my major annoyance: upgrading ships

is there at least an option now to update obsolete components in a slightly easier way? when the main part of your game time consists of manually upgrading stuff, it's sucking out the pleasure for me.

I never played v1.1 but your description sounds pretty much how it's done. The question I have is why do you upgrade so often? I generally don't upgrade based on every minor improvement that I research. I tend to research up to a reasonable, weapon, defense, speed and minutarization level and then start building ships. I build this ship for a reasonable time and meanwhile I research the non military type techs, like the economics branch, research branch, influence branch, etc. Once I've done this for a while and I have enough ships for my current need, I switch my production from military to social and start building planetary improvements. While I'm doing this I go back to researching up to the next weapons, defense, speed level. This works pretty good. I find I only upgrade ships when I have significant improvements in pretty much all areas.

There is a feature in the options menu to remove all components (except jewelry) when upgrading, maybe that would help.

I usually only upgrade ships when I'm about to be engaged in war, otherwise I'll just update the non-military ships with better engines...

oh come on, i cant believe i'm the only one having this problem!
on higher difficulty levels, i actually have to crank out ships 24h to keep up with the gang.. especially when playing drengin, who ought to have as much military as the rest put together. 8)

let me turn this thread into a proposal then: add a button like "replace all obsolete components with newest edition".. that would be one click and then, if some space was left, another few clicks to fill it up. much less work, at least for me.

astat, I don't really understand why you need to upgrade so often ship designs since you need lots of money to upgrade your existing ships. And don't forget that you shouldn't decomission ships lightly.

If you want to increase your military rating, you just need ships with only firepower (no defense, no speed, no range) orbiting your planets.

If you are figthing wars, you won't upgrade your ships that are currently at the front. And the components you need depends about the foes you need to fight.

And depending of the hulls your are using, the new component may not be so useful: if you have an attack value of 30, do you really need to change it for 33? Or having a speed of 25 to change it to 28?

Getting a new miniaturization level is something else, especially with 1.31 where the miniaturization behavior has been changed.

 

And don't forget that ship designs are usable in the next games (unless you have deleted them), meaning that you won't have to design them again if you have met all requirements.

not a bad idea at all. If the Auto Update took all your laser II's and automatically made them your new laser IV's, your Warp I drives to Warp II's or whatever then you could look at the space left a decide whats missing.

I like the sound of that button.

astat, I don't really understand why you need to upgrade so often ship designs since you need lots of money to upgrade your existing ships. And don't forget that you shouldn't decomission ships lightly.

major misunderstanding here. i am not talking about updating ships, it's about updating ship designs...

my shipyards are constantly building ships, and i want them to build the newest models, not obsolete weapons.

gmjapan sees where i am going!

@astat

I understand you. But why you need to have the latest weapons? I am not sure that having fleets with mixed speed is a very nice idea. And don't forget that in a battle a ship can only kill one ship when it fires.

And sometimes a new weapon (especially if it is a Mark I) take more space than an older one

But I guess the problem lies with the fact that I use essentially medium hull.

I think the problem stems from being at war with nearby AI that are competitively comparable to you early on. Tech is low, logistics is low etc. A difference of 1 or 2 in the right attack or defence area can turn a war around. In every battle you lose ships, sometimes you just plain lose. So you find yourself redesigning ships every other turn because that new laser III gives you space to put armour on (or sensors or whatever).

Even though a new mark I will take more space than an old version, it will usually do more damage for the space of the previous tech. But you do have a very good point peace phoenix; you couldnt "auto upgrade" 5 laser V guns to become 5 plasma I guns on a small hull!

Upgrading with every new tech is absolutely unneccesary!

One of the challenges of the game is to research in a smart way, thinking ahead. You research *ahead* of your opponents, create a powerful ship and build a fleet of those ships.
While building this fleet and using it, you research new military and non-military stuff and when other factions are starting to counter your weapons you're ready to build new craft often more than twice as powerful as the previous design.
In most of my games my battleship progress goes from a basic heavy fighter to build up military rating to a more useful version of this fighter (the basic fighter usually has one missile launcher versus two for the new one).
The next stage is building Frigates (medium hull) which also have some defense. If the game goes well, these ships are almost unbeatable. I might upgrade some of my veteran Frigates in a later stage. I like the larger hull ships, and research them, and by that time mostly one version is needed with the most powerful weapons and defenses available. With some careful management, none of these ships are lost to the enemy.
So in summary, on though difficulty, I play a game of 12 game years with about 6 or 7 battleship designs. I am convinced that it's not neccessary to upgrade for every little tech improvement no matter what difficulty level or map size. You have to make jumps through the tech tree and decide yourself when it is worthwhile to combine your latest techs for a new design, that's part of the fun!
Also there are other ways to improve your offensive capabilities beside newer equipment, for instance higher level ships (more hp) or more logistics.

