Ship upgrades in empty space ??

How about a Constructor upgrading a ship in space?

Otherwise, I pretty much agree with the above post; I think ships should be required to be in orbit or "docked" at a spacestation for upgrades to occur.

On the flip side, they need cheapened a great deal. Currently upgrades are hideously expensive, I almost never upgrade, ship experience or not, once I've reached mid-game.

That's a possibility too. Questions would be: do upgrades use up the constructor? If yes, do you need additional funds for the upgrade? How to balance the constructor use for upgrades?
But it does take away the strategic element of placing the starbases with the spacedock modules



I must admit that I didn't take cost into account. I guess that be part of the fine-tuning if this idea is ever considered at all.

As far as cost goes, I think it is about right... You just need to be aware of the change in price between the old and new models. A ship with a pair of first gen warp engines and offensive weapons only is going to be much more expensive than one with a piar of hyperwarps, and a blended offense and defense.

But I really like the idea of having to be at a starport or space station. If the a constructor to be able to do it, I would prefer it not being used up (of course I'm stingy with my constructors anyways )

That's how it all started

I love to expand the strategic elements without reinventing the game. Additionally this pushes the use of military starbases which I haven't used until now. Mostly I go with economic for my planets, some influence bases and of course the resource bases.

The second suggestion of using old ships in a refit just goes with me not liking the choice to either scuttle ships for a low price or upgrade them for a big price where it would be sweet to use them as a time-saver for building new ships (of same size). Oh well, just rambling ...

I usually don't upgrade either - since even the strongest economy inexplicably gets flushed down the toilet when some insignificant race declares war. And the 20,000 economy cap is there ready to help ensure you have hopelesly inadequate reserves.

However, apart from cost, i like the upgrading procedure - it gives you or the AI a chance to catch ships offguard during an upgrade, that's definately somthing worth keeping in the game.

I didn't know that. I seem to remember I had above 50 k bc reserves in my last game But have to admit, I'm still on normal.



Why not include this: ships being upgraded at a starbase with spacedock could still be visible on the map and therefore be target of surprise attacks. They could still keep there upgrade symbol

While thinking of it: does the radius of a military starbase mean that my ships repair faster within its range?

No, however in galciv1 there were repair modules for starbases. However starbases in galciv1 did not have a 'range' persay, instead their area of effect was confined to whatever sector they were constructed in.

Earlier versions of galciv1 also had no starbase limits - you could build as many as their were squares in a sector! later versions you get restricted to nine per sector but the terror star was a way to have a limitless number of starbases in one sector (they could stack).

it's not an absolutely max; when your treasury hits 20k, your economy takes a penalty. i agree that it's annoying; it should at least be scaled to map size/ total number of planet tiles/ something.

but it doesn't kill me. a lot of people hate financing their purchases, but i worked in a mortgage company for a year and developed a think skin (it's all about cash flow!). for major upgrades, i will sometimes allow my treasure to shoot into -100k, but only if my gross income will allow me to recover in a few turns (12 is my usual max). it's a lot faster than trying to save up. sometimes i'll use a lease option with payments to help soften the blow. i've actually modded in the InterestRates tag as a point-buy race ability for my own use, which does seem to work.

i don't like the idea of requiring ships to be docked or in orbit. you can only have 10 ships in orbit at once, and the tedium of moving dozens of small fighters on and off a planet would suck! i'd have a newer ship design by the time i was done upgrading them all! it doesn't bother me that i can't see who's performing the upgrades - i can't see the cruise ships that're bringing me tourism revenue, either. i do think there should be times that it's impossible to upgrade, though. maybe a better middle ground would be that it takes exponentially more time and money to upgrade ships that are outside an SB's AoE (or the same distance from a planet), like this:

inside SB/planet AoE: 1 turn, 100% cost
1 radius outside an SB: 4 turns, 200% cost
2 radii outside: 9 turns, 300% cost
4 radii: 16 turns, 400% cost
etc.

and at some point it needs to become impossible. i've seen the AI with ships that're going to take 200+ turns to upgrade. these are usually gifted ships where the AI player's range does not reach - perhaps that'd be the best cutoff point; if the ship is outside the range of a ship w/o any life support modules, it simply cannot be upgraded.

there are xml tags to support this in GC2, if you want to mod in repair bays on your starbases.

Yah, very good point, it'd be a real PITA jockeying ships in and out.

Really about the only thing I dislike about upgrades is the cost. I do pretty well financially,its one of my primary (if not #1) focus, but its never been healthy enough to take 20-80K hits with any regularity. So I almost never upgrade, save for the occasional "surprise" tactic the ever-chockful-of-good advice Mystikmind mentioned.

  

To rationalize the way upgrades work, I just assume each ship has an auto-repair function (nanotech, probably), and they can receive a message including the instructions for assembling new gear as it's researched. The repair bots would disassemble the current engines (or whatever) to make the new design, which accounts for the downtime.

I prefer the current system to one that added more micromanagement, like having to move them to a starbase, or send constructors (ugh! constructor micro for starbase upgrades is already my least favorite part of the game). I enjoy micromanagement when it's fun, and adds something to the strategic depth of the game. Having to move ships around to upgrade, just seems like busy work to me.

Another way to look at this is that the engines are already minature Stargates....

I think the concept is fair, but the micromanagement would be very difficult. I do like the idea of repair bays at Starbases. This would make frontline base placement a more valid stratey durring heavy fighting, rather than moving your ships deep behind lines for truely effective repairs.

Leave it the way it is. You get a time penalty the farther away from a planet you are...that is enough.

Any other system would be micromanagement hell.

I will say that I like the idea that upgrades done in orbit or at a space station should be easier and cheaper than upgrades performed in the back end of beyond; I think it would be cool if the former were made slightly cheaper and quicker than they are, and the latter were made slightly slower and more expensive.

That's one major point I did not take into account with the original idea - micromanagement.

Since I played only in small and medium galaxies this was not a concern for me but it could turn out very annoying if you have to manually move all ships to corresponding shipyards. My only suggestion remaining would be an automatic move of all ships to the closest starbase for upgrades to be performed and afterwards returning to station. But I don't know how this would work out ...

Before the upgrade function was put into the game, there was a lot of discussion about this. It was doen the way it is to reduce the tedium of the whole process. There is a difference depending on how far you are from your planet to prevent cheese. But the way it is is fine to me.

Very interesting - I didn't know the history of the upgrade discussion

Is there any information provided by the game to see whether it is cost-effective to upgrade a given ship on the spot?