There's bonus tiles for everything else - production, influence, morale, food, research. I'd like to see this implemented in 1.2.
Jarink
I don't like the idea of a manufacturing ship, but what about a starbase module? 500 B.C. cost Tiny hulls only Fixed (say 5-10 pts) of ship production (break it into 2 modules of 5 pts producion each?) Military starbases only Of course, this is assuming it would be possible to code ship production of any kind for starbases.
The problem is, GavCiv2 fleet combat is basically ship-on-ship, not fleet-on-fleet. To use your example, a modern naval task force is usually made up of ships with specific capabilities and tasks. An Aegis cruiser is awesome against air targets, but would be virtually useless against submarines. FFGs are great at anti-sub, but can barely protect themselves against missles/aircraft and are totally worthless for shore bombardment (a single 3" gun and no ship-to-shore missles). <br