A clarification: Orbital structures are counted as ships when determining if the hardcap has been reached. However while a Shipyard counts as a ship, it is not affected by the hardcap, it has its own limit. Even if you have 1000 ships, you can always build Shipyards until you have 100 of them. This enables players who decide not to rank up in BSH to still have the maximum number of ships. In effect this means a player could actually have 1100 ships total.