nly build 12 "interesting/useful" ships ever in GC, the whole game would need to be changed. From epic to fly-speck... I'm not sure how many players would think that is an improvement.

(Double Post)

Maybe upgrades can be done in the field, and redesigns at starbases and planets. I think that adds to the strategic value of having starbases at your borders. Plus as an extra idea everytime ships are upgraded in the field there should be a chance that any race paying for spies could pick off the tech. Spy finds out which ship is being refitted and where and hijacks the upgrade supplies. So if you were in a close science race with a slight advantage you would have to weigh the risks of field upgrades against losing your edge. Also it should be more expensive to do field upgrades, time and money. Maybe have the stats temporarily reduced during upgrade? Just make it so its not a no brainer to just upgrade all your ships at once.

Having manual refit of ships is only worth doing if there a very few ships to begin with, otherwise its a pain in the ass. I personally like the "predesigned model" system of GC1 ships. it really took the pain out of things.

Man, I worry about the laziness of our society sometimes. We do not even play our own games anymore. We want the computer to play for us. We have automated this and computer controled that. Maybe it should be a pain in the ass to upgrade ships. If it is too much hassle just build new ones. I agree micromanagement is a drag sometimes, but don't you ever worry about having remote controls for your remote controls? Well off my soapbox. In certain places, a little micromanagement can go a long way. I think it can be eased by having upgrade controls in the ship list, so you do not need to search out each ship.

Micromanagement can be justified sometimes, for gameplay or stategic reasons. However most micromagement is due to bad design or worse, bad UI.

One of the things I liked most about the original GC was the relatively low levels of inconsequential micromanagement. I'm actually moderately worried about having to manage planet screens and design ships. These are all decent ideas, but may turn out to be a drag once things get too large.

i'm into strategic ship design, but am not personally into the bling element as I'm easily pleased by basic designs - tend to use the base generic hulls and just fill 'em with goodies. I'm wondering whether the bling should be seperated from the strategic, perhaps by having a hull design screen, where you can bling up your small, medium, large, cargo etc hulls and have them saved as your generic hulls for strategic ship design. this would mean, perhaps, that the starport screen is for stategic ship design and build, and the ship design screen becomes a pure bling screen.... just a thought.

In real life, upgrading and refitting usually happens during peace times. Doing so uses logistics that simply aren't available in a war, as they are needed for directing the war. If you go to war with someone, and in the middle, design a ship/plane/tank to counter a threat, do you recall all of your similar troops to upgrade them to this new design? No, you wouldn't even recall one of them, instead you would build the new design and send it to support the troops already in the field. If your troops were "plug and play" as Brad said, imagine the encumberance of the new parts. Now imagine how many supplies like food, and fuel, and parts (for field repairs) would have to be displaced across the field to accomidate these upgrades. How big is a laser cannon? Multiply that times the number of cannons in your fleet. A new engine? That's a good chunk of a ship right there. Don't try to say you'll only need a few parts and the fleet will "McGuyver" it. (as in use the parts to rebuild the whole weapon) That would take training across your empire on how the weapon is supposed to work, and during a war it wouldn't be feasable. Simply put, to send wartime upgrades would cost a fortune, many times more than simply building new ships, as you would have to build a fleet just to transport the parts.

Saying that, I don't think that you should have to send your ships back to the planets either. Limit the range on upgrading your ships. Maybe to 1/4 or 1/3 of their maximum range to allow for the space in supplies the upgrade will need. This will eliminate most of the exploits in refiting an invading army. Give the continuing option to upgrade all ships in range. (i.e. don't make it disappear after you use it once) Anytime there is a ship that could be upgraded in range, alert the player, or give a count of X models that could be upgraded to Y model on the ship logistics screen. Once upgrading has been chosen, the ships in question should either A) be limited to the reduced supply range until refit completes, or become immobile till refit completes. In this way you would also limit the abuse of refitting as a defensive tactic. You might even include both A and B, like switching to B on the last turn of refit, or only using B when doing engine upgrades. I'm just throwing out ideas that might be a suitable compramise between micromanagement, realism, and gameplay.

Finally, unless whatever is finally settled upon is poorly implemented, I doubt this topic would be a gamebreaker for anyone, or at the very most, few. Also, everything I know about the game I know from the forum. I don't have the money yet to preorder my copy so I can't beta test yet, and I never heard of GC1. So if anything I've suggested won't work with your model, I'm not gonna hold it against you if you don't use it. Just remember, often it is better to find a suitable comprimise than simply picking an extreme and sticking with it. I'm interested in this game myself because I've been wanting a good Space Strategy to play online, and I was disappointed with MOO3, and how the developers there had great ideas, but did not prioritize, so when the game was forced gold, much of the good features weren't there yet, and some of the features included did not work, or didn't work well. I wish the design team luck on this one. I hope that when I get this game, it doesn't end up with the other, on the shelf, collecting dust.

