When I design ships in Gal Civ 2, I don't care a lick about art. I don't care how many doodads the ship has, what is looks like, etc. The only thing I care about is how quickly can I put the stats on the ship that I want and then get back to my empire.
So my feedback for the shipyard is from a purely functionalist approach
1) The art is fine enough for me. Again as a person who doesn't care that much, the ships look good, I can make out everything I need to see, I'm good to go.
2) The stat tooltips look good. I can go down each stat, and see clearly where my bonus are coming from (+2 for tiny, +4 for engines x2, +15% for speed bonus, etc). Only thought here would be to put the percentage bonuses at the bottom, and show the actual amount they generate.
So for example right now it looks like this:
10% awesome bonus
50 stuff 1
50 stuff 2
110
My preference:
50 stuff 1
50 stuff 2
10 (10% awesome bonus)
110
3) I am assuming tactical speed is a future stat or maybe a placeholder? Right now its confusing compared to move cap, which is actual speed in the game.
4) The equip object area at the bottom is too small in my opinion, I would like it to take up a bit more of the real estate in the ship builder, or at least be adjustable. Personally I would love two rows, one for weapons/defenses, one for everything else. It helps keep things clearer when I add a lot of modules. It would also be great if it could sort the modules by type. For example, if I add a laser, than a shield, then a laser, it puts them down in that exact order. I would like to see it resort to show laser, laser, shield...so its easier to visually see what modules I've added.
5) The mass number goes red when I'm close to my mass number. I would prefer yellow to show caution. Also it would be great if modules greater than your remaining mass number were grayed out to highlight you can't get them currently.
6) If I use existing design, I would like the screen to default to the equip tab instead of the doodad tab. My thoughts here is generally if I am using an existing design my goal is to update the stats, not modify the art. This could also be a preference I would imagine. For example, for me I would always prefer to be on the equip tab first.