Upgrade costs not making sense?

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.

From a sanity check perspective that makes almost as little sense in the non ideal case as when the first two upgrade prices are 100bc, 60bc + 4bc for 3 mo.

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.

The upgrade prices are ridiculous. It costs almost as much to upgrade as it does to build an entire new ship, and that is in need of fixing.

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.

Another big bonus for upgrading is retaining gained hitpoints. Veteran ships might have double the hitpoints of newly built ones, if a player is diligent about retreating them to heal.

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?

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.

IN the first upgrade I'm buying 5x new engines, 1x new armor, 1x new shield, 5x new point defense for a total notional cost of X. All other parts are unchanged and shouldn't have any cost associated with them in the upgrade. IN the second upgrade I'm buying all the items under X, as well as 6x photon torpedos at an additional cost Y. More stuff changed, so I should be charged a higher upgrade price.

Acording to GC upgrade price logic X > X+Y

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.

and also

It could perhaps have the added effect of making ships in orbit repair faster as well.

They do already.

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

Your argument lacks any logic.

I think it is quite reasonable to ask why not changing a ship's parts would cost more than changing them even if the replacement parts are cheaper. I don't however think that this is a very problematic point. Although this occurs most likely because the cost of the upgrade is based on the value change in the ship overall (amongst other factors), just think of it this way: When they install the better, but cheaper weapons they can sell off the older pricey weapons to someone or use the parts for something else. They will also cost less to maintain, although you can argue that wouldn't be reflected in the upgrade fee.

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 4*(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.

This is a pet peeve of mine as well since I do like to build up experience (as opposed to the RTS strategy of just generating hordes). I have a concrete example on the game screen in front of me:

upgrading from a design costing 307 to a new version costing 480 (better weapons, armor and engine techs).

the cost ? 1578, or as was said, abourt 4 times the value of the ship !!! While it is true that upgrading could have some inherent inefficiencies a factor of 300% seems excessive. The argument from time - that it's doing everything in a turn or so - well, hey, we're ripping out the old parts and popping in the new, not rebuilding the whole body, so there's a logical reason why it would be faster than regular construction.

In my case, selecting the individual ships still gives me a factor of 4x's - it's disappointing as the ability to upgrade and keep veteran crews is a cool thing. Paying the entire cost of a new ship - in the above example 480 - would seem reasonable but not 1578.

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.

Upgrade costs are redicolously high. It costs me far more to upgrade the ship than to build it!

I mena, upgrading my heavy fighter (which costs 168bc) cost me far more then that. More then ALL of my trade routes COMBINED can bring in in a MONTH.

Talk about nonsense...

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

I don't have a big problem with the price of ship upgrades. Yes, it could probably be a little bit cheaper, but as a gameplay element, if it becomes a cut and dry decision for the player to choose to upgrade vs. building a new ship, then it's not a very interesting in-game decision, is it?

I can also envision many scenarios (even in real-life), when it would be cheaper to build something from scratch as opposed to upgrading an existing design. Not necessarily 4x as much, but this is a game after all.

You can also look at it this way - you can upgrade your ships even when they're out in deep space. How much do you think it costs to ferry all the workers/parts from your planet to your ship. Then you'd have to pay all those workers overtime and hazard pay, and you know how unions can get

There was a similar complaint with upgrading units in Civ4 as bieng too expensive.

IMO it's supposed to be ridiculously expensive, because then it makes you think.

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

There certainly are a number of rational explanations as to why upgrading would cost more than just the price of components - certainly, time, location and the fact that reworking is not always less expensive than rebuilding are valid.

But these are dependent on circumstances and can be argued either way - if it costs more in deep space, why more in the home port (tried that). Should there be more logic around this ? And if we are going to go with 'arguments from reality' well, look at how the navy or the space program do it - they refit a lot and run their hulls for decades.

Guessing that it really is a gameplay decision - it's available as an emergency measure but not as a general pupose tactic. It just happens to be one which impacts my style of gameplay.

@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

@gmjapan,think you're quite right that the cost issue is between buying and building - thanks for nailing down the numbers. What you're correctly referring to as buying I was calling the time factor - that it happens immediately or almost immediately. These are the mechanics. However, there are issues with this from a game perspective:
- is it true that replacing equipment is an equivalent task to building from scratch ? Obviously this is subjective and could be argued either way.
- why is there only an 'buy' option here - this is the 'does it need more logic' question. Being able to nuture experience is a cool and interesting part of any campaign game which is not as viable as it could be in GalCiv. It does seem like a gameplay choice ....

Or perhaps I just need to stop being so cheap.