I think the option to refit existing ships should be available... Woes be to the empire that pulls out front line troops in order to "refit" them, but such a choice "should" be available...

For the sake of numbers… I think refitting should be relatively “simple”.

Subtract the “cost” of the hull build, and any non-changed equipment, from the new design and add a surcharge depending on the empires technology level. Anywhere from 5-15% would suffice for balance reasons.

Example:

A ship cost 100 points to build.
- Hull 60 Points
- Weapons 20 Points
- Engines 10 points
- Armor 2 Points
- Support 3 Points
- Sensors 5 Points

A new design costs 120 Points.
- Hull 60 Points
- Weapons 30 Points
- Engines 15 points
- Armor 5 Points
- Support 5 Points
- Sensors 5 Points

Refit Costs are 55 points (+10% due to tech level, rounded down) or 60 Points total.
- Hull 0 Points (No-Change)
- Weapons 30 Points
- Engines 15 points
- Armor 5 Points
- Support 5 Points
- Sensors 0 Points (No-Change)

This way there is a substantial benefit to refitting a ship, versus replacing it, but not enough to allow an empire to “instantly” refit their entire armada without some kind of substantial cost. Refitting should be tedious enough to deter constant re-fitting, giving preference to pre-planned periodic overhauls.

Pre-planning can also be encouraged by implementing a refit-dock colony tile that assists in the refit of ships at a reduced cost. However, I think that both inside and outside empire space refits should be allowed. Simply create a ship module that can be placed on a ship design that allows “repairs” of ships outside of empire space. For a premium (+50-75% or so depending on tech level), these repair ships can also perform “refits” on obsolete ships in the field for a lump cash sum.


Woops, forgot to clarify… As if it is not obvious, I am for option C and Both Y&Z together… Players should be allowed to both buy upgrades instantly (at a dock, station, or repair barge), or dock a ship at a space dock and have them refitted in time, as if “building” it.

Refitting ships automagically makes the refit just lose any real meaning. Recall back to scenes from Star Trek, when a Federation ship undergoes refitting - that's a major event, and retaking command of the newly refitted ship is like a kid at Christmas. The game should be similar. When I refit a ship in MOO2, it is a major event, and I'm ecstatic when my veteran crew retakes the helm of the newly pristine ship.

Just having a refit happen out in the middle of now where once you research a new tech - that's just lazy and unexciting to me. It just boils the game down to a sterile crunching of numbers - bump on the stats on my damage delivered by +2, my speed by +1, and my armor by +3. It loses any character or life at all. I mean, crap, I don't want to play a freaking spreadsheet - I want a game that feels like it has some soul. I mean, waaah - if you don't want to bother with the physical action of refitting your ship, then don't. Just build a new one with the better specs.

Again, it's just super, mega lazy to not want to take the necessary steps to refit your ship at the appropriate facility. Refitting is a reward, not a right. You earn the reward by selecting and sending the ships to be refitted to an outpost. It shouldn't be your "right" to just have everything upgrade magically just because you don't want to do it. I hate micromanagement too, but heck, if you don't want to be bothered with even playing the game, then what's the point? Sheesh.

P.S. And in the name of all that which does not suck, please drop the 12 ships thing, Star Pilot - that's your silly propoganda, no one elses. No one in the right might has suggested limiting the game to 12 ships

It was a demonstration of your actual point, VagabondNomad, about being being emotionally attached to all of your ships you ever make in a game of GC2. It was not silly proproganda. Note that others agreed with me at the time about that number, or even the 24 you later suggested. So you are incorrect on that "no one else" bit. It was no one agreed with you on your point of making all ships "emotionally significant". BTW, that comment of mine in this thread is over a month old, Vags. We settled that issue and moved on. Are you missing the teasing that much?

Recall back to scenes from Star Trek, when a Federation ship undergoes refitting - that's a major event, and retaking command of the newly refitted ship is like a kid at Christmas. The game should be similar. When I refit a ship in MOO2, it is a major event, and I'm ecstatic when my veteran crew retakes the helm of the newly pristine ship.

