Complaint: Upgrading ships is far too expensive

Agreed. the whole point of hardpoints on a ship is that you can swap one weapon system for another on them. There should certainly be a cost in BC and time, but as of now the BC cost is prohibitive.

I would agree that there is little sense in refitting a ship, which is what you are trying to do, at this time considering how insanely expensive it becomes.

Refits should always be cheaper than total new builds as you are merely swapping out parts.

Yeah, my fighters cost 140 bc to build and about 2400 to upgrade.

There's a decimal point missing in there somewhere.

I think that's exactly right. I think its off by a factor of 10.

Yeah I agree. I had my planet que fill up with old ships so I went to upgrade them. I ended up scrapping half and parking the rest around my star bases.

If it was cheaper to upgrade, then the AI woudn't have armadas of suck too!

Obviously none of you have ever upgraded a navel ship, or anything for that matter. But another thing to mention is that you can't put a price on experience. Why upgrade a ship that has never seen combat when you can upgrade your 4, level 21 ships.

I agree it is prohibitively expensive, i am just not sure this is a bad thing. As is, I only upgrade ships with considerable experience, not all of a class. Unless of course, I have an immediate emergency need. I suspect this is what the designers intended, and if so, it appears to be working. Maybe the AI should get an upgrade discount at the high end difficulties? As is, I tend to trash AI fleets already, if my fleets where already state of the art it would get even worse. Currently I use old crappy ships for behind the lines garrisons, instead of upgrading.

If building a new ship was cheaper than refitting an old ship, then the Navy would never refit/upgrade old hulls.

As has been the case for over 100 years, the various navies of the world have always found it easier to upgrade existing hulls rather than building new ships. That is why most United States Navy ships use hulls that are decades old and undergo periodic refits. If this wasn’t cheaper, then the Navy wouldn’t do it. They simply would build DDX’s or Ronald Reagan class carriers and replace all of the ships of the lines with them.

Have I ever supervised the refit of a Naval vessel? No, but its not necessary to have experience refitting a ship to be able to use common sense to deduce that it has to be cheaper than building an entirely new hull.

I don't upgrade, unless I have a bukooo metric butt ton of cash and nothing to spend it on. I frankly follow the same formula ya all are. I design a new ship that looks like the old one and change out the attached items on the hardpoints. Commence building, when I have approximately 1/2 of the new class built I commence selling the old ones or... simply make them all obselete if I do not want to give an advanced ship to who could potentially be my enemies in a few short turns. (Yes, some of them civs don't upgrade enough and consider my second generation ships a godsend, especially some of the minors.)

Upgrades being so expensive was addressed for a while in Beta and "Frogboy" stated that he was quite aware of it and was going to fix the cost or at least tone it down. If memory serves me correctly, the cost has been toned down but I cannot help but wonder if an integer is being called into play that wasn't noted before and the cost is still way to out there to take advantage of the hardpoints and ship design.

Right now, I would guess, that the ships cost is being added in as well as the weapons and defenses being replaced. The ships cost, hull wise should be significantly lower than the original hull cost, especially if a ship is actually on its home planet where it was built, maybe a bit more expensive if it is on another planet with a space dock and quite frankly even more expensive if the upgrade takes place off planet with a decrease in hit points to be comparible with the amount of work the crew has to do to refit the ship.

Anywho, as I said this was hashed out and the best way of getting attention is to have some specific facts and post them or go to the chat room in SDC and poke somone there in the eye about it...

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

I have to agree with you jscott. Not only is swapping parts insanely expensive, but adding a new life support module when you reach a higher minaturization level, for example, is likewise inflated. I can understand some additional expense for a ship out in space, a repair crew has to get there and work in their space suits after all, but for ships on planets that have starports it should be much cheaper. I wonder if a military starbase module that lets you fly your ships in and get retrofitted for a lower cost could be implemented? That would be neat.

I upgrade only my ships with experience, and I use my old ships to attack first and weaken the enemy for when my new ships attack. That way I don't care if I lose an old ship, as I was probably going to scrap it anyway, and it no longer costs me maintenance, and my new ship didn't take quite the beating. But I agree, upgrading is a tad on the expensive side, which is probably done for balance.

Obviously none of you have ever upgraded a navel ship, or anything for that matter.

That is my job actually, and it is cheaper to upgrade a military vehicle than to build a new one, I am not sure what you are talking about...

I would like to see the upgrade costs be the difference between the buying costs of the two vehicles though.

If it were cheaper to upgrade it would create gameplay problems.

Think of it this way, if you get a good combo advantage of weapon/defense and win a battle against the AI, with cheap upgrades the next turn you could be facing an entire fleet of AI ships configured just to right to beat your winning design.

Obviously none of you have ever upgraded a navel ship, or anything for that matter.

