[Suicide Junkie]

Wonder if houses could be modified so that they could only produce certain techs? Highliners would have to carry an uncompleted Ship to a different Sy and gift it to the house for fitting out of those techs. Then on to the next....Woe be to the house that dismantles and steals anothers tech..

Not really... In order to add to the ship you'd have to have the tech to design the model you're retrofitting to... INCLUDING all the previously added components.

So the Last person to add to the ship could have just done it all on his own.

The only place you can distinguish between players in this sort of area is construction, vs retrofitting/repair.

EG: Only one empire has any significant build rate...
This empire builds empty hulls, and sells them to other players.

The other players have 1 point per turn of construction capacity, so they can't build the hulls, but they can still retrofit and repair them to whatever design they like.