Wow. All this talk of yours about how you want to be emotionally attached to all your ships! All these feelings! Maybe you should be a writer, or hook up with SWG MMORPORK instead? I

Lets keep down the amount of micromangement where we can. I would prefer ship refit wasn't super cheesy. I can live with refitting my ships while they are in my influence. That just means my mobile tender and mobile ship repair capability is represented abstractly, in the cost of the upgrade, rather then being units I have to send around to various "collection points". However, if I have to send all those ships to some facility (a shipyard for instance), then I can live with that. More of a hassle, for zero fun, but I can find game fitting rationales for it. However, as I've mentioned in another thread on this subject, if the planned "Universal Upgrade" (UU) feature doesn't care where a unit is and upgrades it anyways, that will be very irritating if I have to upgrade at a facility to perform a manual upgrade!

Should we ask Star Dock to drop the UU feature? Or just ask them to set all such units to be upgraded at the first convinent facility? That gets us into needing units to ask you for your permission to upgrade, otherwise you put it into a planet orbit to defend the planet, and instead, it goes into the shipyard there to be refitted. That would tick off some players needing it to defend that world, right then.

I know we cannot cover all the cases. There is always some trade off. Such is the way of software. But UU tends to be very cheesy, and that will tick me off if the UU can do things I (and the AI) cannot do.

So if it is going to be a UU system and ships can upgrade in the field? Will they have to stay in their current position for X amount of turns while they 'refit'? Seems like an acceptable penalty for upgrading out in space. WIll dissuade you from upgrading on your lines or in dangerous space.

Currently (v0.12[b].002) the "upgrade" button takes you to the ship design screen, where you can create a new ship design. If you replace the old ship design with a modified one then does that change all ships? Is it possible to alter one ship?

Star Pilot,

Let me take a moment to refresh your memory - this is a direct quote from me:

Star Pilot, it appears that either you've misunderstood me, or I've miscommunicated somehow. Although I did say that I could keep track of about 25 ships, I never suggested that the large maps should be limited to 25 ships. If you read some of my earlier posts in this thread, you'll see that I said somewhere in the vicinity of 100 ships would make a good max number - maybe slightly less than that. My point in mentioning 25 is to say that there would probably would not be more than 25 ships that I would be interested in keeping track of, and with a top number of 100 ships, it would make it easier to find those "interesting" ships.

I'll be interested in seeing you try to turn that into me advocating only 25 ships

The issue regarding the method of ship refit and the number of ships in GC2 are intimately related. Obviously, with a smaller number of ships, manually refitting ships becomes more practical. If we have hundreds or thousands of ships, then refitting ships becomes more of a chore.

Here are the requirements for ship refit, as I see them:

1. There must be a monetary cost for the refit that is less than building a new ship.
Why? This is the easier requirement to explain. You're not building a whole new ship, so it should cost less than a new one. The important thing is that it should cost something reasonable, rather than being free.

2. There must be a time cost for the refit of the ship, during which the refitted ship will be removed from the field of play and unusable, lasting from the time that the refit begins until the refit is complete.
Why? If you're going to upgrade a ship, you should receive no benefit from the ship whatsoever during its upgrade. Think of it as an accelerated ship-building process.

To this end, there are several reasons that I keep advocating this being done at a facility, be that a planetary shipyard, or a capable starbase. One reason would be that if you just tore your ships apart in the middle of deep space, it would be pretty vulnerable, and would need to be attackable by enemy forces during that time. Another reason is that it just doesn't make sense that one would haul all the upgrade pieces out into the middle of deep space on a fleet of freighters, rather than just sending the ship to the facility instead. That's really backwards, if you think about it. It's like taking the restaurant to the house, instead of the family going to the restaurant.

And let's look at some of the components of the time cost. One is the time of the actual upgrade itself. Another would be the travel time to the upgrade facility, assuming that this is the chosen refit model. And then there's the time to travel back, assuming that is included as well.

Conclusion
Here's a potential compromise for the refitting of ships between the manual and automagic camps. How about if the requirements stated above were automated in the following fashion:

1. You select a ship for refitting.
2. You select a facility to refit the ship.
3. You select a return destination upon completion of refit (destinations could be empty squares of space or fleets).

And that's it. That way, if you want the refit done fast, and you're near a hefty shipyard / production facility, you could send your ship there and get it done quicker. If you're way out on your frontier, then your refit is obviously going to take longer any way you cut it.

Another idea is that maybe you could just have some options you could select to let the computer automatically handle the refit according to the following criteria:

a. At nearest refit location
b. At fastest refit location
c. At best refit location (the computer analyzes travel time vs. production time and selects the location that will return your ship in the smallest amount of time)

Just some thoughts.