Are navel ships made of lint? Just wondering...

cheap upgrades

Cheap? No it shouldn't be cheap. Cheaper than it is? I would say yes, it is too exepensive. Balance cost with time to upgrade. If I can build a much better version off the same hull in 8 turns, then make the upgrade cost 50% of the new ship and take 1/2 the time (just a very simplistic example). Upgrading a ship type should be faster and cheaper than building a new one.

Think of it this way, if you get a good combo advantage of weapon/defense and win a battle against the AI, with cheap upgrades the next turn you could be facing an entire fleet of AI ships configured just to right to beat your winning design.

Best damn explanation I have read in this whole thread so far... Also, account for distance, or would you like for upgrades to be cheaper but you had to send them back to your Starports for upgrading?

If it were cheaper to upgrade it would create gameplay problems. Think of it this way, if you get a good combo advantage of weapon/defense and win a battle against the AI, with cheap upgrades the next turn you could be facing an entire fleet of AI ships configured just to right to beat your winning design.

Not so. Remember two things :

1) When upgrading ships have 1 hp 0 attack 0 defense. It's in the manual somewhere.

2)The suggestion is to make upgrades take longer but cost less, so that :
2. a) The AI coudn't upgrade the ships in one turn, but in many, so the apocalyptic senario who describe woudn't happen.
2. If the AI upgrades all his ships, for 4-5 turns yours will be able to mow them down without any difficulty.

Hence, it would only be practical to upgrade ships far away from the front, or while at peace.

Think of it this way, if you get a good combo advantage of weapon/defense and win a battle against the AI, with cheap upgrades the next turn you could be facing an entire fleet of AI ships configured just to right to beat your winning design

Currently, it takes at least 1-2 turns to upgrade a ship, so this would not be possible. I'd be more than happy to have that take a few turns more, if the cost were not so rediculous.

Regarding game balance, as it it is now, it's too easy for me to level up my ships against the waves of crappy little low-tech fighters the AI keeps around. I wouldn't mind the AI being able to reasonably upgrade its fleets either

As I recall, in MoO2, in order to upgrade a ship, you had to place it in a spaceport and acually put the upgrade in the build queue just like building a new ship except that the time and cost was smaller. Actual time and cost should increase as the difference between the old and new technology increases.

And, there is a point where upgrading a ship isn't cost effective anymore. Why do you think the Iowa class battleships are now mothballed? Why don't they take all of the ships in the Bremerton mothball fleet and upgrade them? The short answer is that the old ship designs would require too extensive of modifications to be worth the trouble.

I'm inclined to think that upgrades are way too easy in GalCiv2. Cost is the only restriction.

Also, account for distance, or would you like for upgrades to be cheaper but you had to send them back to your Starports for upgrading?

I would absolutely support that. I believe that you should be required to bring in a ship for refit. The last time I checked, the SSN-775 Texas didn't weld on a new sonar array at 750 feet below the surface (ignore the fact that it is a brand new Virginia class submarine). It has to be brought in to dry dock, inspected, refitted, dry tested, wet tested, sea trialed and then released back in to general service.

I understand this is sci-fi, and thus opened to some fantasy, but the basic concepts of ship building haven't changed since the first Phoenician shipped was built on the Med.

I think which we are know but hasn't been said is the micromanagement effect of having to fly your ships back to spaceports to get them upgraded. I don't think that is a big deal but just wanted to be clear. After reading this thread I would agree that as it stands now upgrading is somehting I never do - which does cost me experience. However, I tend to build ships that are exponentially better rather than every few turns incrmenetally better ships so the experience not carrying over doesn't seem to matter. That said I would love to see:
1) upgrade requires ship to be at a spaceport in orbit around planet
2) cost is a little more expensive than just the exact cost of the difference between the parts
3) it does require time to upgrade the ship, at least 2 turns plus more depending on upgrades
4) ship being upgraded CAN NOT be called into service, or at least requires 1 weeks notice or something so that they are VERY vulnerable during upgrade

Basically I would like to have upgrades be more of an option but still I want to have to make a decision on whether to do it or not, not just make it an automatic thing I do every time I get a new tech...otherwise I'd rather keep the current system...I like making HARD choices with consequences not just routinely doing A then B then C...

One other thing...I think upgrading along the same tech path should be cheaper/faster than switching (beam to missle for example) or maybe even the only upgrade allowed. In other words, to offset the potential problem of the AI making instant changes to their ships to combat your tactics, only allow upgrades in the same weapon or defense tech line - no upgrading weapons from beam to missles or defense from armour to point etc. Make sense?

I would think that upgrades are expensive so that if you arn't as technologicaly advanced you still have a good chance agains't your enemy. I would bet that if you guys were facing an enemy more advanced than you, you would be quite glad you still have hope....that being said, its still quite pricey.

How easy would it be to mod the game so that upgrading was cheaper and gaining experience was less effective?