I have been thinking about it for a while. I started with Brad's idea of a separate Shipyard and got inspired by some of the great ideas I read from you guys on this thread. I think I can suggest a pretty decent concept of how the Space ShipYard could work. Feel free to comment.

1. Planets Have a Starport that allows them to build Basic Small ships and cargo module ships using the regular planetary production queue. But those cannot build bigger war ships ( Moo2 anyone?  )

2. At some point you build a constructor ship which will become a specialized Shipyard Starbase. The big capital ships can be built in these starbases only.

3. The Shipyard StarBase has a range of effect, like other starbases, and collects the Production from the planets in that range. Typically you would make one shipyard for the whole solar system. For example, Instead of having 3 planets each build a ship, you have one big starbase building 1 ship 3x faster.

-Let`s suppose this starbase is your new shipyard. It would collect the production from both Earth and Mars as they are in its range.

3.b Alternatively, the system could be made that planets are linked to the shipyards in the same way as asteroid mines are linked to the planets in galciv II. Penalties occurs the farther away the planet is. ( I kinda prefer this one honestly ) 

4. The amount of manufacturing that is allocated to the Shipyard by the planets is determined by a slider. It sets the percentage of total manufacturing that is allocated to Shipyards. This would work along with the production wheel and could be set both at Empire level or Micromanaged on a per world basis, Just like the wheel.  See it like that: The planets build ship parts in factories and then the parts get sent by shuttles to the System Shipyard where they are assembled into SpaceShips. 

5. The Shipyards Being Starbases have their own GalCiv III style dedicated screen where they have their own build queue and can also be optionally upgraded by using more constructors. Because they are important you could add modules to defend them or maybe gives your ships some perks, the possibilities are vast. ( i edited the text in the image to give idea)

6. Maybe those good ol StarPorts on the planets could be kept as a requirement to allow the channeling of the production to the ShipYard. After all, you would need them to shuttle the resources. Incidentally that would allow a way to keep using the +1 military adjacent bonuses you get from your colony layout Those +1 bonus could be used in many fun and creative ways as part of the synergy between the planetary starports and the System shipyard.

Some advantages of a system like this ( in my opinion )

1. Has all the benefits of the Dual queue of GalCiv II

2. Is insanely cool and immersive: Also would be quite innovative as far as Space 4x designs go.

3. Consolidate your ship building in fewer but more efficient production centers : Reduces the number of queues to manage and the number of rally points to update while keeping the same amount of production. Less micromanagement, more fun.

4. New strategic options for warfare. Shipyards become prime targets for attacks. Also make them interesting for defense as they tend to Agro attacks.

5. The most basic ships are still buildable from planets: That would prevent a cheesy ''Checkmate'' endgame if one gets his shipyard destroyed early. Would also free the early part of the game of the requirement to build constructors when all you might want to do is build a few scouts and colony ships. 

Please comment

We just posted very similar thoughts within 40 seconds of each other . . . I believe there is a saying about great minds . . . 

In response: I like what you added, especially your thoughts on planetary ship production and starport function, and I also prefer the distance-from-planet model better than the within-starbase-effect model.

Ah yeah, had initially missed your post  because of them being posted virtually at the same time. :p 

I had been thinking also about the concept of having outer space ShipYards. 

What immediately came to my mind thought is building proxy Shipyards in enemy territory in the End game phase, when you basically have already won or near to. Instead of having to wait 25 turns for your ships to travel the whole map to finish mopping that last enemy. Just build a Shipyard right in his place and then link like 25 planets to it. You would lose a lot of production due to distance but might be a way to quickly spam those transports where you need them. ( providing that the marines could somehow be shuttled too )

You must be out of your mind. Starports are and I will pray to God tonight that they will always be the main ship building source.

This isn't just you Max, but every time there is a hard problem the number one idea is to reduce, limit, and restrict game features and call the waiting and malice's "immersive!". Less starports and grouping isn't the best answer friend. just make better design management, and governors. IMSO

I think it should be simpler. Two queues, accessible  from in the colony screen and the main map like before. How SD fix's this is based on their creativity. and they are creative, their game code. and customer service proves it.

DARCA

My thoughts on single cue

I absolutely love this idea. It makes sense to pool resources.

The only issue I have is the fourth slider.

Some bright spark needs to come up with a way to make it work without the extra slider.

I personally like micromanagement, especially in the first 150 turns, but a perfect game needs to cater to both user groups, a simple more global approach for the one side (and the late game) and a detail one for the others.

So I would prefer a global Spending wheel that can be overridden on a planet or actually for a category of planets (in the style of governor types).

I would prefer the dual queues, but the suggested slider should be applied on a planet / governor level, not on the overall global level.

