[PvK]

Thanks for the feedback, ZeroAdunn!

Do you mean faster, in absolute terms, or "faster than on a planet"?

If you mean the latter, then I can see arguments from both sides. In Proportions, you do have to have 100 million people (and a spaceyard) on a planet before the planetary rate reaches the rate of an orbital yard (and 100M people can take some effort to achieve on a colony).

In a yard in space, you wouldn't have to get the completed ship into orbit, but you would have to get the materials there, probably work in a weightless vaccuum (which has both pros and cons), and are isolated from planetary infrastructure support, and so on. I'd say it was up to a lot of technical details and could go either way.

I figure a developed planet like a homeworld should have a higher rate than a single orbital yard.

So in Proportions, the planetary rate, once the planet is developed (represented semi-abstractly by population), includes being able to multi-task the construction in a way that has to be abstracted since there can only be one planetary queue in the game. Meanwhile, you can build as many orbital shipyards as you want, so in that sense, orbital can always out-produce planetary, even if not in a one-on-one comparison.

PvK