The advent of nanites triggered an industrial revolution for humanity. Not without reason either, while the steam age enabled industry on a scale humanity hadn’t envisioned before, nanites changed the game, enabling humans to go ever smaller with their machines and technology. Being able to reorder matter on the microscopic scale made possible materials and designs previously considered too costly or even outright impossible a mere decade before.
With these new machines, one of the first new fields to be born was Nano-Materials, which studied and focused on producing stronger materials. The name might be a little confusing, but nano-materials is all about reordering matter into a stronger form. The Nano-lattice structure is a development of nano-materials, where a mineral structure is configured in such a way that it is both lighter and stronger then a similar structure of the same material.
This is due to the material being arranged in a structure akin to a honeycomb. Material is removed by nanites, while the rest is configured to ensure maximum structural integrity. However there are times where a denser structure may be desired, in which case a nano-lattice may not be what you desire.
Titan Alloy is typically configured in a much denser structure in which multiple lattice structures are entwined together on the nano-scale. Resulting in a material significantly tougher than the same alloy forged with standard metallurgy, but just as dense. This has certain advantages when used in armor, but in a starship weight is always a factor. Particularly in calculations involving power-to-weight ratios and how quickly a ship can turn or accelerate. This can also matter for landing calculations.
With this in mind starship engineers often have to consider which nanomaterial variation of a given material they want when designing a starship, and which components should use which variation. Thankfully for these engineers, advanced computers can run numerous simulations to help weed out bad options, and optimize the design process.
That brings us to construction. Nanites were found to be wonderfully effective for the construction of complex devices like circuit boards and were especially useful for anything that integrated electronic components with structural material which later became known as integrated materials. Nanites were especially effective when used inside liquids like water. Leading to the development of the nano-fabricator and the nano-dissembler. It also became possible to simply dump raw ore into a liquid medium containing nanites, which would then break the ore down and seperate all useful components out of the rock without the need for bulky refineries.
All of this revolutionized the construction of spacecraft, which soon found themselves built module by module in massive nanofabricators that constructed entire modules from the base up with nanites. The finished space frame components would then be assembled and finished by robots and work crews. The overall process reduced the cost of ship construction substantially and sped up the time tables.
Where before it might have taken three or four years to complete a five hundred meter long hull with conventional techniques. Something that remained rather in line with older tech conventions due to ever rising complexity of ship construction. The new techniques changed that. For the nanites complexity of the design was irrelevant; a solid wall was no different to a console bank. Almost overnight the conventional bottlenecks were solved and that same five hundred meter long hull could now be built in six months to a year.
Naturally, a new bottleneck emerged; any given drydock could only go as fast as a work crew could assemble and install the modules. In addition, the rate of construction was also affected by how quickly new modules were delivered. Soon many shipyards would have vast foundries full of large fabricators for pumping out entire modules, while smaller ships could be built entirely inside a nano-fabricator, notably fighter craft, some shuttle designs and in a few cases, even corvettes. Capital ships like cruisers however remained firmly too large to be constructed in such a manner.
A problem that was further compounded by the loss of the planet Earth. No facility currently owned by humanity could possibly house a nano-fabricator large enough to construct an entire starship at once. The Enterprise currently holds the largest Fabs owned by humanity, fifty massive fabs in her belly used for module construction, each one measuring a hundred and fifty meters on a side. Massive enough to construct a corvette wholesale, but also big enough to build most ship modules without issue. This size was standardized for ship repair and construction since fabs of this size could easily be mounted on capital ships, allowing new modules to be built in the field if required.
Do note that while they are measured a hundred and fifty meters on a side, in reality, there is actually an extra meter of clearance there so that a newly constructed module at the maximum size of 150 meters by 150 by 150 will easily drop out of the bay. Once out tractor beams and workers can be used to move it into place, and then install it in a waiting ship hull.
Of course one may be wondering how quickly the nanites can construct a module and the answer is impressive. The larger the object you are building the longer it will take, but the complexity of the object typically has no measurable impact on the construction. Only size and cost. For large modules, like the one listed above a fabricator would need about two weeks, unless you are building incredibly intricate structures on the nano-scale like those found in propulsion crystals, in which case the time to construct will extend into a period of months.