 manufacturing, but you still have 90 left over from previous round, so you now have 190, your second constructor uses 110 and completes in the third round round. The  third constructor starts in the fourth round (costs 110), and shipyard produces 100, plus the 80 that is still left over, so 180, and your third constructor finishes in the fourth round.

This is why late in the game if you produce a lot of constructors, and then switch to a HUGE ship with a high cost, it will build it in one round.

The thing I don't like is if you turn off shipyard construction (notification queue), you still do not seem to accumulate the excess production. So what is a good idea is rather than turn off a shipyard production is to generate a extremely low cost ship (lowest you build) and then just queue up tons of these. This will keep the shipyard busy, and accumulate the excess builds, so when you go to war or need a quick ship it's built up an extreme amount of manufacturing which you can immediately use on the next round. You can also then just sell any of these excess ships each round for extra $$.

To help understand your production overflow, whether on a planet or in a shipyard, hover over the blank space beneath your build list.  If your build list is long enough to scroll, this won't work.  At least temporarily, take things out of the list.  This will give you more numbers and less guessing.  

I often use building several cheap constructors and then a big war ship to keep up the overall ships per turn average.  It is possible to build up a lot of overflow that way, so keep checking the hover tip and you may find some significant clues.  The same overflow management techniques work for the planet build list as well.  It doesn't feel as useful as managing ship output. If there is an expensive improvement I want that badly, it seems best to start working on it as soon as possible rather than wait for a build list over production overflow to accumulate. Still, it is an available tool.

To the previous post, it is my  understanding that telling a shipyard not to notify you when idle causes the planet to stop sending its manufacturing to the shipyard when it goes idle.  If you have the planet on Military Subsidies, then the manufacturing points get discarded at the Shipyard or somewhere along the way.

Thanks for the replies folks.

Wow.  Didn't know this.  For anyone who is interested, here is a screenshot of what erischild is saying....  http://i.imgur.com/RJmMmsA.jpg

Perhaps I should RTM!

Really enjoying learning this game.  It's been on my steam wishlist for months.  I'm glad I got it a few weeks ago on sale. The UI is one of the best I've used in a 4X game.

Your image reveals you have >800 overflow and are building a 350 cost ship.  Yep, it'll happen in one turn.  You have enough overflow to do that twice, with a head start on the third ship. After that, you will need to take those 5 turns again.

Enjoy!