Dumb ass question

You have ships with the Space Yard component, and they won't finish anything?

For starters, what version of SE V are you playing, and what mods are you using, if any?

Basic troubleshooting (that I can think of)

Do said Space Yard Ships have supplies? (lots of things apparently fail on a ship/base if they have no supplies)

Do you have enough resources to build with?
Or are you trying to build something that costs a lot of a resource?

Do they have crew? (I've heard a ship will 'loose' its crew if upgraded at someplace other than a sector with one of your colonies)

Ok, Dude I ran into this problem also all, I did was lvl the componet up one more in the reasearch area.

The ship might not have any crew on it?
If you build a ship in a ship with a shipyard it has no crew in which to man it. You must build it with a Master Computer instead. Only way to have a crewed ship is to build it on a planet.

Never had the problem myself, but could it be in a system that doesn't have a space port, thus can't get access to resources? I'm just guessing, that might not be a problem at all.

Hmm that is a big change from SE:IV no? I wasn't aware of this at all...

When you build a ship in a base the ship has crew? I really don't see any reason for the ship not to have a crew when it is build on a ship shipyard. How does the game differentiate between the 2? is it moddable? i.e. is there a flag in the component description?

The OP had a point with respect to the shipyard ship. I you want the realism, the game should check if there is any population as cargo or as live planet population in the sector it is and if yes, provide a crew to the ship being built. That would be the best way to handle it IMHO. Otherwise don't make any distinctions and give crew to all ships built regardless of location or shipyard type.

I would also like to see population being added from the crew of a ship to a colony as minimum population to function a colony like 0.01M population.

Hmm, 10 000 crew (not colonists) on cargo ship (and colony ship is in essence cargo ship).

Yeah...and there's the problem. Population is measured in millions. If you need 1M...or even .1M or .01M people to crew a ship then you're doing something terribly wrong...

(Imagines endless rows of big sweaty guys peddling bicycles to power the ship's engines...)

The only good reason to have that many people on board would be for use as troops or boarding parties...but those are already modeled another way.

Here's another idea...don't know if it's possible. What about requiring the presence of a "replacement crew barracks" component when building a ship outside of planetary orbit. I'm thinking of something like the materials required to build ring and sphereworlds...must have "x" number of these crew components in the sector to build ship "x". Once the new ship is constructed the component would be destroyed (or go wherever it is that those sphereworld bases go...off into the mists of gameland). You could even make this a required component when building above planets...but that seems a little silly when theres a bahgillion useless civvies crawling around down there doing nothing...just waiting to be conscripted.

One neat idea would be a Transfer Crew option, so you could transfer crew from one ship/base to another.
I bring this up because I've made a 'concept' starbase that had max level crew quarters/life support and which had a capacity of over 8k crew, and had similar ideas for a ship also, sort of a 'space bus' as it were, both made just for fun.

If there was a Transfer Crew option, then it could be possible to actually have a ship that has extra crew quarters/life support could act as a 'bus' of sorts, not only to transfer crew to a base with a space yard, but also to crew new ships/bases built away from friendly systems, and also to re-crew ships that lost crew in combat.

I've also had a similar idea to the one Lord Shleepy mentioned.
A "Crew Transfer Facility" for bases that would make use of the unseen methods migrating population use to move around. Say it would be about 20kt, and would 'generate' 50 spare crew each turn.

Yet another idea to go with the above, toss in Crew as yet another resource that can be generated by a Resupply Depot. Planets would generate unlimited Crew by themselves, but a Resupply Depot could also provide limited amount of replacement crew to ships/bases in the same system that weren't at a colonized planet. It might not be enough to recrew a fleet impaired by a lot of toxin injectors, but it will quickly solve the problems of ships/bases ending up without crews in a friendly system due to damage or refit. Even with minimum crew, a ship could make it back to a friendly planet to get fully recrewed.

A side factor could be new Crew having base experience boosted if they came from a planet with crew training facility, be it by going to the planet or a Resupply Depot providing crew from that planet.

Lord Shleepy, I do like the idea of a 'crew' type component being needed to construct Ring Worlds or Sphere Worlds. Sort of represents needing a LOT of people to build one of them.
Could call it a Mega-Scale Construction Facility or something to that effect, a 2000kt component with a description like "Houses specialized crews and equipment needed to construct and maintain Ring Worlds and Sphere Worlds". The Base/Baseship it is one would be 'used up' like the other ones with the Cables and Plating components when the Ring/Sphere World is made.

I really don't think it's the case. It's been quite a while since I used shipyard ships, but I never had to restrict them to planets.

I have wondered about how the game handles crews. I never paid much attention, but I've noticed that captured ships get crewed up to full sometimes, and ships will recover from other crew losses as well.

Surely someone's built a base out to guard a warp point and got it crewed. I thought that was the main point of having mobile shipyards in the first place.

Yeah I know, things like android crew, extra cryogenic crew storage and the like...

All these are great ideas, but it looks like they require extra coding and extra ui elements i.e. a lot of work. If Aaron were to make all shipyards hand out crew it would be a simple clean and easy solution. IMHO it's too much detail and too much work, and for what? more micromanagement?

Make shipyards consistent!