I upgraded my survey ship once but it seemed to charge me way way more than the upgrade window said it would. I crashed several thousand BC into the red and never managed to crawl back out of the financial black hole. My empire stopped developing and was destroyed, being so early game it proved fatal.

I can't remember the exact numbers but I think I thought I would be charged about 400BC and found it took around 9,000BC. Ouch.

I upgraded a survey ship that was out of range, and it is taking forever to upgrade. Even now that it is within range, the time to upgrade has not changed.

I don't mean to sound like a snot, but what do you expect? If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you don't understand why, when you attempt to upgrade one of your vessels that it outside your empire's sphere of influence, it is taking a long time and costing a lot of money? Okay, let's consider what is happening "behind the scenes". Your industry is having to produced the upgrade parts, haul them clear the heck out into the middle of nowhere, then improvise some sort of spacedock way out there, shut your ship down, tear out the old parts, put in the new, and then get everything to work again. Hmmmm. Seems like that would obviously take less time and cost less money the closer you are to your empire.

The part about the cost not changing now that it's in range - that I don't get. Did you colonize another planet, causing your shipt to fall in range, or did you somehow move your ship during the refit (hopefully this wasn't allowed)? In any event, once the actual refit begins, the cost has already been incurred, so if you colonize other planets causing your ship to fall in range, it's too late - you've already had to haul those parts across creation to get to your ship.

IMO a ship that you wish to upgrade should be

1. adjacent to a SB that has a repair facility. Though I havent been through all the SB modules I don't think there is one. 2. or it should be dock in orbit of a Planet WITH a Star Port.
3. or the game needs a new ship specifically designed to take new parts to a ship out in space.

Think of #1 as a foreign port, say maybe in Hafia, Isreal. #2 a shipyard/repair facility in your home country. #3 a Ship Tender.

I don't think we will get any of those three as the game is so far along, but one can hope.

Or, just throwing things out there. All ships I have been on, 6 in total, have there own repair facility onboard. They can manufacture there own parts, etc. If that ship deployed with a good supply of duct tape and bailing wire, then all they would need is Macgyver and the newest technology to be space-mailed to them.

I don't mean to sound like a snot, but what do you expect? If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you don't understand why, when you attempt to upgrade one of your vessels that it outside your empire's sphere of influence, it is taking a long time and costing a lot of money?

Oh you did NOT just disrespect Lucky Jack now DID YOU?!?