What distinguished Portuguese ships and overseas support?

What made Portuguese carracks different, and was relying on homeland production a mistake?

Atlantic naus were larger and more strongly built, while early factories supported maintenance but lacked the infrastructure for rapid local replacement.

Portuguese naus were large, heavily constructed ships shaped by the demands of the Atlantic rather than only Mediterranean conditions. Their size and strength gave them an advantage in gunnery and survivability at Diu. The early overseas network occupied existing infrastructure and concentrated on factories, forts, and maintenance rather than complete naval dockyards. Goa later gained some construction capacity, but in 1509 replacing major losses still depended heavily on the homeland.