Fleet Upgrading

[AlanC9]

Someone check me on this. I split up one of my fleets into two pieces and had them go to two different shipyards. The two new fleets had the same number of corvetters, with one fleet having an event-gained cruiser.

One of the two starbases had 6 shipyards, the other had 2. Shouldn't matter since right now only one shipyard does upgrades, right? But the fleet at the 6-shipyard base upgraded far slower than the one at the 2-shipyard base. The slower-upgrading fleet had the cruiser in it. When I broke the cruiser out into a separate fleet, both fleets upgraded at the same speed.

So the event-gained cruiser was killing my upgrade speed. It was wildly different from my existing designs, but OTOH, it couldn't have upgraded anyway. I don't know how this calculation worked, but this can't be right.

 

[AlanC9]

where is "observing what the enemy is using and adapting to that" equal to "no work" ?

NOT doing anything, because the system makes it overtly punishing to try and adapt, is actually "no work".

Who's advocating not doing anything? The smart thing to do would be to try and get info on your potential enemies' designs years before the war breaks out. Plus maintaining a mineral/fleet cap reserve to build specialized ships when you know what you want them to be.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

where is "observing what the enemy is using and adapting to that" equal to "no work" ?

NOT doing anything, because the system makes it overtly punishing to try and adapt, is actually "no work".

It is not overly punishing... it is reasonably punishing to keep respec your fleet every few years or so based on the opponent which require very little decision making.

Anything that makes you do long term planning is meaningful decisions.

Making a quick decision based on some scouting and then quickly update your fleet to the perfect counter is not very rewarding because it is too easy and you are basically reacting not making any real decisions

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Who's advocating not doing anything? The smart thing to do would be to try and get info on your potential enemies' designs years before the war breaks out. Plus maintaining a mineral/fleet cap reserve to build specialized ships when you know what you want them to be.

Yes... making bad decisions will actually have consequences. If you can just withdraw and respec your fleet there really is not much of a challenge.

You will have to live with your decisions.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Someone check me on this. I split up one of my fleets into two pieces and had them go to two different shipyards. The two new fleets had the same number of corvetters, with one fleet having an event-gained cruiser.

One of the two starbases had 6 shipyards, the other had 2. Shouldn't matter since right now only one shipyard does upgrades, right? But the fleet at the 6-shipyard base upgraded far slower than the one at the 2-shipyard base. The slower-upgrading fleet had the cruiser in it. When I broke the cruiser out into a separate fleet, both fleets upgraded at the same speed.

So the event-gained cruiser was killing my upgrade speed. It was wildly different from my existing designs, but OTOH, it couldn't have upgraded anyway. I don't know how this calculation worked, but this can't be right.

That seem a bit strange... should check on that and see what it can be. Could be that the calculation look at the build time and cost of all ships in a fleet... but that would make things really strange and stupid.

 

[Savior59]

Who's advocating not doing anything? The smart thing to do would be to try and get info on your potential enemies' designs years before the war breaks out. Plus maintaining a mineral/fleet cap reserve to build specialized ships when you know what you want them to be.

Ideally, yes players should be doing this to ensure that their fleets are well equipped against enemies. What this person is saying is that it is work to scout your enemies and build counters, something that some people are claiming is "no work" due to the lack of alloy cost that comes with changing your fleet to counter an opponent's.

 

[Savior59]

Yes... making bad decisions will actually have consequences. If you can just withdraw and respec your fleet there really is not much of a challenge.

You will have to live with your decisions.

Making bad decisions already has large consequences, withdrawing and respecing your fleet is a strategic choice that players make after scouting enemies and finding out what fights best against them. There is no need to tag expensive retrofiting ontop of that work.

 

[Z.A.W.I.S.Z.A.]

To anyone who is even slightly apologetic to the new upgrading system, heres a little breakdown.

The entire thing is borked. The game doesnt count the number of shipyards when upgrading. Doesnt matter if im putting those corvettes in my backyard or on the insanely huge shipyard dedicated to nothing more than building and refurbishing existing fleet. And even if that would be the case, then the upgrade button should automatically direct my ships to the nearest AND biggest (in terms of shipyards) station. It instead goes to the nearest with any number of shipyards. So i need to micro because my admirals are dumb as rocks? The cost doesnt make sense as well. Its 10 fucking corvettes. Do you want to tell me those 10 crappy little flying coffins upgrade cost is about as much as building a decent chunk of a megastructure? Cause i dont really think those can be even comparable in size, let alone the number of materials required to build or remodel. And then theres the second blarg in the room. Lets look at this logically. You buy a car. You want after some time to upgrade the engine. Now changing the oil filter doesnt cost just about 60% of the cost of the entire automobile as far as i know. Then theres the issue of time. You want to tell me that K2 civ is unable to figure out that this one clamp here is where the rocket launchers were, and you probably should put something similar in its place? Or what, did they forget how matters replicators work? Did the shroud addiction dissolved their brains?