In summary:

Global spending wheel with three dimensions: Manufacturing, Research, Wealth (as is)

Local override spending wheel (Governor based)

Manufacturing control on a planet level, percentage of industry capacity assignment to each manufacturing building (colony (for buildings), starport (for ships)).

Allow more manufacturing buildings (additional build unit for buildings, additional starports) and therefore additional local queues.

Support channeling production capacity to the solar systems mayor starship building facility (starbase) like suggested above by EvilMaxWar.

Should only one object be built, the sliders are automatically adjusted to assign the full capacity of the planet to that queue. For the none-micromanagers the basic setting is that the capacity of a planet will always be equally distributed to all build queues active on the planet.

Maybe we could work with two spending wheels, if we are not allowing additional building facilities on the planets (I would still prefer the additional ones, but for a solution without that track):

1) Spending Wheel (Manufacturing, Research, Wealth)

2) Manufacturing Spending Wheel (planetary Buildings, planetary Ship Production, Starbase ship production)

The problem with the second wheel is that two of the three directions require a building on the planet before they can be applied.

Not an attack, just a comment about abstraction in games. Apoligies for the lack of proper "This is a kind of joke" smilie.

Your last sentence is basically the same thing I said though. If you can use billions of people to buy a farm and a ship in a planet, why not use it to build two farms? Or a farm and a factory? Or two ships? Even if it's at reduced production rate, it would make sense that you could build multiple stuff on a planet if you have enough population for the tasks (0.1B people could not be enough for that hyper factory and that huge battlecruiser though). That you could even set the priorities for each construction in the planet. Buuuuuut... nope. Single queue (or double in GalCivII).

Queues are decided because of gameplay, not realism. As baffling as sometimes it can be.

I do not understand two of the criticized points about a one-queue building approach:

1. realism: of course you wouldn't build just one thing on a planet at a time, but instead of having 1,324,980 Industrial complexes, 349,000 science labs, 2 Million farms etc. building at the same time, the GAME abstracts this into "one farm" etc. A ship is kind of a "mega-project" and it means that the focus of the planet is on that project at the time of its construction (other things get build, but its not worth mentioning). After the ship is finished, other "mega-projects" are undertaken, for instance the industrial sector is strengthened overall (hundreds of thousands additional factories being represented by one additional "building" in the game). 

2. speed: if you have two projects at 50% split of resources each, it takes twice as long to finish either one. The outcome is nearly identical (even somewhat worse) than having one thing building at 100% and than after that the second thing at 100%. 

What I really like, is InquisitorFelix' idea of having dedicated starbase-production facilities in space, to whom resources can be channeled from several planets and asteroids in range:

In that way, you would only have a couple of shipyards for your super-powerfull ships, instead of a huge amount of planets producing at the same time, but taking forever to finish them. Especially in larger galaxies and in the end game.

Also, I think smaller ships should be allowed to build on planets, even without a spaceport/starbase-drydock, to make for a quicker starting phase and to prevent the checkmate scenario where you can't build any ships even though you have planets.

Don't be silly DARCA.  Please re-read the OP and then read the FrogBoy quote on the Gaunathor post. That should give you some insight as to what I am doing.  Like you, I really liked GalCiv II and saw no immediate reason to change the system. But It is not the same anymore. And Brad seemed quite set that two planetary queues would likely not happen. Instead the preferred alternative was an external shipyard. 

Im just trying to push dual queue ideas forward but doing so in the way that the Devs said they would be interested in doing it.

I am all for a better idea but have not found it so far.

I tried to think about a way to incorporate this into the production wheel but seriously It seems to be a deadend. The wheel is pretty much hard limited to 3 options. Even if you turn into a square with 4 options. When you think about it for a minute you see that it would not work.

I think you misunderstood that point. It is not about that kind of speed but rather how fast you can turn around your empire production without manually updating 75 unique planet queues.

Refer to my exemple with the Drengin declaring war on you, And you really need to quickly shift your entire production to military to counter it.

If  your current production is mostly social production that means you want to stop that and build ships instead. With a single queue you need to manually change all your queues. With dual queues it can be done very quickly with one slider.

The production slider shouldn't play a role. I would suggest that it is a flat percentage of the planets production capability, which is based on the upgrades one has on the actual shipyard itself.

I would suggest that transport / colony pods can ONLY be built on a planet. You need to load them up anyway.

I would support a late game research from the study of worm-holes to create a warp-gate between two starbases. I think Necessary for very very large maps.

I support a radius point for a shipyard, but this should only give bonuses to production per planet in radius. Allowing one to build a deepspace shipyard, but won't get planetary bonuses. The star-ports on planets give bonuses to shipyards within range.

A separate strategic ship yard would be a great addition to the game but it isn't new in 4X games.

