[Loser]

Monolith Facilities are great, really great, though they are time-consuming to build. I usually only use them on good-air, large or huge worlds, and build a Ship Yard 3 (or better yet a TSY3) just to cut down their construction time. But that reasource converter trick makes them even more impressive.... how devious....

As for the length of time it takes to build Ring Worlds or Sphere Worlds (or any tool of Stellar Manipulation), you really have to use the .... um .... 'cascading upgrade series' (got a better term?) technique or you'll never get it built (well, not _never_, but ... 'never'). Ship- (or Base-)based SY3 will build an empty Star Base in six turns IIRC, and once they're all built you need only one turn (and all of Brewster's Millions) to dance-retrofit-dance your way to the right components. *BLAM* : Big-Fracking-Planet-Thing.