Fleet Upgrading

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have refrained from using real life as a basis of my argument, as should you. It is not a logical nor is it a sound basis for an argument to compare how our primitive Navy operates to how a Science Fiction navy operates.

I disagree.. because most things in games and particular in games such as Stellaris mechanics are based on things we a familiar with and understand. If not we can't relate to them.

I have use many other arguments, the realism argument was only brought up because others repeatedly said that it did not make sense or broke immersion. I just gave a plausible way to reflect on the mechanic from a more realistic perspective. It is not an argument for the mechanic itself, just an example reflection on what it can be.

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

1. The math done by you and nobody else. Meaning its viability is questionable until tested. And I dont really want to whip out pen and paper atm. And yes, im not trusting nobody. Very useful skill.

His maths is based on the game files, not something he just made up. He is getting frustrated because he has showed pretty clearly that the game works exactly as intended, but people are still in denial about that.

Now a further question is whether the game *should* work like that, and on that you can have legitimate disagreement. However, there is no point in expressing scepticism about his maths, especially if you're not willing to do the work yourself.

 

[AlanC9]

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. l

Well, a non-idiot could just leave the old ship behind, no?

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

For what it's worth, I think the devs made a tactical mistake in making the upgrades so expensive. I'm not saying it's a bad system, but given that the economy was radically changing, it was bad timing to introduce this change in the way upgrades work.

Personally, I think I'd prefer if the refund for obsolete components was around 50% or even 75%. I understand the rationale for wanting to prevent us from refitting our fleets too easily, but the extra time it takes to do that would by itself change the way war is handled.

Perhaps the system will be a bit less punishing once they change the conversion of minerals to alloys, as I believe they will. Currently it's 3:1, but I believe they're intending to make it 2:1 based on a tweet from Martin.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

It is 6 minerals for 3 Allyos in the beta patch.

And yes... tweaking the numbers might be needed.

AND make it possible to reduce time if you have multiple yards in a station without having to split your fleets manually. That is a something they need to look at.

 

[Tyrax Lightning]

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.

... *Facepalm at self* Dammit... I totally forgot that at the time I was trying to Upgrade the Fleet cause I had gotten the T2 Lasers Researched but at the same time I had lost some Corvettes & was building Replacements... I was trying to do both at the same time to prep for the next Assault... >_<

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.

Point Defense attacks Ships as well, instead of ONLY Missiles/Strikecraft!!? O_0

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Point Defense attacks Ships as well, instead of ONLY Missiles/Strikecraft!!? O_0

Yes they fire on ships as well and their DPS are pretty good, flak cannon in particular are great since they have good tracking.

But they nerfed them in the patch and gave them negative modifier on armour because they were way too god before with a higher DPS than most other small weapons.

 

[Tyrax Lightning]

Yes they fire on ships as well and their DPS are pretty good, flak cannon in particular are great since they have good tracking.

But they nerfed them in the patch and gave them negative modifier on armour because they were way too god before with a higher DPS than most other small weapons.

Figures. Still I might wanna keep that in mind... Many thanks for the info!

For the Topic: I totally agree that it needs fixed that when Upgrading Ships, we should NOT have to do stupid things, like Splitting Fleets, to get our Ships & Shipyards to do something that should just be intuitive to do. If a Shipyard isn't busy it can bother to deign to help with the workload instead of being idle. If the Code can't support this, maybe it's time for a Code Tier Upgrade... oh wait, after all this building on MegaCorp, Paradox's Alloy Reserves might be depleted...

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

It is 6 minerals for 3 Allyos in the beta patch.

Hence I said 2:1, meaning the amount of minerals needed for a single alloy.

 

[nuyu]

I built new one and scrap old ships, have 8 tentacles.

 

[GuildenSpur]

I agree with the OP. Upgrades are way to slow and expensive. Even refitting some small components seems to take forever. Very fun when your fleets are upgrading and when they are almost finished the Unbidden arrives and like most of the times in my games, arrive just at your doorstep. I'm all for tactical or strategical choices but this waiting is just annoying. They can build a new ship a lot faster than they can refrofit? Haven't they learned how to build modularly yet?

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree with the OP. Upgrades are way to slow and expensive. Even refitting some small components seems to take forever. Very fun when your fleets are upgrading and when they are almost finished the Unbidden arrives and like most of the times in my games, arrive just at your doorstep. I'm all for tactical or strategical choices but this waiting is just annoying. They can build a new ship a lot faster than they can refrofit? Haven't they learned how to build modularly yet?

Upgrade time are completely based on the cost of the new component minus some of the old. Upgrade time are then multiplied with 0.75.

If it takes 60 days to build a corvette and the cost of that corvette is 200 and the cost of the upgrade is 100 then that will take 22.5 days per corvette to upgrade.

So NO... it is faster to upgrade than build entire new ships.

The problem is that you currently need to split the fleet if you have multiple yards in one station in order for each yard to work on the upgrade. Each yard only work on one fleet at a time.

