[Jmenschenfresser]

I've noticed the lack of build activity by the AI on several occasions, but I've never actually seen ships appearing out of empty construction queues, if that is what you mean. Most of the time their SYs sit idle, while one or two crank out ships.

As far as adding the racial trait, be sure to change the ship construction file first off, so that they use the racial weapons in their ships, bases, sats, etc. Easy way is to copy and paste the file from a race already using that trait...that's more on the fly.