Well first of, are you offended in any way? Cause it sounds like you are attacking me, just because of a suggestion...
And I have no idea what you are talking about... empty space of want? 2x the amount of labor hours?
Sorry, I'm gonna need a better explanation for that.
I'm suggestion increasing the amout of labor hours we gain per hour, proportionel to the levels.
As leveling from 1 > 17, generally dont take a long time, reducing the amount of labor hours per hour for thoose levels wont have any severe impact.
And from level 17 and up, the amount becomes the same as we currently have, and only increases further, until it caps out at 75 labor hours per hour at level 50.
Since the XP per level increases aswell, that +1 labor hour per hour, per level, is still not something that makes people level 50 instantly.
Lets look at low, mid and high level crafting, for leveling purposes...
From 15 to 16, you need 1120 xp. Thats 2 traders cutter, and 708 labor hours required to build.
With 42 labor hours per hour, that takes just 16,8 hours.
With the suggested system, you would gain 40 labor hours per hour, at level 15. So that only increases it to 17,7 hours.
From level 35 to 36, you need 3519 xp. Thats 5,7 traders cutter, but lets say 6.
It require 2124 labor hours to build 6 traders cutter. With 42 labor hours per hour, that is 2,1 days worth of labor hours, required to go from 35 to 36.
With my suggestion, at level 35, you would gain 60 labor hours per hour. So it would take about 1,5 days, to go from 35 to 36.
From level 49 to 50... requires 6668 xp. Thats 10,8 traders cutter, so lets say 11.
That is 3984 labor hours, and with 42 per hour, its 3,8 days to reach level 50.
With suggested system, you gain 74 labor hours per hour at level 49, so that reduces to 2,2 days.
The extra time it takes to reach level 17, is as said, hardly noticeble, and the higher levels only really see a bigger reduction near the end, but it never reaches a 50% reduction.
But all of this, is just numbers I came up with. It dont HAVE to be 75 at level 50, or 50 at level 25... But there is still need for more labor hours per hour, considering how much that actually require labor hours already, and more is surely to come.
And as I said, big enough clans already have the hours to pump out SoL's several times per week. But it is not ONLY about thoose ships... there is more to the game than only SoL's.
Right now, the limited hours severely limits what people can do.
If you want to level crafting, then you gotta avoid wasting hours on anything else.
Same deal if you want to make upgrades.
Or if you want to get resources from your production buildings, well there goes the hours. Currently, this really only benefit traders, yet they simply sell the resources to NPC's instead of crafting sub components and sell thoose to crafters.
Also, my suggestion is not something that have to be a permanent thing, but could be done for testing purposes only. We are in a early access alpha afterall, and only way to actually see the effects of something, is to implement it for a period of time.
And as I also mentioned, it dont have to be the numbers I came up with. I just picked thoose, cause I like to divide/add with 5. It could start with 35 at level 1, and cap at 65 instead, if thats what the testing showed to be best.