BTW, we're not against the idea of also being able to upgrade ships individually. 

I do think it might get pretty tedious to have to send ships to a shipyard before they're upgraded. That doesn't sound like fun.

Okay guys, let's make sure we're on the same page:

User has made the Constellation class star ship.

They crank out 20 of these ships and they're all over space.

40 turns later they're at Phaser Mark IV technology and decide it's time to upgrade their Constellation ships.

They can either A) Upgrade them all at once or Go to individual ships and have them upgrade to a particular ship type.

The TIME it takes to upgrade those ships depends on how far they are from a friendly planet or starbase.  If they're in a starport (planet) or at a starbase then the time to do it would be 1X (where X is the cost of the differences).  The further away the ship is, the more cost (say 10X).

So users could send their ships home to be refit faster but they're not forced to.

I am not sure of a better solution. If you FORCE users to send ships home, that could get incredibly tedious. Even if you put in some "Go home, refit, and come back" it would make coordinating an attack difficult.  The user CAN do this, but they don't HAVE to do it.

I don't think it's a good idea to have ships instantly upgrade because because all kinds of cheese comes into play.

Now, if there is a button on each ship panel that lets you "upgrade" that individual to the designated descendant (so you can refit, one by one, as well as all at once), now we are in business.

Actually, that's precisely what I was suggesting. (Sorry, I realize now I wasn't very clear about what I meant.) I still want to be able to upgrade my fleet one ship at a time if I so choose. However, I'm much more likely to upgrade my ships by class, especially once my navy has reached a certain size. In other words, as long as my newer Serpent-class destroyers are operating in sufficient numbers, I'll have absolutely no problem recalling my older Talon-class destroyers to be refitted. And if I don't have enough of the new Serpents to fill the gap, then I'll be faced with an interesting tactical decision--either way I'll be taking a calculated risk!

Okay guys, let's make sure we're on the same page: User has made the Constellation class star ship. They crank out 20 of these ships and they're all over space. 40 turns later they're at Phaser Mark IV technology and decide it's time to upgrade their Constellation ships. They can either A) Upgrade them all at once or Go to individual ships and have them upgrade to a particular ship type.

Nice. Thanks Brad; that's exactly what I was hoping for!

The whole idea of this is to make the upgrade tediousless! Not like Civ3 was! In Civ2 there was only one wonder which was a MUST for me. It was the one that would upgrade units automatically (Leonardo DeVinci's workshop). It just made the game so much less of a pain in the posterior. Now in Civ3 they changed its function and I was very very angry. Everyone willt ell you that keeping your armies up to date with your tech is the worst thing in any strategy game. This option is aimed at being less of a pain, which I am happy with. But it will probably still be a bit of a pain cause of the refit downtime. I could see a ship being retro-fitted for 3 months (ie 3 turns) but any mroe than that seems a lot of excessive. True the challenge of upgrading a ship may be big, but Im sure the technology used to achive it can keep up with it. I guess the ultimate sellign point will be the time it takes for the refit.

I like the idea of upgrading/refitting ships..

I'm not bothered too much by the idea of that happening in space, although to justify that option it would be nice to have some mini-freighter style repair ships which would have to make there way from the nearest planet out to the ship patrolling, bringing both labour and parts... Hence the 'cost' and 'time' of the upgrade would be how long it will take the repair ship to make it out to the patrolling vessel and how many repair ships (by payload) it will take to make the repair (more repair ships needed, larger cost)

I'm not suggesting this be micromanaged. I'm thinking it would be automatic, like traderoutes once they are established. However having that system in place justifies that method of working to those who don't like the idea so much.

I wonder whether in addition to the option of upgrading ALL ships or upgrading individuals, we could upgrade ALL ships then select any we DON'T want upgraded. (In large armadas where only a portion of ships might be on a patrol this would actually be the quickest way to go)

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, with the previous idea of using mini-freighter style repair vessels to upgrade ships on patrol away from a home planet, the fleet waiting to be upgraded would never be 'idle' and defenceless to enemy attack itself, at least not for more than one turn while the actual repairs are done when the repair ship reaches the vessel.... Rather a smart enemy player could do a classic 'wipe out the supply lines' mission by taking out the defenceless repair vessels in transit.

