I can't stop starport from building unwanted ships!? (noob)

Also, just curious, why is there a glowing ring of some sort around a planet sometimes? I assume it's because of something I've done. I see it on Mars and Earth off and on.

If the ring is blue, it means you have selected the planet in one way or another.

after I built my last needed freighter, the starport kept building them.

Once a Starport completes a ship, it will continue to build them until you tell it to stop. You must select the planet, or colony manager screen, go to the build ship menu and then select nothing to stop building ships.

Most people want the starport to continue to build ships throughout the game and it is easier to allow the ships to be built automatically, then going to every starport, every time you want to build a new ship.

Example, many people build defending fighters for near orbit during the first few months of the game. (Tiny ships, all weapons, no engines, not meant for space combat.) Instead of having to go to the planet every time a fighter is completed, which could be once every one or two turns with some Industrial planets, they just let it run and within a couple months they upgrade the ships and move to a new build.

There may be an option to disable this, I am not sure because I have not had the need to turn it off.

Hope I have been some help.

You have to select 'None' from the shipyard construction list and then hit Done. Anything else, and it'll just keep building what's selected, no matter if you selected Done or Cancel or what-have-you.

And what glowing ring is this? The light-blue ring with the even-breaks? That's called the 'selection indicator' or something to that effect. It shows you what planet and/or ship is currently selected (as both planets and ships can be selected), but I figure you know that ring already, so... What exactly are you talking about? Try and take a screen shot of what you speak of and upload it somewhere so we can take a look.

EDIT: Gah, Quixen beat me to it.. by 20 minutes.. Damn, it takes me awhile to work through the threads...

you can go into options and turn off the continue to build the same kind of ships if you want. It is just below the slider for number of turns before autosave

In the options menu, you can choose to not have your starports automatically make ships. Hit escape, then look at the game menu (or maybe it is in the interface menu) and examine the little boxes. There is a box for having starports automatically make the last ship that is checked. Uncheck it and you now have manual control over what your starports make. This is useful if you'd rather be making money than ships - i.e. that production of ships has a cost associated with it. While your in the options menu, take a look at the other defaults, as you may want to change them to suit your personal preferences.

You have all been a great help. Thank you very much!