Can someone help a newbie with upgrades?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I've only been playing for about two days so still learning but i'm having some trouble with upgrading ships. Do i need to have already built the ship or have it available at the starport to build before I can upgrade a ship? Also I thought I could just click on a ship, pick upgrade, and then choose which items on that ship I wanted to upgrade, but it doesn't seem to work that way. It seems to want me to pick a ship I want it to look like. I also tried to create a new ship (only spent about 10 minutes) and it came out looking very ugly. Are there prebuilt ships I can download and just add my tech? I was also having issues with everything spinning really fast and the map going crazy but I found a link about updating teh AMD dual core drivers, so I will try that. thanks
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A lot of very good questions? in your post Strum,

To Upgrade a ship you already have:
You MUST design a replacement ship...
Ex: You have a Scout ....
Design a tiny hull with your best engines and weapons ...
THEN select that scout ship and ... an Upgrade Option appears...
Click that and from the Upgrade screen select your new fighter as the ship to upgrade to ...
IT WILL CO$t some money, but instead of that almost worthless scout you have a FIGHTER ...
Now you can go BLOW UP stuff instead of just looking at it ...
HAVE FUN !!!!!

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You do have to design the ships that you're upgrading into, and they do have to be of the same hull size--so to upgrade your survey ship, you'll need to design something with a medium hull. Then, when you go to the upgrade screen, you'll be able to select it from a list.

As for ships being ugly: If you can't design them well, just don't bother with extras. Pick a hull of the size you want and just stick on the functional components in some way that looks symmetrical. If your ships are in fleets and your map is zoomed out a little, you won't really be able to tell the difference anyway. Also, you might try using different base racial types for your ships. I like Human and Drengin, myself.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes, DreadArchon is correct, the ship appearance is a non-factor ....
Look at the AI created ships (by clicking on them ) and you will often see ...
Laser cannons and sensor mods hanging off the hulls at odd configurations..
... and yet those same ships can BLAST you right out of the game !!!!!!!
Hey , I admit , I will spend a lot of time making a custom ship look "just so" ...
But combat results depend only on FUNCTION not how they look !!!!!!!