Upgrading\Refiting Ships

I'm 90% sure that there will be an option to upgrade existing ships but its one of the features that didn't get into Beta3. No info I can remember about how it will work though.

If not then it must have been dropped from the features list at some point.

You'll be able to upgrade (i.e., refit) ships in GalCiv II. The way I understand it is that once you upgrade a design, it will be applied to existing ships automatically, but the time it takes to complete the refit will be based on where the ship is. For instance, if you have a vessel far away from your territory, it will take longer to upgrade than one that's parked in orbit of a world with a starbase.

As a disclaimer, don't take the above as gospel. It may be wrong or end up changing.

Interesting concept! So....a ship near to your colony might upgrade in 1 turn where as a ship out in the misddle of nowhere/on the front line might take several turns to finish upgrading. I assume that a ship in the process of being upgraded would be marked in some way. Will be interesting to see how it happens.

Yarlen I hope you are correct as that is awesome! Let me rephrase, AWESOME!

Nice, thanks for the info!

You'll be able to upgrade (i.e., refit) ships in GalCiv II.

Yarlen is the feature in the beta yet, or not? Just to know if we are wasting our time waiting for a retrofit of if we should scrap the ships?

I don't believe this feature is fully implemented in beta 3, but Cari-Elf would know.

just one question...how can a ship be upgraded, if its in the middel of nowhere/at the front line?
Why not use the same system as in Moo2? if a ship becomes refitted, its not operational for X amount of time and will cost of course some time...in real life its the same...if a ship becomes refitted it cant be used for a while (I know it because I work in a shipping line)
Ok...its science fiction, but this would give an extra strategical component to the fleet management wouldn't You think so?
A ship which is light years away has to return first to a planet which has the capabiltiy to handle a refit (e.g. a Starbase) and there it can be refitted and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on
Any comments?

Why not use the same system as in Moo2? if a ship becomes refitted, its not operational for X amount of time and will cost of course some time

You said it, the thing is time. It would take too long to upgrade old ships making it more expensive then making new ships. And you would have to calculate it into the beggining price of the ship. Sicne you know it would be likely upgraded later, you would have to make the ship cheaper to begin with so it takes less time to build to compensate for the time it will take to retrofit it. Which yet agian would make it cheaper to build new ship instead. In addition refit system worked for moo2 because there were far fewer ships than we can expect from Galciv2. The movement system was far different too. It took far less time reletively to get the ship to refit site. Im sure the ships will move faster in the release, but as it is in beta it takes like 12 turns to travel 2 sectors to my core high production planets from the border of my little empire. Thats a good 24 turns just traveling time. Ontop of this, the queueing of refit orders would drive any man crazy. That's just the kind of micromanagement we can do without.

As Astax says, its down to micromanagement. Individually ordering all your tiny hull craft home (unless they happen to be in fleets already), individuallty refitting, individually assigning new orders as they come out of refit.....headache. In this system the game does it for you so you don't have to worry about it.

As for a realism point of view, imagine the logistic support fleet going on behind the scenes moving between ships. Mobile and temporary 'battlefield' repair bases doubling up for refits etc.

It won't make it into the first build of Beta 4 but it is due soon after.

Basically users will be able to upgrade existing ships.  When they do, depending on the cost of the changes and the distance from your territory it will take time to upgrade.  The ships will go into a construction mode in space where they will be defenseless. Typical times will be between 5 and 20 turns for reasonable updates.

The ships will go into a construction mode in space where they will be defenseless. Typical times will be between 5 and 20 turns for reasonable updates

Oooo risky.

Basically users will be able to upgrade existing ships. When they do, depending on the cost of the changes and the distance from your territory it will take time to upgrade. The ships will go into a construction mode in space where they will be defenseless. Typical times will be between 5 and 20 turns for reasonable updates.

This really sucks. Straight up. As it means that you'll have to pre-prosition all of those ships of that model! Might as well require shipping them to world with a starport and using Civ3's simple upgrade system then!

Seriously. This is a very bad idea, as it will almost always force the players to go through and park all their ships in a safe area before hitting the master upgrade. Bad bad bad!

I think this is an excellent idea! This forces the player to make difficult choices about upgrading ships or building a new one. If you're going to upgrade a ship way out on the fringe of space, it should be an incredibly costly and time-consuming situation to upgrade so far from all your resources. And your ship should be understandly defenseless during such a refit. That's perfect!

And one can decudce that at the other extreme, if one were in orbit around a shipyard, then the upgrade would be much less costly and quicker. Again, that makes perfect sense.

Having said that, I would think that upgrading a ship at a shipyard should be faster / cheaper than building a brand new ship, otherwise, what's the point.

But I like this idea, although I don't see logic in doing the upgrade in deep space vs. a shipyard. I think a better solution would be to us a waypoint type of system where you say, "Send my ship to shipyard B", do this refit, and then return me back to this spot.

But still, overall, good idea, even if slightly flawed.

I'm holding off comments until I try it!

I do think that there should be some risk involved in pulling ships out of the battle lines to refit 'in the field', also it could encourage players to think about their fleets a bit rather than pumping out hundreds of identical craft. Defending the ships in refit could prove to be an interesting aspect of warfare.

Seriously. This is a very bad idea, as it will almost always force the players to go through and park all their ships in a safe area before hitting the master upgrade.

