Buildings

If you want to make things in Naval Action, you need buildings — and there are really only three that matter: the Workshop, the Forge, and the Shipyard. The important thing to understand up front is what they aren’t: they’re not passive factories that pile up goods while you’re offline. They’re workbenches you stand at and operate — you feed in materials, choose what to make, and craft it on the spot.

The three crafting buildings

Each building is a station for one part of the craft:

• Workshop — makes components and repair supplies: the rope, fittings, planks, and consumables that other recipes (and your ships in battle) depend on. It’s the broadest, lowest building and usually the first you put up.
• Forge — makes guns: cannons, carronades, and the ammunition they fire. If you want to arm your own hulls or sell ordnance, this is where it’s made.
• Shipyard — makes ships. It’s the top of the chain and the most demanding to unlock and supply; the whole subject of building a hull is covered on Ship Crafting & Blueprints.

How they chain together

The three buildings are designed to feed one another, and seeing that chain is the key to crafting well. Raw materials — bought, traded, or looted (see Resources & Woods) — go into the Workshop to become components. Components and more raws go into the Forge to become cannons and shot. And the Shipyard pulls components, guns, and woods together into a finished ship. Each step adds value, which is why a self-sufficient crafter — or a clan that splits these roles between members — can build a fully armed hull far more cheaply than buying every piece.

Buildings live at your outposts

A building has to sit in a port where you hold an outpost, because it draws on that port’s warehouse for materials and deposits what it makes there. That ties your crafting geography to your outpost network: it’s usually smart to cluster a building where the materials it needs are easy to get, rather than hauling raws across the map to a shipyard in the wrong place. You can hold only a limited number of buildings — the cap rises with rank and can be extended — so each one is a real choice about what you mean to make.

Planning what to build

Because buildings and their slots are limited, build to your intent. A captain who mainly fights and wants to keep ships repaired and armed leans on a Workshop and perhaps a Forge; a dedicated shipwright invests in a Shipyard and the supply lines to feed it; a trader may skip buildings altogether and simply buy what others craft. Note too that blueprints — the templates the Shipyard builds from — come from the Admiralty, which is a purchasing post, not a building you construct. For how the money side of this pays off, see Making Money.