TL;DR: This is making me question the whole "we want to make the most immersive 4x of all time" thing. Its counterintuitive. Those xeno asshats are super advanced civilisation with just about infinite knowledge and eldritch beings on speed dial, they should get better at making stuff, not worse. Yet, one game logic and new system apologists later, we are here, with fleets taking decades and entire moons worth of alloys to upgrade.

Not a fan. They done borked it up.

 

[AlanC9]

To anyone who is even slightly apologetic to the new upgrading system, heres a little breakdown.
The cost doesnt make sense as well. Its 10 fucking corvettes. Do you want to tell me those 10 crappy little flying coffins cost about as much as a decent chunk of a megastructure?

That's an interesting argument, but it's got nothing to do with upgrading.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Someone check me on this. I split up one of my fleets into two pieces and had them go to two different shipyards. The two new fleets had the same number of corvetters, with one fleet having an event-gained cruiser.

One of the two starbases had 6 shipyards, the other had 2. Shouldn't matter since right now only one shipyard does upgrades, right? But the fleet at the 6-shipyard base upgraded far slower than the one at the 2-shipyard base. The slower-upgrading fleet had the cruiser in it. When I broke the cruiser out into a separate fleet, both fleets upgraded at the same speed.

So the event-gained cruiser was killing my upgrade speed. It was wildly different from my existing designs, but OTOH, it couldn't have upgraded anyway. I don't know how this calculation worked, but this can't be right.

Not sure what is going on here... might be event oriented.

I tested this with adding one or several cruisers to a corvette fleet and the corvettes still updated with the same time as before. At least this seem to work as intended using your normal regular designs.

 

[Z.A.W.I.S.Z.A.]

That's an interesting argument, but it's got nothing to do with upgrading.

Eh, phrasing mishap. I meant the upgrade cost in the late game. Oopsie

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Making bad decisions already has large consequences, withdrawing and respecing your fleet is a strategic choice that players make after scouting enemies and finding out what fights best against them. There is no need to tag expensive retrofiting ontop of that work.

Making long term decisions is always MUCH harder. The old system was very simpleminded in my opinion. Now your decisions have long term ramifications.

 

[Z.A.W.I.S.Z.A.]

Making long term decisions is always MUCH harder. The old system was very simpleminded in my opinion. Now your decisions have long term ramifications.

What rammifications? With the new upgrade system the only thing im ramming is my early game fleet against enemy defences so that i can gain more room for new stuff. Theres no logic nor tactic here. Good old soviet union strategy. I know they added space commies to the game but come on...

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

To anyone who is even slightly apologetic to the new upgrading system, heres a little breakdown.

The entire thing is borked. The game doesnt count the number of shipyards when upgrading. Doesnt matter if im putting those corvettes in my backyard or on the insanely huge shipyard dedicated to nothing more than building and refurbishing existing fleet. And even if that would be the case, then the upgrade button should automatically direct my ships to the nearest AND biggest (in terms of shipyards) station. It instead goes to the nearest with any number of shipyards. So i need to micro because my admirals are dumb as rocks? The cost doesnt make sense as well. Its 10 fucking corvettes. Do you want to tell me those 10 crappy little flying coffins upgrade cost is about as much as building a decent chunk of a megastructure? Cause i dont really think those can be even comparable in size, let alone the number of materials required to build or remodel. And then theres the second blarg in the room. Lets look at this logically. You buy a car. You want after some time to upgrade the engine. Now changing the oil filter doesnt cost just about 60% of the cost of the entire automobile as far as i know. Then theres the issue of time. You want to tell me that K2 civ is unable to figure out that this one clamp here is where the rocket launchers were, and you probably should put something similar in its place? Or what, did they forget how matters replicators work? Did the shroud addiction dissolved their brains?

TL;DR: This is making me question the whole "we want to make the most immersive 4x of all time" thing. Its counterintuitive. Those xeno asshats are super advanced civilisation with just about infinite knowledge and eldritch beings on speed dial, they should get better at making stuff, not worse. Yet, one game logic and new system apologists later, we are here, with fleets taking decades and entire moons worth of alloys to upgrade.

Not a fan. They done borked it up.

Well... you pay maintenance on ships which represent things like changing oil filter in a car. Ripping out a laser cannon to put in a missile system is more like converting a regular car into a flat top or putting in a new engine. It is rare for wet navy ships in real life to completely replace their large weapons system after they are built.