I must admit however thats sometimes I get a bit nervous when flying through the tech tree (I usually play research oriented style), sometimes I research so far ahead, that I could potentially build horrible uber death fighters at any moment, but I don't want to stop to actually build them! So I run the risk of having a too low military rating.

Upgrading with every new tech is absolutely unneccesary! One of the challenges of the game is to research in a smart way, thinking ahead. You research *ahead* of your opponents, create a powerful ship and build a fleet of those ships.

try raising the difficulty level some more and see if you can still afford upgrading your designs only when you feel like it..
it just doesnt make sense to build phasor I when you already have phasor III

aren't there any powergamers out there, reading this thread? i mean come on, i know there's people around who are a lot freakier than me. i've seen them doing crazy maths stuff for this game, they surely are perfectionist enough to always build with the latest components instead of obsolete stuff.

I agree with astat. Well, maybe not about the being freakier than him thing!

While I will often skip upgrading already produced ships, I want all new ships to be produced with the most effective weapons, defenses and speed available. I then send all ships to a common rally point and put ships of the same speed together. The only time I produce a ship with older techs is when I have forgotten to head back into the ship designer. Really, why would you build a ship with old tech when new tech is available? Astat is also right that you can’t really slack on this on the high levels, you have to squeeze every advantage you can find.

I think the idea of a button, that upgrades all current components to the current generation thereof, is a great idea. You would need to make sure it dropped components if you ran out of space, and that you fill whatever space remains on the hull however you like. But it would definitely save some time.

try raising the difficulty level some more and see if you can still afford upgrading your designs only when you feel like it.. it just doesnt make sense to build phasor I when you already have phasor III

I play at maso and obscene and upgrade very little. Usually only to switch from one atk/def to another.

To start I only build hulls with engines and life support. Medium and higher only. Build this and send it on its way to a rally point or other place of your chosing. They do not take that long to build and you will have 10-20 quickly. Pick the race you are going to destroy and see what there atk/def is. Go to the shipyard and design a ship with the best atk you have and def against the enemy on the hull size you have flying. Click on one of the ships, click upgrade, spend the required BC, and in a week or to you have the best available ship.

That is how you can play at higher levels with out upgrading every few turns. Much quicker too if you have the economy to support.

I do like the idea though. It would give something else to spend down to under 20K each turn.

If you are currently building a certain ship named, say, Killer MKI, and you go to the shipyard, select Killer MKI and click Upgrade, then modify it and save it as Killer MKII, all the shipyards currently building MKI will switch over to MKII automatically.

If you are currently building a certain ship named, say, Killer MKI, and you go to the shipyard, select Killer MKI and click Upgrade, then modify it and save it as Killer MKII, all the shipyards currently building MKI will switch over to MKII automatically.

well i know.. and thank god they do.
but i am talking about the upgrading part, not the "planets building x should now build y" part

I start my shipyards building Cruiser Mk I. Meanwhile I am researching new components. One or two turns before my Mk I cruisers are due to launch I go into the shipbuilder and upgrade the design to Mk II with the very latest items. Sometimes the upgrades are significant enough to increase the build times, but usually the ship is done on time with the very latest technology.

wasn't this a major point in World War II? The Americans decided to win the war with the B-29, even though it was outdated and outclassed by the end of the conflict. They put all their resources into production instead of research.

The Germans, on the other hand, were coming up with fighter jets, long-range missiles capable of hitting England, planes with other planes strapped to their wings, and all sorts of crazy futuristic stuff.

But the Germans ended up losing. I think it was because their fighter jets couldn't slow down enough to land and would just crash into the runway after they ran out of fuel.

Think of it as a choice in development. you can choose to plow ahead with research and deal with all the upgrading that goes with it, or you can choose to not upgrade and focus on outnumbering your foes.

This game is the amalgamation of millions of choices you make man if you don't like how it plays stop making those choices!

Hi!

i know there's people around who are a lot freakier than me. i've seen them doing crazy maths stuff for this game, they surely are perfectionist enough to always build with the latest components instead of obsolete stuff.

Too much work to do that every turn. That's why I usually play with low number of planets and slowest tech. I also do research and building in batches:
- research key tech's for ships and put a bunch of newly designed ships in queues
- while researching other (non-ship related) tech.
- When ships are done and I get th(os)e non-ship tech(s), I start upgrading planets, and
- swicht back to ship tech research to repeat the cycle.

BR, Iztok

I think people are missing the point. Instead of looking for a way around what astat wants to do, he is looking for a game interface that supports what he wants to do.

I think people are missing the point. Instead of looking for a way around what astat wants to do, he is looking for a game interface that supports what he wants to do.

The problem is, as I think has already been mentioned in some form or other, is that it's not real practical. He askes for:

let me turn this thread into a proposal then: add a button like "replace all obsolete components with newest edition".. that would be one click and then, if some space was left, another few clicks to fill it up. much less work, at least for me.

