Ship Factory

"New ships are designed and constructed at the Ship Factory, making it a critical part of a base's operations."

Stats (X-)
Note: Upgrade stats can be found here.

General
The Ship Factory is responsible for ship construction. Along with the Ship Lab, its level determines the range of hulls you have the ability to build.

The build queue can only support one ship, meaning that you cannot build or refit multiple ships simultaneously. However, you can still scrap ships during another ship's build or refit.

When damaged, the current build or refit is paused until the Ship Factory is repaired to full health.

At level XI, the Ship Factory gains the ability to launch base squadrons, similar to The Bridge at the corresponding level (VI).

As a multi-tile structure, its range is determined by simulating a Combat Module with the same range in each of the two occupied tiles, then combining the two range arcs.

To rotate this structure, pick it up and press the arrow keys (on PC) or tap on empty space (on mobile).

Strategy
The Ship Factory is arguably the most important building to protect at all levels, especially in the end-game when build times become exceedingly long; taking damage in any way will delay your build queue, slowing the rate at which you progress in the game. Even if your Bridge or Storage Modules are destroyed, you will only lose resources and possibly some medals, but you can collect those through farming. On the other hand, you cannot regain lost time no matter how hard you tried. While there is a limited amount of stuff to research, there is virtually no limit on how many ships you can build (99 per ship).

At lower levels, the Ship Factory has no defensive capabilities, so place it close to the center of your base, providing it adequate protection from enemy attacks. Remember that even a single scratch will pause your builds! Your base will only start repairing by itself when it reaches the threshold of 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% health; otherwise, it will remain damaged until you log in and click on the repair button.

From level XI onwards, you might want to use it in a fashion similar to the Fleet Bay to improve the strength of your base. Try to make it such that destroying the Ship Factory would result in at least 25% overall damage (due to the need to take out nearby defenses), causing the base to start repairing without requiring you to check in from time to time.

Trivia

 * The Ship Factory initially had a different appearance when the VEGA Conflict was in Flash.
 * All Miner Rebellion modules (except Terminus Mines) received Anti-Pierce in the mid-January 2020 update which is basically infinite Counter Pierce.
 * The Ship Factory XIV was released in the late March 2020 update. In the same update, it received increased DPS at all levels.
 * The Ship Factory had its upgrade times reduced by 30% up to level XIII in the late April 2020 update.