only problem is that the ship bieng 'upgraded' is vulnerable for one turn. Although once I had an enemy attack a fleet that was bieng upgraded, but the armor was already adapted to what the enemy was using and that protected my ships, either that or sheer luck.

The other thing is the cost, because high end ships would be more expensive, and so you have to pay for each time you do it. However that cash could be used for other things such as buying new ships or something.

An exploit usually means that there are always positive effects (if you do it right anyway), so I think that this is more of a 'cheese' since there are still risks and you have to be careful not to loose too much cash.

This seems like a bug/exploit to me. That being said, I don't see how they could fix it fairly! Neat trick tho

They could "fix" it by not healing the ships when they are upgraded.

Well, they could. But since this is the only way to repair a ship in less than 4 turns--by any means--they really shouldn't. If we could use constructors to repair ships and starbases (which would be somewhat balanced in that constructors take significant time and money to make in large numbers), fixing this would be fine. But the whole "invade for two turns and hit 'End Turn' twenty times, then repeat" thing gets really tedious really fast.

I know this would add to micromanagemaent but really just too much cheese as is.

Okay, how?

Are you actually suggesting that it would make more sense for people to build a ship and then set off charges all over it than it would for them to leave the new parts undamaged?

Seriously, why the hell would you build a ship that's half blown up when you finish it? I admit that this might unbalance the game a little, but it's the obvious logical (realistic) approach. Kinda like how we'd be able to turn our Black Hole Guns against a planet in real life but we can't in this game.

Are you actually suggesting that it would make more sense for people to build a ship and then set off charges all over it than it would for them to leave the new parts undamaged?

Are you saying that just cause I add 1 more weapon on my ship because I got more room with miniaturization that all that hull damage would be fixed by adding that weapon?

Sorry, it's a cheap shot I know but couldn't resist.

Oh by the way I don't consider this a major problem just 1 of the things that can use some improvement to make the game even better.

Are you saying that just cause I add 1 more weapon on my ship because I got more room with miniaturization that all that hull damage would be fixed by adding that weapon?

Absolutely. "Fixed" it would be:
Captain: "Lord Drath says we need another set of turrets on the starboard side."
Crew Member: "Sir, the starboard side was ground to powder three weeks ago."
Captain: "So repair it."
Crew Member: "Um, no. Our contract clearly states that we must put the missile battery in broken, jury-rig it to the power plant, and detonate half the magazine to give symmetry with the damaged port side."

Now it's:
Captain: "Damn it, we lost the starboard batteries. All hands, get in there and help with repairs."
Crew Member: "Sir, we'd have to almost completely power down the ship to do that. No engines, no shields, no guns for at least a week."
Captain: "Well, we really have no choice. Hopefully the rest of the fleet can keep the Torians off our backs until we're done."

The simplest solution to the repair situation is to make extra ships.

Only it doesn't work like that. The new ships will have half the HP of the old ships, and will take several weeks to get to the area. If you're doing some sort of deep strike or if you had unexpected losses and your extras went down, it's actually more practical to take over a planet and park there for five to ten weeks, which is itself highly impractical.

I have since checked this out and have some corrections to how I said this works in my original post.

First off, if you try to upgrade a ship to it's same class, it just doesn't work. However, it doesn't charge you the cost of the repair as I originally said it did.

However, you can go into the shipyard, select a ship class to upgrade and save the exact same ship to a new name, for example Fighter IIA. You can then select a damaged Fighter II out in the field and "upgrade" it to a Fighter IIA, thus repairing the damage. One difference between this and my original post is how much it actually costs.

A top line ship (large hull with 3 Doom Rays and 5 Aereon Missile Defense) cost 750 bc to "repair" in this manner (even more if not neutral). This is sufficiently expensive that I can't go around and repair every Fighter II every time it receives damage. I end up using this tactic only on experienced ships whose hit points have increased dramatically. For the low level Fighter II that gets damaged, it's more cost efficient to use it till it dies and replace it with a new Fighter II off the production line.

With this in mind, I feel that this is a legitimate tactic that provides a reasonable benefit for a reasonable cost.