Sailing Era Shipbuilding
First off you need the blueprint. Easier said than done. Other threads on those.
Secondly it is possible to get any ship via random builds. Gotta be lucky though. That makes this whole system redundant but at the same time takes the random out of the result. Depends what you input. Also note that a ship built via random with tacky components CAN result in the same ship that you craft with a blueprint and the best components. Again this system simply removes the random. Worth it? Not sure since you can save scum…
The superb components required by the best ships are from guild upgraded ship component shops. Each shop usually has one type of superb component so you will ultimately require several shops upgraded.
Shipbuilding skill – when you build a ship it will say your skill and then the number of ‘Entries possible’. These entries are the bonus stats and the amount awarded are random up to the maximum. You can roll 0. More later.
The way I do mine requires several quite specific things.
First I upgrade my town to max. It must have a shipyard (duh) and if it has a ship component shop so much the better. It MUST have a post for expeditions to do this as I suggest. This post is important. Again more later.
I made ‘Ship of the Line’. What I assume to be the largest of the ‘English’ ships. No promises there. I will try to random something bigger later.
Because these come standard with max weaponry attribute I added purple star gold ingots.
So… With all my supplies on hand and upgrades done what I do is this.
Save your game in the town.
Commence your build in the shipyard using your blueprint and gold.
Go to your post and commence an expedition.
Wander around in there on flat ground (1 supply per day) and do NOTHING in there other than wander around aimlessly.
Leave after the number of days required to craft your ship and collect your ship.
Check it’s bonus skills. If you don’t roll max then repeat till you do and make sure it’s good ones. Some are not really useful and others are.
Once you are happy make it your flagship as I doubt very much the bonus on other fleet ships matter so you can just make whatever to fill those.
I actually kept my better rolls of 4 bonus until I got one with 5. 5 requires 12 shipbuilding skill.
I do not have 4 +shipbuilding items for my shipbuilder so it can go above 12 I assume. I do not know the cap on skill or max bonus you can have.
Some of these ideas easily translate across to other ways of crafting ships. Like using the post and save scumming builds. I believe that you must have a save before you commit to a build because I believe the resulting ship and all it’s bonus skills are determined at this point. Saving anywhere after this point will net you the exact same result every time. I tested it. Might be exceptions but I didn’t find one. So save before you commit to a build and using a post is the fastest way I found to speed the days up.
Hope it helps.