I like the idea of the Starport build queue for larger ships and the production coming from the planets within it's radius. As the game proceeds I find myself with a few small planets scattered about which have production capability and no spare hexes on the planet surface. It would be nice to be able to shift production resources via a trade route between the planet and a relevant Starport. The rate at which Starport production would be boosted could depend on spare planetary production capacity, how much of this could be transferred on any given trade ship and how many trade ships ran the route. The trade route would then be a viable target for an enemy force as it would directly affect  ship production rather than a planets economy.

The more I think about it the more I want it.

Ok, what about this,

The current star port mechanics stay. All ships are buildable. You don't have to build a  Solar construction yard.

But you can, with the right tech. (no extra slider)

This will give you:

A second Solar construction yard, all planets owned by you send a % resource to the yard.

Any asteroid mining can be directed straight to the SCY for a significant bonus.

Further technology could increase the % sent to SCY

Planet project send all resources to SCY

That sounds like a galactic achievement (or at least a civlization achievement). That is to say a only 1 may be built.

I think the whole Fixed rate shipyard production to avoid having a 4th slider defeats the point of the dual queue system. Without a global control to direct them on a empire wide level, dual queue does not seem even half as interesting to me.

I think it would make sense to go back to dual queue. It worked in Galciv2 and it was fun. I don't see how changing it would make the game any better?

No, not an achievement. All races can build at least one per system

As in Galciv2 you didn't have to build any star bases to achieve victory, but if you did ....

Galciv3 has only one construction queue at present. We don't know what the devs have in mind.

It has been hinted there may be an option for a second queue, this is my interpretation of what could be done.

I like the idea EvilMaxWar  suggested.

Your (and others)  participation and contributions on all that concerns stardock games  is excellent.

I value your opinion.

You sound defeated, I may be wrong

I still love your idea. It just need fleshing out.

Lets brain storm!!!

The fixed rate, is not a bad idea. There are only so many supply ships that can travel to the shipyard at a time.

Thus, I suggest that upgrades to the shipyard, yield higher rates of production. The radius may also increase which implies it can gain bonuses from other planets falling into its domain of influence. This forces strategic placement of the shipyards. Tuning up all production to a planet will still give a bonus to the shipyard as well.

Not saying a slider is a bad portion, but I do not ever envision the entire production of a planet reaching a shipyard. There are only so many transports that a shipyard can organize to sort / store goods. Planets are really big... shipyards are small by comparison. Hence, why I suggest a production bonus from a planet, based off the planets production rate.

I too like the idea of limiting small ships to be built on planets so you never are completely dead in the water but save building the larger stuff in space. I did like the two queues as well, being able to build a planetary project and keep building ships made sense to me. I cannot help thinking about the USS Enterprise in dry dock as the "concept" behind space built larger hulls. Also the above mentioned ideas of utilizing a the whole star systems planets to contribute resources to building larger ships is a great idea!

Constructing large structures in zero gravity would be more beneficial (cost effective, if the raw material were already in space) than constructing on a planet, with the view of Ejecting said construction into space.

I agree that any resource coming from a planet would suffer a penalty.

The idea that you could pool resources from all bodies within a  system to make a 'super construction site' appeals to me.

True, and we're only talking about a outward visual representation here. I think it boils down more to each individual's taste and acceptance for/of change. We're used to having dual queues from GalCiv2, so not seeing it feels different and change is initially rejected in an automatic way, by most people, unless there is an instant positive gratification in that change, thus overcoming any resistance to change that might crop up. So basically it's the same but different.

To weigh in on this thread (but I won't quote other comments because I can't keep them all straight!)

First, I will truly miss the dual queue system of planetary improvements and ships being built at the same time.  I respect the desire to change the game dynamic; it will be a challenge for some of us.

Second, I fully support the ideas presented for a space-based ship construction platform if there cannot be a dual planet-side queue.  Allow small ships (colony, constructor, defender, etc.) to be built planet-side along with planetary improvements.  But capital ships would need to be built in space.

My concept -- use the "Terror Star" system of GC2, where a number of techs must be researched to create these unique star bases.  Or have the research of capital ship technologies provide unique constructor modules for such space construction platforms.

Also, have them anchored to solar systems.  Or only able to move one unit per turn (too massive to do otherwise) once fully constructed and self-sufficient, i.e., it becomes an artificial planet strictly limited to producing space vessels.

I do not like adding another slider to determine how this construction platform is supplied, so using the "influence radius" concept, fix some ratio of planet population + manufacturing capabilities to feed supplies to this base project.  Below certain levels, individual planets can't build or sustain these platforms.  This would limit their construction and function.  Once fully self-sufficient, as an artificial planet, it falls under the civilization's overall production scheme.

Anyway, I'm probably only repeating what others have said, but it's my two cents!