If a players espionage skill (or whatever it is called in Galciv) was high enough a warning (of (x) amount of turns in advance in accordance with the diplomatic skill etc) would be given indicating that an enemy had launched a repair fleet.

I imagine this idea has lots of drawbacks, is far to complicated to add in probably at this point in a beta, however I haven't thought about it a great deal, just wanted to see whether it was something other people could see happening etc.

They can either A) Upgrade them all at once or Go to individual ships and have them upgrade to a particular ship type.

This is what I was hoping to see. You choose to upgrade your ships of a particular ship design and get the following choices:
- Start upgrade of all "Constellation" class ships; OR
- Give me a popup with a list of all "Constellation" class ships with a checkbox next to each one (Yes/No to upgrade)

The Upgrade Yes/No dialog window should display the following when you click on a ship in the list:
- MUST HAVE: Current ship status (current damage, etc.)
- MUST HAVE: Turns required for upgrade
- NICE TO HAVE: Name of Race whose space this ship is in, and current diplomatic relations (peace/ally/war)
- NICE TO HAVE: Distance to closest unfriendly ship (i.e. not one of mine and not an ally ship)
- NICE TO HAVE: Relative Safety of current location (Secure Zone, Safe Zone, Contested Zone, Unsafe Zone, War Zone)

The "Relative Safety" rating should just display the same rating that the AI uses to decide if it is safe to upgrade it's ships, but display the rating in a friendly Human-readable way.

-PC

We could always make a minimap that shows the positions of the ships to be upgraded, and draw lines between the ships and their home planets. (Though that should probably be a toggle).

They can either A) Upgrade them all at once or Go to individual ships and have them upgrade to a particular ship type.

So both options are going to be in? Well I'm perfectly happy.

BTW, is there any financial cost involved with refitting or is just a time penalty?

BTW, is there any financial cost involved with refitting or is just a time penalty?

Oh good question! I was wondering that too.

I'm fine with the all or just one upgrade, though a small extension to the all might be helpful. How about "all that can be upgraded within X turns"? That way you don't accidentally disable a remote ship for 100 turns.

I guess I'm warming up to the "upgrade in place" idea. It is an option after all. However, I really like 4D's idea of having upgrade freighters, similar to trade routes. In GC 1, we have critical economic supply lines as trade routes. Perhaps, in GC 2 military supply lines as upgrade freighters could add to the strategic and logistical depth (an interesting risk to manage in addition to time vs. distance). I suppose I am looking for additional ways to improve the concept of borders, fronts, and territories over GC1.

I like the option to upgrade all ships vs. selected ships. Perhaps one way to simplify ship selection would be to use mini-map screen that displays my ships by class; I could drag-select the ones to upgrade. This would be an easy way to pick those close to (or away from) the front lines, for example.

In GC 1, I always wanted a feature to send a damaged ship home (or nearest facility) to repair and automatically return to a waypoint when finished. I think this might be useful for upgrades in GC2 as well. When you have many, many ships, having to "spacebar thru" a large portion of them for these "routine" activies (repair and upgrade) will be tedious. I don't see how this would make attack coordination any more difficult than upgrading in place, as the "upgrade in place" duration varies based on each ship's distance.

Also agree: instant upgrade = bad.

The whole idea of this is to make the upgrade tediousless! Not like Civ3 was! In Civ2 there was only one wonder which was a MUST for me. It was the one that would upgrade units automatically (Leonardo DeVinci's workshop). It just made the game so much less of a pain in the posterior. Now in Civ3 they changed its function and I was very very angry. Everyone willt ell you that keeping your armies up to date with your tech is the worst thing in any strategy game. This option is aimed at being less of a pain, which I am happy with. But it will probably still be a bit of a pain cause of the refit downtime. I could see a ship being retro-fitted for 3 months (ie 3 turns) but any mroe than that seems a lot of excessive. True the challenge of upgrading a ship may be big, but Im sure the technology used to achive it can keep up with it. I guess the ultimate sellign point will be the time it takes for the refit.

Astax, let's make sure you understand the issue because it doesn't look like you do.

In GalCiv II you DESIGN your own ships. It's not like Civ where your musketeers become riflemen. 

