Starship builder not handling space correctly

This is problem has been fixed. The next update will include the fix.
Thanks for reporting it.

Hmm... I've noticed some similar serious issues with the shipbuilder. I had not connected that it happens only with upgrades, because I only do upgrades (otherwise who wants to spend time adding all of the "extras" to make it look cool - it takes way too long to do that over & over).

What I've observed is that I'll see a component in the components list that claims to need say 10 spaces. When I then drag it to a hard mount, my overall size consumption only changes by say 5 spaces. What is really annoying to me about this is that I would love to put another engine or whatever that takes a claimed 10 spaces (if its really only consuming 5) but I can't, because the design says it won't fit (even though the last one I just placed fit in 1/2 the actual space stated).

So I end up having to leave some extra space on the ship, because nothing claims it will fit, even though if it were to let me drop it i'm sure it would actually fit.

It also means that I can't ever figgure out in advance what i have space for - some things take the stated amount of space, and others less - there's just no way to know until I drop the component onto the ship...

This is all with the latest beta, and I have the option to leave all of the compoents on the ship when I upgrade (this should be the standard option - it is insanely tedious to have to replace all other components but the one that you really did want to change on a new design).

In general, the ship builder seems very buggy - not CTD buggy, but it also fails to make the ship that I'm upgrading dissappear from my list of ships to choose from (I have to manually hit Obsolete after creating an upgrade).

Sometimes, when I go to upgrade a ship, I see the existing components in the wrong order - so that the hull is the last thing listed (not the first), and this has the strange side effect that I can remove every component, including the hull!, but I can't remove whatever should have been the last component (usually sensors or support module).

I don't believe it's supposed to automatically obsolete the previous version of a vessel. If it did, you would no longer be able to construct that older design, which, for me at least, is a very common occurrance. Most of the time, I'm either creating a ship that looks like one of my other designs or I am creating a ship that will be used side-by-side with the current ship design. I rarely obsolete any of my ship designs, because you never know when you might just need numbers and not necessarily the better-equipped ship. This is especially so when that newer version is only capable of going farther or faster. The additional cost or building time is not worth it when you only need to defend a few local planets.

Cheers,
- Zolkar

Ah... that makes sense.

The reason that this is confusing, is that although it doesn't obsolete the older model automatically, it *does* switch all starports to producing the newer moderl automatically!

So it seems to me, that it should do one or ther other - just be consistent. Either "upgrade" really means "make a new model based on the old model" or it means "replace this model with a newer model".

Having it 1/2 way is confusing.

And if it were up to me, I'd do the former ("make a new model based on...") since that would be the most flexible for the user (we already have the *very great* feature of being able to use "governors" to change all production from the old model to the new, if we wish (or have a dialog pop up that requests how we wish to handle it - switch all production or not).

: )

Yeah, the most recent patch didn't fix this, certain components still seem to take up less space

There are still a couple cases where the components take up less space than they should. These were fixed this morning and will be fixed for our next update.

I have found the sequence that produces this bug.

If you create a new ship, the components you place on the ship sizes correctly. If you upgrade the ship, component sizes are still correct.

However, if you load a game and open the ship designer, upgrade an existing ship, then the ship components are smaller than advertised. It seems it neglects to add the hull size modifier for the components, ie. Anti-Mat Torpedo: 9+2% Hull Size on a Large 55 Space Hull should take up 10 space, but only takes up 9.

I couldn't figure why this was happening before, so I was able to create some ridiculous ships. On a 220 space Huge Hull (yeah, tons of miniturization), I loaded it up with Black Hole Generators (attack 16, base size 6, 2.67att/size!!! easily most space efficient), and made a 0/0/224 attack, 108/100/100 def ship. It required over 6000 manufacturing points to build, and 80k to buy outright (I had the money ). I also had 3 military star bases, so the ship ended up having over 500 attack and 200 def each type. Oh yeah, it was also blazing fast at 36 speed.

Now, I feel kinda guilty since I've figured out what's wrong. Probably not going to build something like that again.

Lol!

Kaesar,

I've followed your steps to reproduce and it looks like the problem is fixed.