The Drydock is a type of port in Napoleon: Total War.
Description[]
A dry dock is a man-made basin with a set of watertight gates. It allows the construction of many types of warships.
A ship can be floated into the dock on a high tide, then the gates shut and the basin pumped out. The ship is supported on blocks, and extra timbers are used to wedge it upright as the water is drained. Workers are then free to work on the hull as required. Careful timing takes account of the tides to minimise the amount of manual pumping needed, but this does mean that work is constrained by time and tide. Like many industrial enterprises, working conditions are harsh, and a drydock adds to the misery of the lower, working classes in the region.
In practice, drydocks not only aided repairs, but also construction. A ship could be laid down, and then simply floated away when complete. Ship design became limited by the size of the stone or brick basin of the dock. All this work was overseen by a master shipwright and a naval architect, who often treated even state-owned docks as their own personal businesses. It was not unusual for dock officials to sub-contract their friends and cronies for work, in exchange for handsome commissions, introductory fees and simple bribery!
General Information[]
Drydocks are an upgrade over dockyards, and are able to build ships of the line as well as bomb ketches. For most factions, building drydocks allow them to access the entirety of their ship roster aside from steam ships. However, steam ships, rocket ships, and the largest ships of the line require drydocks to be further upgraded to steam drydocks. The one exception to this rule is France, which can field 122-gun Ship-of-the-Line from drydocks. As steam drydocks are available much later than drydocks, this gives France a potential early-mid game advantage in terms of naval power.