You can't simply have an instant upgrade path because it would be incredibly easy to exploit.  Players could make a very wimpy, cheap ship and then "upgrade" it to a mega powerful ship.  There has to be some sort of mechanism to upgrade ships to avoid that.

If you're going from say a bunch of ships that are essentially identical in every way except they're gonig from Laser II to Laser III then you're probably talking between 2 and 5 turns depending on the distance.  But if you're going from Laser II to Death Beam X then you're likely to look at between 10 to 25 turns.

Perhaps, in GC 2 military supply lines as upgrade freighters could add to the strategic and logistical depth (an interesting risk to manage in addition to time vs. distance). I suppose I am looking for additional ways to improve the concept of borders, fronts, and territories over GC1.

How about this: an upgrade requires a "cargo shuttle" to go from the nearest colony/starbase to a ship that is doing a mid-space refit. It carries all the spare parts and stuff, and is treated just like a GC1 mini-freighter (no weapons or defense). A midspace refit is not complete until the spare parts shuttle arrives at its location in space. That would be a deterrent to doing a refit far from your space, and an advantage if you are already at a colony/starbase. Also, you can stop enemy midspace refits by attacking their shuttles. Too much?

ow about this: an upgrade requires a "cargo shuttle" to go from the nearest colony/starbase to a ship that is doing a mid-space refit. It carries all the spare parts and stuff, and is treated just like a GC1 mini-freighter (no weapons or defense). A midspace refit is not complete until the spare parts shuttle arrives at its location in space. That would be a deterrent to doing a refit far from your space, and an advantage if you are already at a colony/starbase. Also, you can stop enemy midspace refits by attacking their shuttles. Too much?

It could be very cool, but it carries a risk of being a right headache. I do like the idea though, just wondering if its too demanding on the player.

That's effectively the first thought I had after skimming this thread.

Instead of leaving distant ships completely prone to attack for an extended upgrade period (10x as Brad mentioned, vs. 1x for ships at a planet), you could make it either the same or add a moderate penalty (for doing the upgrade in deep space instead of at a dock) as normal upgrades at a system.

However, instead of happening right away when you set the command to upgrade, the nearest space dock would dispatch a mini-constructor to each distant ship; once that mini-constructor arrived at the ship then the upgrade process (complete with laying prone and immovable) would occur at the normal or minorly penalized speed and cost. The ship is fully active until that mini-constructor arrives, and only becomes defenseless when it does arrive and the upgrade happens.

This method incorporates the delays for performing the upgrades far from a space dock, but doesn't make it so dangerous to your fleets (which would make mid-space upgrades almost completely infeasible). On the flip side, as noted above the mini-constructors could be intercepted by the enemy, possibly resulting in a loss of the upgrade money for that particular ship! And perhaps even a chance for the enemy to take that money for himself or steal some of the technologies used in your planned upgrade as well

It's an interesting idea but doesn't solve the cheese problem:

I build 20 big ships with really wimpy weapons/defenses and send them out.

I then immediately "upgrade" them to really tough ships. 

In the system you guys are talking about, what exactly is the "cost" of doing this?

With our system, the idea is that those ships being upgraded would be useless for X amount of turns while they're being upgraded based on distance and expense.

Even our system is pretty lax.  If I build 100 ships that cost 100 to build and then upgrade them all to ships that would cost 500, I am effectively getting a huge advantage because my planets are still producing new ships while my cheap fleets are being produced too. 

The problem being: What is producing these upgrades? 

The ideal solution IMO would invovle something like this (but it's a micro management nightmare):

A upgrade cargo ship is built on the planet that the ship came from that costs the difference between the original and the new ship. It then flies to the ship and once it intercepts, it is upgraded to the new level.

The problems with this is:

1) It could take a long time to produce enough cargo ships since all your ships could come from a handful of planets.

2) What happens if the originating world has been conquered?

3) Do you force people to produce cargo ships? If not, then how do you switch back and forth without it getting complicated (i.e. space sports, by definition, are supposed to only create ONE ship at a time).

In other words, the player has to incur SOME cost. 

Now you might say "Well, let's just have the player pay $$$ to upgrade" but the problem with that is that it rewards the player who has not built up their industry on their planets.  Something has to manufacture the ships and upgrades and that is where the problem with upgrades comes into play.

