upgrade = all object removal

When you say "all objects" I am assuming you mean anything that is not jewelry. And no, I don't know of a way either. I do use "blanks" for my designs, so all I have to do is upgrade the hull and add the components. For example I use the same blank for colony ships, and troop transports. All the visual items get kept. Engines always go on the same hardpoints (almost always), sensors already have a hull spot ready for them, ect.. It makes the upgrading a lot easier. I did spend a fair amount of time designing the blanks, like the way they look, and am enjoying some of the conformity in the fleets.

Hint: you can create your blanks at any time. Just be cautious. I had created a colony ship and decided I wanted to keep the basic design. So I saved it as the colony ship (had impulse engines). Then i selected that design and clicked upgrade. I got exactly that design without any working modules, and saved that as a "blank". All I need to do to use that paticular style is upgrade the blank, and add whatever the situation calls for. Here is funny thing though. That design, even though it has no engines on it, impulse drive is what unlocks it and is required. I don't have a problem with that, in fact i kinda like it. Others may not. So if you make a blank from a working ship, the components on the working ship will be the required techs to unlock the blank. You might not get to use your blank on the first turn because you don't have the required techs.

This is all from before the Beta patch, so I don't know if it has changed... but...

If you upgrade a ship, and the first thing you do is click on a componant in the scroll bar and remove it, then click on the hull in the scroll bar, then all of the pieces of the ship will reappear (including the one you removed).

Zippy, it could turn out that if you did this with your colony ship, then deleted those impulse engines and THEN saved the blank you would get the ship from turn one. This is just a guess since the upgraded ships definatly "remember" the pieces that were there. So maybe going through the manual step of removing those pieces would give you a design that you would get from turn one. Of course, I'm guessing and you said it doesn't bother you anyway. But, what the heck, I'm ina rambling mood.

also seems that any level of miniturization play's a key in unlocking blanks - which is bothersome when you diside to goof off in the middle of a game and create a new ship type

i usually have my ship made with the jewelry with the most basic of componets when designing a new style and save it with the name i want for that class then as i unlock tech i will upgrade it , but a lot of times when i upgrade its with new weapons etc. its just annoying to add everything back on there when all i want to do is upgrade the weapons.

p.s. has anyone else have a problem with CTD's when loading a save?

I am having the same problem and it's just annoying. All I want to do is remove laser 3 and add a laser 4 or something, but the game acts like I clicked new instead of upgrade except it keeps the same hull. I didn't have this problem with the original game out of the box, it just started happening when I upgraded to 1.0X.

All I want to do is be able to remove old tech component and add new tech component, I don't want to have to add engines, sensors, weapons, etc etc back in too, especially if I haven't researched anything better.

Omicron

I tryed foslex's advice and when you click upgrade remove something like a light or something and remove it , then click on the hull and all your stuff will comeback .

p.s. thanks foslex , that a great help.

Version 1.1 has a checkbox option in the game options to keep the old components or strip them off. Your choice. you can change this in game so say if you want to just upgrade engines you can; a few turns later you may want to upgrade a design completly so you can uncheck it. and you will get a totally stripped ship to upgrade. Pretty cool. Its under the Main Menu Interface options I believe.

You can also select the amount of rotation for the parts when placing them in Shipbuilder here.

ok , thanks for this reply.