Star Wars Shipbuilding Industry

[Kingmaker]

One thing I've noticed whilst reading various extended universe novels is that shipbuilding industry in the GFFA seems to be extremely concentrated.

Kuat, Corellia, Mon Calamari, and Fondor are all stated to be major strategic locations at various points because of their massive shipyards. However, given the scale of galactic civilization, one would think that the industry of a single system (even a wealthy and overdeveloped one like Kuat or Corellia) would be a drop in the bucket of galactic warship building capabilities. Is this just more of authors not grasping the scale of galactic civilization, or do a small number of highly developed shipyard systems really dominate the industry?

[Sea Skimmer]

Kuat is described as having had several of the systems planets completely dismantled for materials; so no, I don’t think they are all completely failing to grasp how big these shipyards would need to be. I do think the authors totally drop the ball on diversity of star ship types which then tends to reinforce the notion of few yards.


Just because the yards are located in one system though; which makes it easier to control and defend them, doesn’t mean they aren’t drawing in resources from other areas. They almost certainly do so on a considerable scale; after all hyper drive covers galactic distances within a days timeframe. We don’t know how much fuel costs, but we don’t get the impression that it is highly expensive.

Krupp at Essen in Germany is a perfect real life example of one small area having a massive concentration of armaments industry, surrounded by a vast array of supporting industries you don’t hear so much about. The big yards in Star Wars are probably similar.

[Connor MacLeod]

It really isn't as decentralized as it seems, it only looks that way because there were relatively few major shipbuilders under Palpy's reign (monopolization and eliminating competition is a good thing from a business perspective, remember.) But the big shipbuilders often had multiple shipyards scattered throughout the galaxy. The Pentestar alignment as I recall had control of some shipyards that were a KDY subsidiary or afilliate, and there was Rothana, also tied to KDY.

The Empire retained its own shipbuilding capability. maintaining multiple Imperial-controlled shipyards in a sector: some of which were stationary and some of which were mobile. (We saw an example of some yards of that sort in the Black Fleet Crisis novels.)

[The Romulan Republic]

One thing I've noticed whilst reading various extended universe novels is that shipbuilding industry in the GFFA seems to be extremely concentrated.

Kuat, Corellia, Mon Calamari, and Fondor are all stated to be major strategic locations at various points because of their massive shipyards. However, given the scale of galactic civilization, one would think that the industry of a single system (even a wealthy and overdeveloped one like Kuat or Corellia) would be a drop in the bucket of galactic warship building capabilities. Is this just more of authors not grasping the scale of galactic civilization, or do a small number of highly developed shipyard systems really dominate the industry?

First of all, those are far from the only significant shipyards. There's also Sluis Van and Bilbrigi or whatever (which appeared to be one of those directly Imperial-controlled yards) in The Thrawn Trilogy, and probably others as well. Kuat, Corillea, and Mon Calimari seem to be the most prominent, but they are far from the only ones.

[Kingmaker]

First of all, those are far from the only significant shipyards. There's also Sluis Van and Bilbrigi or whatever (which appeared to be one of those directly Imperial-controlled yards) in The Thrawn Trilogy, and probably others as well. Kuat, Corillea, and Mon Calimari seem to be the most prominent, but they are far from the only ones.

I was aware that there were other major strategic shipyards, but the ones I mentioned were just the first that came to mind. Still, Kuat and Fondor seem to get an inordinate amount of attention in the EU (Kuat understandably, given the gargantuan orbital ring shipyard and the monopoly on Star Destroyer production).

The big yards in Star Wars are probably similar.

So, you've got the Kuat Drive Yards in Kuat itself, but Kuat has ~400 (or whatever) feeder industrial systems producing components and raw materials for the big yards in Kuat, which uses that stuff to assemble Star Destroyers. Am I getting that right?

But the big shipbuilders often had multiple shipyards scattered throughout the galaxy. The Pentestar alignment as I recall had control of some shipyards that were a KDY subsidiary or afilliate, and there was Rothana, also tied to KDY.

And there's probably a lot of smaller yards that, while they can't turn out the volume of Kuat or Mon Cal or Corellia, can supply sector or system demand for stuff like fighters and patrol/escort frigates. Maybe the big yards get so much attention compared to other manufacturers because there are a very limited number of yards that can assemble the really big stuff i.e. Star Dreadnoughts and large orbital forts. A company like Sienar might be very nearly as important, but their products don't require massive orbital facilities to assemble (which don't require dedicated dreadnought fleets to defend).

[Eternal_Freedom]

And there's probably a lot of smaller yards that, while they can't turn out the volume of Kuat or Mon Cal or Corellia, can supply sector or system demand for stuff like fighters and patrol/escort frigates. Maybe the big yards get so much attention compared to other manufacturers because there are a very limited number of yards that can assemble the really big stuff i.e. Star Dreadnoughts and large orbital forts. A company like Sienar might be very nearly as important, but their products don't require massive orbital facilities to assemble (which don't require dedicated dreadnought fleets to defend).