Another idea would be to have the planet manufacture ALL the upgrades it needs as one mega cargo ship which then splits off.  So if Earth has produced 50 Galaxy class star ships and you want to upgrade them to the Galaxy II class ship and the difference is 20 resources per ship, then it would cost 1000 to upgrade all 50 ships and then once built, the cargo fleet would split up and head towards each ship.

The problem with THAT, however, the case where some cargo ships get destroyed. You don't want the star port to get hijacked by the computer to build replacement cargo ships for the ones destroyed.

ANOTHER idea, which would take too long to implement and test, woudl be to have a ship building queue and when you upgrade a ship, the cargo ships get inserted into the queue and whenver one is destroyed, more cargo ships get inserted into the queue.  But that would require a LOT of coding and testing, mroe than we have and it still might not be "fun" to play that way.

ANYWAY..

Any game mechanic for upgrading ships should take these factors into account:

1) The cost difference between the original ship and the upgraded ship to prevent cheese.

2) The distance from the planet it was constructed on (to prevent cheese with building super fast ships and then upgrading them to mega death ships easily).

3) The MANUFACTURING capacity of either your planet or your civilization to reward players who have built up a manufacturing capacity -- MONEY should NOT come into play unless it's at a massive penalty.

 

How about an imperial upgrade tax?

1) Click "Upgrade" for a type of ship.
2) All ships of this type are mothballed where they stand, unable to move, and with X% combat capabilities.
3) The Imperial Upgrade Tax goes into effect, under which Y% of industrial output from all worlds is skimmed (reducing their output). Y% should be player-adjustable.
4) These taxed resources are sent directly and instantly to every upgrading ship, and applied to the ship's "completion bar".
5) Once a ship's upgrade completion bar fills, it de-mothballs and is upgraded.
6) Once all upgrades complete, the tax is automatically revoked.

Lossiness: This system would be non-lossy for ships at a planet; in other words, 100bc of tax would provide 100bc worth of upgrades. The farther a ship is from the nearest planet, the more resources are consumed in transit.

So if Ship A and Ship B are being upgraded, each needs 40bc to complete, and both are sent 10bc per turn (from total tax income 20bc per turn), then both would complete in 4 turns if they were each at a planet. But if Ship B was 100 lightyears away such that 50% of the resources were consumed in transit costs, then:

Turn 1: 20bc tax. 10bc sent to each ship. Ship A gets 10bc. Ship B gets 5bc.
Turn 2: 20bc tax. 10bc sent to each ship. Ship A gets 10bc. Ship B gets 5bc.
Turn 3: 20bc tax. 10bc sent to each ship. Ship A gets 10bc. Ship B gets 5bc.
Turn 4: 20bc tax. 10bc sent to each ship. Ship A gets 10bc. Ship B gets 5bc.
Ship A is now finished, after 4 turns, at cost 40bc.
Turn 5: 20bc tax. 20bc sent to ship B. Ship B gets 10bc.
Turn 6: 20bc tax. 20bc sent to ship B. Ship B gets 10bc.
Ship B is now finished, after 6 turns, at cost 80bc.
All ships are now finished, taxation ends.

-Cherry

I like Saber Cherry's suggestion!

2) The distance from the planet it was constructed on (to prevent cheese with building super fast ships and then upgrading them to mega death ships easily).

Why do we care about the planet it was constructed on? Can't any planet with a Star Port deal with the upgrading? That's like me shipping my Acura back to Japan every time I need servicing.

That is true.  And in fact I think Saber Cherry's idea has real merit.

ANYWAY.. Any game mechanic for upgrading ships should take these factors into account: 1) The cost difference between the original ship and the upgraded ship to prevent cheese. 2) The distance from the planet it was constructed on (to prevent cheese with building super fast ships and then upgrading them to mega death ships easily). 3) The MANUFACTURING capacity of either your planet or your civilization to reward players who have built up a manufacturing capacity -- MONEY should NOT come into play unless it's at a massive penalty.

As applied to the system I detailed above:

1) The Cost incurred would be the price per mini-constructor. Again, it would be possible to destroy/intercept these thus causing loss or theft of that cost (and any advanced techs involved in the upgrade) and prevention of the target ship's upgrade.