He didn't say that an Upgrade is applied to all ships. Maybe we will get to choose ship-by-ship? If a good interface is provided, this should be painless. Maybe a list that shows the current location of all ships of a particular class and a checkbox to choose Yes/No to upgrading each ship in the list?

I do agree that if the upgrade was a choice of All Ships or None then that would really suck.

Humm... well, if you can decide ship-by-ship, that will just make it a micromanagement pain in the neck, but not the horrible sucking chest wound as if it is an "all or nothing" deal. However, the only upgrade button is on the shipyard screen right now. That implies it is an all or nothing to me. Maybe I'm just too SMACXed though.

I think it's reasonable to have it so that only shipyards can upgrade a ship. Of course, that means no in-field refits, but I don't have a problem with that. Especially since that means the AI would be forced to send its ship to get refitted, rather then just having them lieing about, being refitted with the latest and greatest and being easy pickings for your fleets.

I have to add to this as well - like I said above, I like the upgrade / refit idea presented. However, I have to concur with the opinions here that an all-or-nothing refit would make refitting impractical. Who would want to take ALL of their battleships offline in order to perform a refit? That would toss any strategery right out the window.

What about having an option that lets you upgrade ships by class and/or ship type? In other words, you could choose to upgrade all your destroyers at once, while your cruisers and battleships remained operational. Or you could refit just your Talon-class destroyers while your Serpent-class destroyers (along with the rest of your navy) remained on active duty.

Assuming it's reasonably practical, I think that would be a fairly ideal solution to the refit problem. It saves you from the "upgrading-everything-or-nothing" decision, while still getting rid of the need to micromanage your refits one ship at a time.

It shouldn't end up with being a case of 'all' your battleships going into refit unless you just design one type and keep building it until you have made several tech advances to do a complete overhaul in one go. The upgrade Yarlen described would refit all ships of one design at a time.

For example I tend to design my battelship and call it something like Overlord Mk1. I develop a new mass driver and design an upgraded version using it, and call the new type Overlord Mk2. Another tech comes along and I design the Mk3. By now the Mk1 is over the hill so I put it in for upgrade to Mk3. While those ships are in refit I still have the Mk2's and any completed Mk3's availiable.

Ok that could lead to my front line emptying but if I'm careful I can limit the impact. Ultimately if you want all of your ships to be using the most modern technology then you have to accept the consequences. Alternatively you make do with aging ships defending the frontier.

I think this system has the potential to make things interesting out on the front and give ships a bit of character. Individual refit orders would certainly add micromanagement but gives the player much more flexibility.

The other alternative is to revert back to GC1's magical auto upgrading navies where every new tech is miraculously applied to your entire fleet in the blink of an eye leading to hordes of bland, identical ships. No thanks I think the current proposal is much more interesting and challenging.

I think this is the best way to do ship upgrade. Has a hint of Space Empires style "moth-balling" of ships. I loved that feature, thou I seldom used it.

Martok and Ugleb, that would be the horrible chest sucking wound version of upgrading. Now, if there is a button on each ship panel that lets you "upgrade" that individual to the designated descendant (so you can refit, one by one, as well as all at once), now we are in business. Otherwise, you are going to end up rotating all your ships out of the combat line, by class, to a safe point before you initiate upgrading. Suck suck suck!

So, if we go with the SMAC upgrade functioanlity, which lets you upgrade by unit, or by model (universally), then we are okay. But if you cannot do it individually... Individually gives us better strategic choices as to when that unit should be upgraded. Can you risk sending back half your old Serpents on the border to a safe area for upgrading? Or do a slow upgrade across the border, because you need that force, even if old, out there ready to defend? That's a more interesting choice. One that isn't going to happen under an "all or nothing" choice set.

I also would prefer the flexibility to upgrade ship-by-ship. Otherwise, I need to build a second class of ships to perform a similar role to those to be upgraded. This could be very expensive. It would be cheaper, from a cash flow perspective, to rotate ships out a in smaller groups.

While I know we should be contributing based on improving game play, my next comment is not purely about that. Upgrading ships in the field does not feel right to me. Are starships so modular that they can be done without special facilities or labor? Where do all the new and expensive technology components come from? From the invisible logistics fleet that must be replenishing consumables? I think that refitting should be done on planets, starbases, or perhaps dedicated shipyards/spacedocks. This also increases the strategic value of locations that can do refits. Feels better than having to play hide and seek with my cocooned, upgrade-in-the-field ships. Sorry for the rant--just my two cents.

While I know we should be contributing based on improving game play, my next comment is not purely about that. Upgrading ships in the field does not feel right to me. Are starships so modular that they can be done without special facilities or labor? Where do all the new and expensive technology components come from? From the invisible logistics fleet that must be replenishing consumables? I think that refitting should be done on planets, starbases, or perhaps dedicated shipyards/spacedocks.

I agree totally and have said this many times. Alas, it seems as though the developers have other ideas in mind...

This really sucks. Straight up. As it means that you'll have to pre-prosition all of those ships of that model! Might as well require shipping them to world with a starport and using Civ3's simple upgrade system then! Seriously. This is a very bad idea, as it will almost always force the players to go through and park all their ships in a safe area before hitting the master upgrade. Bad bad bad!

So what would you propose then? Instant update? So I send a bunch of wimpy ships into the middle of Drengin space that aren't a threat and then suddenly upgrade them in 1 turn to monster ships for a sneak attack?