The US did not rip out the main guns on their battleships when they modernized them with missiles for a good reason!

And we all agree that a six shipyard station should upgrade fleets six times as fast... NO ONE is arguing otherwise. THIS is what we should complain about.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

What rammifications? With the new upgrade system the only thing im ramming is my early game fleet against enemy defences so that i can gain more room for new stuff. Theres no logic nor tactic here. Good old soviet union strategy. I know they added space commies to the game but come on...

The only reason you do that is because you don't care about ship experience then I guess?

In any way... we don't have a morale system for our fleets so we might want to have that as well then... having a newer more resilient fleet means better morale or something.

In real life we care about the crew because an experience crew is worth ALLOT in real life. The safer we can make the environment for the sailors the more efficient they are. History have shown this over and over. Those who neglect their crew safety often suffer from it eventually.

If you are going on the offensive you should perhaps build up fairly big before you attack and upgrade ships to the latest standard, being able to retain experience actually is a thing in this game which can have a significant advantage over time.

The new upgrading has more to do with forcing you to think about ship composition and how you position them in your empire.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

We should also consider that this is sort of a nerf to conquering play styles which is a good thing in my opinion. It is too easy to roll over the galaxy as it is.

 

[happyscrub]

Unless a dev said a future change is to change X gameplay, people need to stop saying a lot of things in 2.2 was intended. You have no idea as much as the next person. Heck there's already a patch being tested

 

[Leylos]

While I don't mind the upgrade costs, I find the upgrade speed far too slow.

I currently decided to upgrade one of my lategame fleets. It will take over 5000 days.

 

[Z.A.W.I.S.Z.A.]

The only reason you do that is because you don't care about ship experience then I guess?

In any way... we don't have a morale system for our fleets so we might want to have that as well then... having a newer more resilient fleet means better morale or something.

In real life we care about the crew because an experience crew is worth ALLOT in real life. The safer we can make the environment for the sailors the more efficient they are. History have shown this over and over. Those who neglect their crew safety often suffer from it eventually.

If you are going on the offensive you should perhaps build up fairly big before you attack and upgrade ships to the latest standard, being able to retain experience actually is a thing in this game which can have a significant advantage over time.

The new upgrading has more to do with forcing you to think about ship composition and how you position them in your empire.

Yes, I do not care for experience cause its inconsequential. All I care about is an admiral who btw can die off now seemingly at random during the fight now(I had a fight where my losses were exacly one corvette and I guess my admiral decided that it should be flagship, but whatever, Ive already established that leaders in stella are competing with potatoes on the sapience scale). Back to the topic at hand, ripping an old gun and installing a new one isnt comparable to making a car into a cabrio, its comparable to changing an engine. Which, again, can be done with less than cost of an entire brand new car. Much less than 90% of the cost in fact. Besides, when upgrading between weapon tiers and not weapons in general you also get insane jump in cost. You arent even mounting a new cannon, at best you are installing a new barrel when upgrading from blue to ultraviolet lasers so that the material is more resilient to melting. Also dont compare modern military to space wizards. Theres no comparison. The ammount of time doesnt make sense as well. Again. Matter replicators. Physics bending machines. Unobtanium. Black hole mineral mine because ripping matter from a star thats been compressed to the size of an atom is super easy. But upgrading fleet? Bah. See you in 30 years sonny. Remember to bring grandpa his OJ when you are back.

I am going to argue this over and over because not only this one particular thing is just so SO immersion breaking its not even funny anymore, it also grinds the entire game to a full stop. And playing the game as intended (2300 mid, 2400 late) is actually factually impossible with current upgrading system, both resource and time wise. And I wouldnt even mind as much if I could mitigate it somehow. But I cant. No matter if im a swarm of hungry hungry gestalt hippos or robets or fucking reptilians from zeist, i need to chug out those foundries and about nothing more really. Is that fun to have this huge awesome sprawling empire with really nice albeit a bit messy planet system (I hope thats changed as well but thats a nitpick at this point) and dedicate basically one or two EVERY SINGLE PLAYTHROU to smelt stuff into slabs? Was that intended by the developers, who wanted to make planets something more than sector fodder?

 

[Sifer2]

It's almost certainly broken or poorly designed. You have to upgrade since otherwise one ship with an old thruster will slow the whole fleet down. And the Fleet Manager gets more an more confusing/broken the more ships you mix into your fleet who are not the same design/tech level. The only current work around is to use No Retreat doctrine to try to just kill off your old ships. Since upgrading them costs nearly as much as building a whole new fleet, and may take longer than they would to build fresh if your building from multiple shipyards. lol