The mini-constuctors would be dispatched immediately upon setting the upgrade command, from the nearest spaceport to the ship to be upgraded (as noted by ProudCanadian, why should it matter which planet it was built on when there are other spaceports nearer?). One could say that the reason they are dispatched immediately is because they are corporate-owned contractor ships and were already built, merely awaiting a job and cargo of upgrade parts

2) The Distance is covered quite simply by the time it takes for a mini-constructor to reach the ship you are upgrading. This inherently adds an extra delay for ships in deep space.

3) Overall Manufacturing capability could be used to determine how long the ship is rendered helpless for upgrading after it is intercepted by its mini-constructor. Not entirely logical when applied to deep-space ships perhaps, but one could say that better manufacturing capability means more technicians and equipment loaded onto the mini-constructor to apply the upgrades, and thus a quicker completion of the job.

SaberCherry's suggestion is interesting but IMO a bit too abstract. Plus the fact that you can leak massive amounts of resources if you have several ships in deep space. To me, the cost should be the same to all ships but the upgrade delayed for ships at long range--it simply makes the most sense that way. It takes the same parts to upgrade a ship no matter where it is, only the time to get there (mini-constructor transit) and difficulty of the job ('helpless' time during upgrade, with a fixed penalty for not being at a starport) varies.

One thing I can't resolve with the mini-constructor idea is the following:

1. You have a fleet of ships of type A on the edge of youre civilization, and they are all nearest to planet B, which would be performing the refit.
2. You instruct the game to perform a refit.
3. Planet B would be presumed to have on hand, or be able to spontaneously generate a mini-constructor for each ship being refit. This is difficult for me to resolve, given that everything else in the game consumes time as a resource in order to generate materials.

Another "cheese" consideration is something similar to what Frogboy has mentioned before:

1. In GalCiv 1 a planet could only build one ship at a time (not sure if this is still the case in GalCiv 2).
2. Let's say you build X number of huge ships that are essentially empty hulls, save for the engines. They should build relatively quickly considering they are mostly empty space (as compared to a fully built-out ship of similar size).
3. You move all these empty ships near a shipyard where they will be needed.
4. You instruct the game to perform the upgrade. The "cheese" factor that I notice here is that this one planet is now essentially building several ships at once, instead of just the one they're normally limited to. I consider this as building several ships rather than refitting because these are only really ships in name, since the only components are those required to be classified as a starship. I guess if a planet can do this many refits at once, then a planet should also be able to build more than one "new" starship at a time. That's all I'm saying.

4. You instruct the game to perform the upgrade. The "cheese" factor that I notice here is that this one planet is now essentially building several ships at once, instead of just the one they're normally limited to. I consider this as building several ships rather than refitting because these are only really ships in name, since the only components are those required to be classified as a starship. I guess if a planet can do this many refits at once, then a planet should also be able to build more than one "new" starship at a time. That's all I'm saying.

The problem is that's a possibility with pretty much every system save one with non-instantaneous mini-constructors as Brad mentioned (where they're added to the queues automatically then sent after completion). But if the mini-constructors take x time to prepare and send out, then it also makes less sense to have an additional 'helpless' time for the ships being upgraded when the mini-constructors arrive (as the building of the constructors has already introduced a significant delay). But shifting the delay to the beginning of the process then leaves us with the 'scouts-to-battleships in 60 seconds on your doorstep' cheese. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, it would seem.

For a mini-constructor system, we're then stuck with a choice: balance the delays between building mini-constructors and applying the upgrade (as having both in full would be excessive IMO), or allow one or the other form of cheese. IMO, it would be more vital to prevent the instant-upgrades cheese than the multi-simultaneous-build cheese.

Astax, let's make sure you understand the issue because it doesn't look like you do. In GalCiv II you DESIGN your own ships. It's not like Civ where your musketeers become riflemen. You can't simply have an instant upgrade path because it would be incredibly easy to exploit. Players could make a very wimpy, cheap ship and then "upgrade" it to a mega powerful ship. There has to be some sort of mechanism to upgrade ships to avoid that If you're going from say a bunch of ships that are essentially identical in every way except they're gonig from Laser II to Laser III then you're probably talking between 2 and 5 turns depending on the distance. But if you're going from Laser II to Death Beam X then you're likely to look at between 10 to 25 turns.

Well that's just obvious. And 2-5 turns is 2-5 months. Thats livable.