How much were you able to sell them for.  I wasn't able to sell ships in Dread Lords either.  Also it's cheaper to decomission them, plus you might not have to fight them some day.

Testing in 1.99rc, for what it's worth.

Late game testing allows me to sell combat ships, but interestingly they won't pay a cent for a terror star.  With all the diplo techs etc and galactic bazaar, I'm seeing an offer of anywhere from 10% to 25% of the ship's worth, so I'm unsure exactly how it values them, although it seems to value ships with more weapons much higher than ships with an equal amount of defenses-at least a 3 to 2 ratio, but this was using extremes (so a ship with 100 attack is going to be worth more to it than a ship with 5 attack and 95 defense).

This is, however, like everything else they buy from you, dependent on their current stash of cash-they'll pay more for something if they have 5000BC than if they have 200BC, although I'm not sure where exactly the breakpoint is.

Early game testing I can successfully sell a ship to them as well, even as low as a 2 attack ship.  I am noticing they won't buy my 1 attack ship, though.

Interestingly, they'll actually pay more for a cargo hulled ship than a tiny ship of the same firepower.  Presumably there's some modifier to their offer based on space.  While in TA this isn't as bad of an idea, as long as they put some hp modules on it, I have yet to see an AI do this, so it's definitely a way to take advantage of the AI in a sense, although you'll still lose money doing it.

I'll have to second GW's post-do the AIs actually have anything in their treasury?  And what ships are you attempting to sell them?

Yeah I was building tiny hulls with minimal weapons. So maybe by the time I was trying to sell these to my opponents they were considered obsolete.

What I love to do is start wars and then sell ships to both sides. Helps me make lots of money early on and usually most ships I sell gets destroyed before any of them get to me.

In my testing I was never able to get back the production cost of a ship, or even over 30% of it.  I'd be curious how you're managing to make a profit off of that.

Indeed.

You spend 1BC for each point of industry and each point of research that you use/fund per turn.  So a small hull with two Mark I Lasers on it will cost 40 + 2 * 25 or 90BC to produce.  I would estimate not more than 25BC for selling such a ship to the AI, and probably closer to the 15-20BC range, which basically means you're losing 70BC on every single ship (of this type) you're selling to the AI.

Obviously that's not good for your economy.

I'm currenly having fun buying cheap corvettes from the drengins then selling them too their enemies. I then bribe the drengin into starting more wars. Cheap ships at low, low prices.