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

I haven't gone very deep into a playthrough yet, but I'm wondering whether there are techs that reduce the cost and / or the time it takes to do an upgrade? If not, there definitely should be. It makes sense that some empires would be more efficient than others at reusing materials, as well as being more efficient at modifying their ships. It would also be really cool if there was a tech that could allow you to upgrade and / or repair a fleet without having to return to a starbase, provided it is in friendly territory, at the cost of being even slower to upgrade. That way you could have a fleet on patrol all the time without having to worry about sending it back to base (cuts down on micro-management).

 

[Siri]

I think there should be two upgrade buttons. One where the costs remain as is, or possibly even a little higher, but the upgrades are done very quickly. Then there should be a second button where the upgrades are glacial, pretty much like they are now, but the cost of the upgrade is much closer to the difference in value between components. It could also be a flip choice available as an empire policy so you have to commit for 10 years when you pick one.

Makes a lot of sense really, if I am fine with rushing and just discarding all old things I could do it quickly in real life (albeit not with space ships), and if I take my time I can sell off the old stuff and get a very good price for them. Either way the combination of slow and expensive is horrible.

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

I think there should be two upgrade buttons. One where the costs remain as is, or possibly even a little higher, but the upgrades are done very quickly. Then there should be a second button where the upgrades are glacial, pretty much like they are now, but the cost of the upgrade is much closer to the difference in value between components. It could also be a flip choice available as an empire policy so you have to commit for 10 years when you pick one.

Makes a lot of sense really, if I am fine with rushing and just discarding all old things I could do it quickly in real life (albeit not with space ships), and if I take my time I can sell off the old stuff and get a very good price for them. Either way the combination of slow and expensive is horrible.

Not a bad idea!

 

[GuildenSpur]

The problem is that you currently need to split the fleet if you have multiple yards in one station in order for each yard to work on the upgrade. Each yard only work on one fleet at a time.

Yes indeed, and that's what I usually do and did. The numbers still seem slow compared to previous versions, but I don't have any empirical evidence so it could just be a feeling.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes indeed, and that's what I usually do and did. The numbers still seem slow compared to previous versions, but I don't have any empirical evidence so it could just be a feeling.

From the defines file...

2.1

FLEET_UPGRADE_TIME_COST_MULT        = 0.75        # Upgrade fleet cost
FLEET_UPGRADE_MINERAL_COST_BASE        = 5.0        # mineral cost to upgrade a ship is always at least this regardless of relative design cost
FLEET_UPGRADE_MINERAL_COST_MULT        = 1.0        # mineral cost of ship upgrade is abs( price difference between old and new designs * FLEET_UPGRADE_MINERAL_COST_MULT )

2.2

FLEET_UPGRADE_TIME_COST_MULT        = 0.75        # Upgrade fleet time cost
FLEET_UPGRADE_SECTION_COST_REFUND_MULT = 0.75    # Refund factor for ship section when upgrading
FLEET_UPGRADE_COMPONENT_COST_REFUND_MULT = 0.25 # Refund factor for ship components when upgrading

So the price was extremely cheap before in 2.1 since it always was the exact difference between the old and new ship and this is also why time was so short.

The current system make more sense than the old one which was quite artificial in terms of how you could use it. The new make more sense. One can argue about the numbers and having some decisions or other settings to shift the numbers might be an interesting idea. But it should never be very cheap or very fast, that is neither realistic or in my opinion good for game balance.

The current system would probably be a slight nerf to rather aggressive strategies and being aggressive have generally been the more efficient way to deal with the competition so any nerf to that is good in my book. It should be expensive to keep a fleet up to date, especially if you have a large fleet.

At least we can see that this was a deliberate change to how it worked, it just need some tuning and fixing in my opinion.

If you want the old version back just edit these two lines...

FLEET_UPGRADE_SECTION_COST_REFUND_MULT = 1.00    # Refund factor for ship section when upgrading
FLEET_UPGRADE_COMPONENT_COST_REFUND_MULT = 1.00 # Refund factor for ship components when upgrading

It is your game and you can do whatever you want with it...

 

[Ter.Yeah]

Well, at least the Leviathans of the galaxy rejoice. Nobody in their right minds will retrofit a fleet to kill them now Not unless you're bathing in alloys and under a guaranteed peace agreement for the next 30 years.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Well, at least the Leviathans of the galaxy rejoice. Nobody in their right minds will retrofit a fleet to kill them now Not unless you're bathing in alloys and under a guaranteed peace agreement for the next 30 years.

No one stops you from upgrading all your fleets in pieces so upgrades are more gradual.

Another thing which I find interesting which I'm certain other will scream about is that if you have a very large fleet then both expanding it and upgrading old ships to the same level will now usually mean that you gain new military technology faster than you can both build and upgrade your ships.

To me this is fine but I get that allot of people find it unfun and unfair... as if life is fair...

 

[GuildenSpur]

I am ok with it. It just means that you need to take care when you start the upgrades or split your fleet to upgrade. Fleets sustain losses and the new ships are all of the new design anyway. Upgrade by fire