I think this is pretty much it. Also:

In SW we focus on Galactic governments, so we are likely to see shipyards that provide these governments with their chosen, galactic-standard ships (ISD's, Mon Cal cuisers etc).

So, Kuat, Fondor (which built at least one Executor SSD), Bilbringi, Mon Calamari (which by 137 ABY has a massive orbital ring like Kuat). Those are the big yards that supply the galactic governments with their trademark ships, so we see those most.

There are plenty of other shipyards that can supply smaller level governments. Consider, Correllia used it's own shipyards to build a powerful assault fleet in the Second Galactic Civil War, Bothawui managed to build and maintain a complete and successful line of Assault Cruisers, and the Hapes Cluster was able to build whole fleets of Battle Dragons entirely on it's own.

(Also, just off hand, the fleet carrier Endurance, centrepiece of the Fifth Fleet in the Black Fleet Crisis was build at the yards of somewhere called Harrsk.)

[lord Martiya]

You're forgetting the Rendili Stardrive. That, according to the Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross Section, HAS a system of yards in the Mid and Outer Rims, apart the main one in the Rendili system.

[Broken]

Kuat really can dominate the heavy warship/ship-building industry on sheer size alone. Most of my post will deal with Kuat since that is the source I am most familiar with and have the most information on. To give you an idea of the scale of the Kuat shipyards, here is the image from Platt's Starport Guide back in the EU of WEG's d6 system.
Kuat
As noted in that same guide:

pg 38
Due to the high volume of starship traffic around Kuat itself, direct hyperspace travel to the planet is forbidden. It's also impossible. The Kuat system proper consists of a star, four planets (including Kuat), and thousands of stardock facilities orbiting Kuat's sun. Navigators plotting direct courses are surprised when their hyperdrives cut out before the ship is even near the system - the stardocks extend that far out.

Since we know it takes planetary sized "mass shadows" to drop a ship out of hyperspace, that gives at least some idea of the absurdly huge size of the shipyards which completely encompass the orbit of the four planets of the Kuat system itself, although we don't know if this is only on the orbital plane of the planets (given EU writers, this is likely) or some variation of a Dyson Sphere. Unless they literally used some no-longer existing planets as raw materials, it must have been a delicate dance to construct something so huge without throwing off the orbits of the other planets, moons, and other assorted debris in a solar system from all extra gravitational mass they added to the system. Doubtlessly as a Core World, Kuat build up their manufactory over thousands of years, but they still must have strip-mined an enormous amount of materials to just build the docks themselves, not to mention how much demand there must be to require such a huge structure to begin with.

Now, it seems logical that the other major shipyards have either physical infrastructure on a similar scale or perhaps have spread out their capabilities in order to have "local" service across the galaxy. Correllia is noted especially as a large starship producer, although more civilian oriented then Kuat. Otherwise, the sheer volume of ships and modules that something like Kuat could produce would simply saturate the market until they became the default basically everywhere, since hyperspace travel seems to be both extremely fast and inexpensive making markets easily accessible from any one starting point.

Warship production, on the other hand, is likely more restricted either by regulation or inertia built up over centuries of peace. It would not surprise me to learn for instance that Rothana Heavy Engineering, a subsidiary of KDY, built the Acclamator-class for the Clone Troopers using a "paper project" from KDY in order to keep the whole clone army affair potentially at arm's length if it proved a fiasco fed by the press and Senate. Likewise, the satellite shipyards used by Black Sword Command in the Koornacht cluster could repair and construct ships from designs they already had. Fondor, Sluis Van, and Bilbrigi perhaps all fall into this category, all able to produce large capital ships, especially Fondor which required a non-military traffic ban from the Imperial Navy during the construction of the Executor; the Executor project it is also noted took up the majority of the Fondor shipyard's resources. But they all lacked the scale to mass-produce warships.

From what I can find, the Yevetha captured no more then 5 capital ships and 39 other ships in various stages of repair and construction. It took them 12 years to bring their count of star destroyers up to around 60 with hundreds of "thrustships" of a much smaller design which do not appear to require the captured shipyards to construct. Compare that to the thousands of warships needed to be built in short order for the Clone Wars. In Battle of Coruscant alone, both sides fielded over 1000 warships, mostly destroyers for the Republic and CIS frigates. That means in 3 years the Venator-class Star Destroyer was designed (or updated/dusted off if it was a paper project) and over a thousand were built in time for the Battle of Coruscant alone with an unknown number not diverted from their deployments in the rest of the galaxy. That's the kind of scale the films reveal and the EU mostly seems to get entirely wrong.