Special "ships built with this improvement" apply the turn the ship is created. If it works even if zero production is provided by the source planet(due to range) then you could conceivably put all those improvements on one planet and just route it to every ship's last turn. But honestly, you should just build more ships rather than making less that are very slightly better.

That's good to know, thanks.

Well, i do build 'more ships' but those go towards 'militia' fleets primarily just for defense.

Then i like to build 'special' fleets (few in number) which are the best ships i can get for the purpose of the pure enjoyment of combat - and for these ships, i do want every little edge i can get.

I was thinking of setting up with a cluster of about 3 or 4 worlds and putting the best ships i can build in every shipyard and usually they will be very slow to build, so it should not be too much trouble to keep an eye on it and switch the shipyard project planet to each one on the last turn of production.

If I understand the question right without an ideology perk you have shipyard decay after five tiles so it is important to move your shipyard to cover as many planets you are sponsoring as possible including your highest manufacturing planet is a primary concern.  What this means if you switch shipyards with your manufacturing capital you lose manufacturing because of distance decay. This should be a concern in both positioning, or moving your shipyard, and picking planets to sponser your shipyard.

Five tiles is it?

Because you know how unaffiliated planets are automatically attached to any nearby shipyard if that planet built the shipyard or not...... Well i noticed unaffiliated planets more than five tiles away are not automatically attached and i had to do it manually, this must explain why? But always i will give those planets there own shipyard as soon as its productive capacity makes it worthwhile to do so or the shipyard it is helping is producing constructors less than five turns.

-once a shipyard starts getting fast i will detach assisting planets because fast production is less efficient (unless i am building combat vessels of course).

6 Actualy, Standard, Ideology perks can boost this, alot.

EDIT:

Military Subsidies is your best friend btw, in regards to producing ships quickly that a shipyard would normaly take an age to build. For example, currently I have a shipyard that takes 24 turns to build a colony ship, I switched 1 of the 3 planets sponsering to Military Subsidies and they get produced every 3 turns now. Switch 2 and its every turn.

The same applies for planetary production for improvements and I suspect it also applies for research.

I do use military subsidies - usually when the planet doesn't have anything useful to build though.

Interestingly, last night when i switch to military subsidies, my planet builds a shipyard!!! I thought possibly because similar looking option? But then again, lately my planets have been building wrong things..... because my mouse has been getting a bit 'sticky' here and there, don't you just hate a sticky mouse!! grrrrrr

I did not know any production is carried over?? I have not seen any evidence of this?

I know it used to in Galciv2, so you could actually change a ship or planetary construction half way through an the production is switched to the new project but this is forbidden in Galciv3.

It does.

Hmmm, does the advised number of turns for production fail to take this excess production in to account? That might explain why i have not observed any evidence of this excess production being carried over?

Yes, it fails to take this into account, when displaying the expected finishing time of a ship/improvement. You can make it visible if you have an empty queue and hover the mouse over the empty production queue. If there is a stockpile, A tip will pop up. You can slo just try it out yourslef, build a world up to have 60 manufacturing, build a couple of 3 manufacturing improvements and then an expensive one (e.g promethion reserve). It will be finished faster then is displayed in the turn you order it.

You don't get this effect for changing a half finished project, this manufacturing goes down the drain.

Ok, well of course i will never notice/remember if something got built sooner than reported! lol

But then how come the first factory on Earth is reported to finish in 4 turns but then the next turn it changes to 7 turns?

Because you started building something at the shipyard, which eats half the production of the planet at the initial setting of 50/50.

Huh? But I thought social and military production was separate? Its not?

The slider says how much of it goes, the actual shipyard says if it goes in the first place.  If you don't have a shipyard, or have an inactive shipyard, none of it is going.  Until you actually set something building, your planet is assuming full production just as if there wasn't an attached shipyard to start with.

OMG wish i knew this sooner!!! In all my games I have been building ships at my main science worlds and any other worlds that are a struggle to develop!

Yes, that would be a bit of a drag on them.

Oh well, it is an answer that contributes well to the topic of this thread.... why are my worlds so undeveloped! .... because i sucked all the life out of them building ships! lol

Edit: why it always trick me to quote the wrong message? I am tired of that.

Hover over the empty space under your shipyard build queue.  It will display any accumulated production.  If your build list is so long there is no empty space, you are out of luck finding a displayed value.  My favorite trick is to let a high production shipyard pop out a bunch of upgrade constructors one per turn while I research my latest military tech.  Then I upgrade my designs and use the accumulated manufacturing to pop out a fresh new shiny top of the line ship,  It's not a big exploit or anything, but it is fun.

Good tip, thx

Or you eliminate the decay. The Terran Alliance gets 50% shipyard decay reduction (Engineers Ability). When you couple that with Pragmatic -> Builder -> Coordinated, you get an additional 50% reduction, for a total of 100% reduction, which means any planet can sponsor any shipyard, anywhere, without decay. 

This is one of the reasons I take this as an Ability in a custom race too. The larger the map, the more valuable this Ability is. 

Also if you have a Shipyard in the middle of a bunch of plants, but not within two tiles of a specific planet, you cannot get people put on Colonizers or Transports (you have to go do a drive-by and pick them off a specific planet). My feeling is, it's just best to get rid of the decay as much as possible. 

The distance limit for auto fill of a Colonizer or Transport is 6 tiles.  To my understanding this does not extend with any bonuses.  As you point out, you have to do land and leave maneuvers {an old phrase from pilot practice sessions is "touch and goes") to add population from planets beyond that radius.

Here's the biggest problem.  Way too late to start rolling the economic starbase snowball down the path to victory.  This should be the first thing you concentrate on after the colony rush.

Indeed!

So i have been replaying this same map.... i am not up to turn 270, i am about 190, but already i can see i am about 10 times more powerful than the first play through!

The only significant change was to build more factories from the start... plus making Earth my manufacturing capital.

The Drenging still managed to streak ahead on the power rating, but this time i did not wait for technology, i started building lots of prototype ships from early game.

The Drengin have been at war with me for a long time but have not attacked? How come? neither do they seem like they want to? I have just one powerful prototype ship fleet on their boarder looking for a fight, but i did not think i needed 'range' to find them, so my ships are stuck at range limit and the drengin wont come and play? What is wrong with them?

I did harrass them a few times with fast survey ships and kill their asteroid mines and any constructors i came accross. They have some powerful fleets but the speed is only 3, is that why they wont attack?

Their overall power rating is first at 2500 and i am second at about 2100. Their difficulty level is Genius.

Shameless self-promotion: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4hv-Mbo-IfWQnWeOAv8jFpSmkjdNpM6_

You might pick up a thing or two. 

Never concern yourself with the power rating. It means almost nothing. 

How far away are they? If they are very far away, it is going to take them some time to get to you. 

Remember, the AI isn't smart: it will do things that human players would never do, like declare war before having a fleet ready, or declaring war over a long distance. 
 

That has a lot to do with it. With only 3 moves it will take them a long time to get to you. 
 

"Genius" doesn't make them any smarter, it just gives them massive bonuses: http://galciv3.gamepedia.com/Difficulty_Settings

Among other things the blueprints for ships are tweaked to ahve more engines.