Let's say you have a small hull ship with 3 engines, two beam weapons, a basic support and a missile defense. So you research from Impulse Drive III to Warp Drive. If you would like to just replace your three engines with Warp Drives you can't because they're bigger. Let's say also that you had also happened to pick up some high end beam defense, should that replace your lower value missle defense? Also there are upgrades that could work easily on one hull size at a specific miniaturization but not on other hulls and not even on the same hull at a different miniaturization.

The thing is that there's such a wide variation in what you'd want to do on a "standard" upgrade, I'd really have no clue as to how it would be programmed. If the OP could describe in detail the specifics of precisely how this upgrade should function over different hull sizes, miniaturizations, combinations of new techs etc. then there could at least be some vague possibility of having something like this implemented. Simply saying "replace all obsolete components with newest edition" is not a sufficient description of the fucntion.

That's why this thread basically contains suggestions as to how one can minimize the need for constant upgrades. Another thing you could do if you absolutely have to constantly upgrade, is minimize the work involved in designing an upgrade by using the clear function to remove all the components and use the place feature to auto place the components. The ships can come out looking pretty funky and asymmetrical but it sure is quicker than hand placing each component.

Actually there is a way to make this easier. Right now you can't place any component that exceeds the available space on the hull. I've often found this a bit annoying and unnecessary. Why not allow the user to place components as desired, even if the hull capacity is temporarily exceeded. Of course you would need to get the space utilized down to what the hull supports before you could save, but I think this would streamline ship design in general.

You could add that fourth engine and then decide what you want to take off to get back under the limit. As it is now you have to take off one or more things, add the fourth engine, then see what you can put back on. If you allowed the hull capacity to be temporarily exceeded, you could do exactly as the OP requested which is to replace any weapon, defense, engine or support module by the highest level component available in the exact same placement as the previous component. Of course weapons and defenses would only upgrade those of the same type. If the changes used up more space than allowed, then the user would have to remove components before saving. If the user didn't want all possible upgrades, then he'd have to manually change them back. If there was space left over the user would have to decide what more to add.

It's difficult to know what's easily modified in the game without knowing exactly how it's implemented, but this sounds simple enough. I guess you would need the same kind of upgrade field in the components description that's currently in planetary improvements, perhaps this isn't so easy after all. Even if you can't do the upgrade part of this it still might be worthwhile to check the hull space on saves only.

That’s a fair complaint. I see it working this way.

Default to replacing all older components with the newest version of the same class/type.

Always upgrade all components before checking for space since a reduction somewhere else might fix space issues (engines may get bigger while weapons smaller). If you have insufficient space after the upgrade, drop components that have increased in size in the following order if these components have changed:
1) Weapons
2) Defense
3) Engines
4) Special (life support)

Only drop one before moving to the next category. So, for instance, if the weapons and engines both get larger, you would drop one weapon, check again, drop one engine, etc. I could see a debate that you may want to just get any extra space completely out of weapons, but this would be a point of preference of how to best implement, not an argument about whether the idea is good in general.

Place four game wide toggles (in game preferences or somewhere in ship design) for ship design
1) Replace components with highest rated attack weapon on redesign (as opposed to best of same class)
2) Replace components with highest rated defense on redesign (as opposed to best of same class)
3) Replace components with alignment specific weapons/defense when upgrading (as opposed to ignoring them)
4) Don’t upgrade components with newest tech on ship upgrade (I.E. don’t apply any upgrade logic at all for those of you who don’t like this idea!)

So in your example above:

Replace the three impulse drives with warp drives. Check space. If the ship is no longer legal for the space allowed, drop one warp engine. If weapons had also been upgraded, increased in size and the design failed the space check, a weapon would have been dropped instead.

If toggle #2 is checked:
Change out the missile defense, for the better beam defense. Check space. If the ship is no longer legal for the space allowed, drop one beam defense.

If toggle #2 is NOT checked: Do not change the missile defense, even though you have a better beam defense.

Toggle #3 must be present because the special defenses/weapons don’t fit the graduated scale of improvements very well and they should be a player style option.

You would still have to review the design. But now you would most likely be just removing/adding only one or two components for functional reasons. If you are looking at the eye candy aspect and not the funtional aspect you probably don't want to do this and should flick toggle #4.

Mumblefratz, just read your post. I change my mind, your solution is simpler and easier than the one I outlined. But I would still keep the toggles for whether you want to change class types on weapons/defense upgrades.

I upgrade ships quite a bit and don't have any particular problem with it. I start fresh every game and don't re-use old designs. Even though the game recommends against it, I do all my saves using the same name so I don't have a ton of different names for the same type of ship. It does work, but only because I flush old designs every game. The problem you run into when you do that is the game won't always remember the old ones, but if you're not re-using them, it doesn't matter. In any case, I toggle the "remove functional components" set-up option quite a bit in-game depending on how big of an upgrade I'm doing. Sometimes it's easier to remove them, sometimes its easier to leave them. The game always give me the option to ugprade all ships when I'm done which is a big help when you have a lot of the same type. All in all, I feel upgrading is pretty painless and easy to deal with, no complaints.