Huh? Your second upgrade is to a 'more expensive' design, whereas the third option is a 'less expensive' design. I imagine it just compares costs, rather than comparing individual devices.

Yeah I don't get what you're saying either. So the final total of the third is less than the second? Isn't that expected since you're using cheaper parts? It also figures in other things such as changing weapon type, def vs offense, etc and I believe it has some added cost built in.

Not really. You're trading time for money. Upgrades (usually) take far less time than actually building a ship, so you pay a large amount of money to do so. Also, changing a complete ship can sometimes be even more difficult than building a new one from scratch, so it makes sense that some upgrades would cost more than building the ship, because you have to take OUT everything, and put in everything, not just put it in.

Call me crazy... but I'd like a more flexible upgrade dialog. For instance, sometimes I want to upgrade all my frontline War Ships *now*, in one turn... but for my reserves, I'm happy for that to take longer, say four or five turns. I don't want my ENGAGED War Ships to be upgraded at all, since that loses them a turn and sets their hp to 1. So, cheaper upgrades for 'takes longer', and a way to choose which ships take how long. Good idea?

One thing that would be spiffy is if you could build a new tile on a planet called Starship Drydock, where ships in orbit around that planet can be upgraded for far less cost at the tradeoff of taking two or three times as long. It could perhaps have the added effect of making ships in orbit repair faster as well.

No, simply wrong. The price is coming out because you no longer have to fit it out with costly psionic shredders. Let's make this clear: every upgrade, you remove every part and replace them Cheap weapons > expensive weapons. Your argument lacks any logic. Yes, new weapons, but they're a lot cheaper than buying a new stock of expensive old weapons.

Which is why you have a new engine installed everytime you have your car's oil changed. Makes perfect sense now

another slightly strange thing with upgrading... if you have say 4 ships of some design to upgrade, it costs more to upgrade them all with the 'upgrade all' check box than if you go round and do them all individually. i.e, upgrading 'all' of 4 ships costs more than (cost of one ship). its not n*(cost of 1 ship) either, so cant mean just displaying the number of ships to be upgraded wrong or anything.

Although the listed cost of a ship is far lower than the upgrade price often is, when I compare it to rush buying a ship from scratch, it is cheaper. Since you are still using civilian contract workers to 'rush' a job that would take weeks, it's natural that it would be more costly. What I find odd about it are the interface quirks like having to choose a single ship in space and being able to upgrade a ship several sectors away, even behind enemy lines without problems.

As for the upgrade cost of all ships at once and not selecting ships individually... Okay I can't rationalize that at all. Maybe um... it's harder for the civilian workers to get to the ships while organized in fleets or in planetary orbit and by singling them out in space for some magical upgrade vessel to come along does some of the logistical work for them so they give you a discount... yeah... something like that.

Another thing that bothers me is that it does not give you an estimate on the upgrade time. Maybe there is some way to know this based on the cost of the upgrade, but I haven't figured it out yet. Often times I've made tactical decisions, upgrading ships in dangerous areas or maybe at times when timing is critical, then after hitting upgrade, finding out that it will take 3 weeks when I needed it in 1. Some examples include upgrading a colony ship in mid flight to try to beat an AI to a planet or converting one to a constructor to grab a resource. Other times I might upgrade my flagship or other sensor ships to military vessels when a war breaks out in enemy teritory in order to attack unarmed starbases, or trade routes, etc. Without being able to tell how long the upgrade will take, these decisions have often been costly loses.

No, upgrades are not too high.
They are cheaper then buying new ships.

One thing that would be spiffy is if you could build a new tile on a planet called Starship Drydock

Actually, there used to be a tile upgrade to the space port that for whatever reason the developers lost interest in after beta testing or during testing. That upgrade would and could be the ideal place for lowering the cost of upgrades to ships in orbit. Ships not in orbit, cost would be astronomical of course and time consuming. Successive upgrades to the starport tile could become availabe after researching items such as:

Enhanced Miniaturization, Enhanced Logistics = Upgrade Starport to Spaceport (10% reduction in U/G costs on that planet)

Advanced Miniaturization, Advanced Logistics = Upgrade Spaceport to Spacedock (15% reduction in U/G costs on that planet)

Ultimate Miniaturization, Ultimate Logistics = Upgrad Spacedockt to STARDOCK (25% reduction in U/G costs on that planet)

I should have posted this in the wishlist for 1.2 (mewp)

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

@Kimo Hardy, I think you are looking in the wrong place for the costs in your example. Typically buying a ship costs 10x the cost to build. For example buying your 480 ship outright should cost 4800 (minus any civ abilities) so I see the costs for upgrade as:

The difference in the cost of the upgrade to the original, multiplied by 10 and factoring in any civ bonuses you have.

In your example the difference in the costs is 480 - 307 = 173
Multiplied by 10 = 1730bc but I believe you have civ attributes (from techs) that also reduce this cost by almost 9% to 1578bc

Its not the cost of the new version. I have noticed this one before when I have upgraded ships.

At least that is my interpretation based on every upgrade I have done; you are paying for the difference between what you have and what you will get and in GalCiv2, paying for ships means 10 times the cost to build.


Edit: I fully accept I could be talking out my ar$e and its pure coincidence in my games! This is all based on observations