It is possible to get a negative in the tool-tip if you downgrade a very expensive component with a cheaper one and the 25% refund is greater than the cost of the component. Not sure how the game actually handle such a case though.
Fleet Upgrading
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It is possible to get a negative in the tool-tip if you downgrade a very expensive component with a cheaper one and the 25% refund is greater than the cost of the component. Not sure how the game actually handle such a case though.
I woulda swore this was EXACTLY what the Game was designed around on PURPOSE by the Devs...? Was this a mistaken impression? Now i'm confused...(Still trying to learn the game... probably still a long road ahead of me.)
For the Topic: I kept trying to Upgrade a large fleet of Corvettes from T1 Lasers to T2 Lasers & it kept saying "Preparing to Upgrade" but never did anything after that... I was wondering if this was a Bug or if the process was awaiting sufficient Alloys. Glad I found this Thread & I now know the answer. Now Upgrading is never worth it compared to just getting older Ships blown up then replacing them. Upgrade Button might not have any reason to exist anymore... spending so much time & cost on a little Upgrade is impossible to justify compared to just suiciding the Ships & replacing them imho. :/
I bet you were building stuff there so it was queued or something... at least I have had no trouble with this. Or it was some bug you encountered.
I agree with OP. If I'm running point defense and get declared on by someone that doesn't use missiles, I want to be able to refit my ships for a reasonable price.
It is a reasonable price as you can see from my calculation. You pay less than the cost of the new component since you get 25% of the cost of the old one as a deduction.
It is not reasonable that you only pay the difference between the old and the new, that is not how upgrading something work.
You simply want to have something that should not and never should have been in the game in the first place. As it is now make more sense and you need to think about how you design your ships more than before.
I must also say that point defense actually is a pretty strong weapon in general, especially on corvettes. I would not loose that many tears if many of my corvettes had point defenses in case I'm up against missiles or fighters.
So I did a little bit of testing with upgrade costs, and I found that it must be bugged.
In this scenario, I used one Defense platform with 2 level 1 Armor components (20 Alloys Each), 4 shields, and all Red Lasers. This added to be a total cost of 266 Alloys.
I then replaced the two level 1 Armor components with level 2 Armor (20 Alloys per component -> 26 Alloys per component) and left everything else the same, totaling a cost of 278 Alloys.
When I went to upgrade my Defense Platform, the cost was 42 Alloys, 30 more than the cost difference between the upgraded and regular platforms.
I don’t think the cost increase was intentional.
In this scenario, I used one Defense platform with 2 level 1 Armor components (20 Alloys Each), 4 shields, and all Red Lasers. This added to be a total cost of 266 Alloys.
I then replaced the two level 1 Armor components with level 2 Armor (20 Alloys per component -> 26 Alloys per component) and left everything else the same, totaling a cost of 278 Alloys.
When I went to upgrade my Defense Platform, the cost was 42 Alloys, 30 more than the cost difference between the upgraded and regular platforms.
I don’t think the cost increase was intentional.
Have you read the thread at all?!?
The cost should be 26*2=52 minus 25% of the old components which in this case is 10 Alloys which equals exactly 42 as what you got.
So no.... this is NOT wrong, this is exactly as it should be.
You do NOT just pay the difference, that would be strange. You don't just bolt on some strange new stuff and get new armour. You first rip out the old one and put in new armour. You do get to keep some of the old components as the upgrade saves 25% of the old cost and rebate that back to you.
The reason for this change was exactly to prevent switching back and forth between hard counters, instead forcing you to pick a balanced design that can handle all situations.
It is a serious AI exploit if you can upgrade fleets whenever you want in a few weeks and for almost no cost. We really don't need more help against the AI.
It can also be a balance issue in MP in favor for the defender in wars.
I also think this will make us think a bit more about what type of fleets we build and how we distribute them in our empire a bit more. It also makes the actual upgrade matter. If you upgrade your fleets every time you get a new technology they can end up pretty expensive.
It can also be a balance issue in MP in favor for the defender in wars.
I also think this will make us think a bit more about what type of fleets we build and how we distribute them in our empire a bit more. It also makes the actual upgrade matter. If you upgrade your fleets every time you get a new technology they can end up pretty expensive.
I would argue that most space-faring civilizations that run off clean energy and have access to FTL travel would be competent enough to at least recycle 75% of the materials used in space ships. Throwing 75% of the alloys away is wasteful and impractical.
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Sure... but you still need to factor in the extra cost and resources for doing the upgrade as well. So you might think that it is closer to 75% but allot of it is now more or less minerals again and you need to reprocess it into Alloys again after. Alloys is a very wide term so one alloy are not equally valuable in all situations so reprocessing are probably a thing.
So 25% is a fair estimation... then there is something called game balance.
Alloys is a broad term, but alloys are an overall representation of refined minerals. Breaking them back into minerals makes no sense, plus under that logic they should return minerals back, no?
Plus, I would argue that the increased upgrade cost does not help game balance, it undermines players that attempt to counter their opponents.
I like that refitting takes a lot of time and resources. It isn't something you can do mid-war without consequences. Sometimes it's better to just throw the ships into the meat grinder and build new ships to replace them. Maybe the numbers can be tweaked but I hope it doesn't turn into upgrading an entire fleet in a month for 10% alloy cost.
I don't have a problem with the time, but it should be reduced by how many shipyards you have. If I have 6 shipyards then the upgrade time should take 1/6 of the time if I only had one.
The price though does seem to scale oddly. putting some more armour on a ship should not cost almost the same as buying new ships.
From what I can tell the COMBAT SYSTEM still relies on a rock / paper / scissors type of balancing. In my current game the neighbor to the north of me uses missiles, the neighbor to the south uses kinetics + energy. If I hard counter the missile opponent the kinetics & energy empire will have a distinct [50% damage] advantage against me. If I try to stay in parity with the k+e neighbor then the missile empire counters me. If I split my fleets then I could purpose build to counter the expected enemy but I'd be outnumbered in ships 2-1.
Because there's not a particularly good solution to the above it's probably more FUN for the player to be able to respec fleets at least somewhat efficiently.
I understand the math behind the arguments as it's pretty clear concerning upgrade costs & time. However I'd prefer a more plug-and-play approach to upgrading where you only worry about component build time & cost as opposed to hull or other factors.
100 yes!
I'm so much more care about my fleet design now compared to 2.1.
Like previously you could through a shipyard on some border station and refit for a month or two. Now you actually plan and save for upgrades.
As well is you plan for battles since now you feel for the loss of your ships. And cant just rebuilt like nothing happened. In 2.1 they main factor in fleet construction was you dackyard capacity. Now you care about the resources you spent too.
Id like to say just 2 things .
1 . 2017 days to upgrade my fleet , 6095 days for the federation . If you stop it , you lose YEARS of upgrade
2. Why upgrades use one 1 shipyard ? , i tryed to divide the feet in 6 but they just go in queue and dont upgrade till the first one dont finish ... ive to build more 1 shipyard stations and send there all the split fleets ?
1 . 2017 days to upgrade my fleet , 6095 days for the federation . If you stop it , you lose YEARS of upgrade
2. Why upgrades use one 1 shipyard ? , i tryed to divide the feet in 6 but they just go in queue and dont upgrade till the first one dont finish ... ive to build more 1 shipyard stations and send there all the split fleets ?
will that federation fleet ever fly around?
If the AI still refits all the ships as soon as it can, I can predict the fleet will never actually do anything...
i agree by the way. We know that game summs up upgrades of individual ships, so maybe it can upgrade them one by one.