Upgrading the Found Frigate

[WLFobe]

I have (again) received a frigate from an anomaly. I got it quite early, and it made a nice addition to my fleet of corvettes.

But eventually, I developed destroyers, so it's no longer as important as it once was. And I now have Warp 2. I can't figure out how to upgrade the frigate's engines (or shields, or anything). Am I going to just have to bite the bullet and disband this thing?

 

[VahnNoa]

If it's not simply a clone of your other frigates, yes.

The same is unfortunately true of the ether drake. When I got it I was using wormholes, once I got jump drive there was no way to upgrade, so my 14.4k power ether drake just sat in my home system, since he couldn't join the fun.

 

[MAHak]

You can use the frigate to explore or harass the enemy in a war.

 

[The Founder]

Event spawned ships generally have no way to be upgraded. Unless they use any of the games stock hulls (at wich point they would be quickly downgraded with the next upgarade). With the controlable Leviathans you may get different versions, depending on wich drive tech you have when get them.

 

[Barnacle Bill]

Faced with this issue with the Frigates, I have in the past resorted to save file editing to update just their warp drives to the latest. Generally when I have one of those games where I found a lot of them (I've had games where I found 5-ish of them total). Seems to run in cycles. Last two games I haven't found any at all, but found a whole fleet of 4 battlecruisers and 6 escorts with FE technology and jump drives. Last game I found two such fleets. The current one (so far) I found one such fleet plus a 5-star admiral from the same species, so I put her in command of it. As she was put in stasis for war crimes, I hope she doesn't go rogue on me or something because taking her out will no doubt be a pain... However, a few games ago I found two such admirals in the same game (with the same name) and they never made a bit of trouble, so probably OK.

 

[macd21]

Rather than disband them, I usually send them into a fight the can't win, then research the debris (as they often still have some tech I don't).

 

[ranma100]

Faced with this issue with the Frigates, I have in the past resorted to save file editing to update just their warp drives to the latest. Generally when I have one of those games where I found a lot of them (I've had games where I found 5-ish of them total). Seems to run in cycles. Last two games I haven't found any at all, but found a whole fleet of 4 battlecruisers and 6 escorts with FE technology and jump drives. Last game I found two such fleets. The current one (so far) I found one such fleet plus a 5-star admiral from the same species, so I put her in command of it. As she was put in stasis for war crimes, I hope she doesn't go rogue on me or something because taking her out will no doubt be a pain... However, a few games ago I found two such admirals in the same game (with the same name) and they never made a bit of trouble, so probably OK.

Where and how are you finding these fleets? Is it a mod? I have never found more than 3 frigates or a cruiser.

 

[The Founder]

Where and how are you finding these fleets? Is it a mod? I have never found more than 3 frigates or a cruiser.

Shielded Worlds have a chance to contain either stored FE ships or a Admiral in stasis.

Also Xenophile is know to gift FE ships (Surpluss Cruisers) if they like you enough.

 

[Playwars]

Where and how are you finding these fleets? Is it a mod? I have never found more than 3 frigates or a cruiser.

He's talking about the shielded worlds, some Fallen Empires have planets protected by an impenetrable energy barrier within their territory, once you have access to those worlds (most of the time by conquering the said Fallen Empire) you can unlock a research project to take down the barrier, it triggers when you scan the planet, once it's done, you can get one of four things :
-A mothball fleet of several battlecruisers and escorts fully equipped with FE tech.
-A technology vault which will give you access to a FE tech.
-A 5 stars immortal admiral who had been emprisonned for war crimes.
-Several hostile void clouds who had seemingly been emprisonned here (beware your science ship will probably be annihilated before it can get to safety)

 

[Almond_Brown]

Rather than disband them, I usually send them into a fight the can't win, then research the debris (as they often still have some tech I don't).

Interesting idea. I was not aware that your own Force/Fleet left behind "debris" that could be surveyed... Hmmm, will have to check into that.

 

[DukeLeto42]

I feel like special units such as the ether drake should match the fleet's ftl type. Not the small ships from anomalies, but leviathans in your fleet should be valuable and unique enough to be kept with your fleet.

 

[Aed]

Interesting idea. I was not aware that your own Force/Fleet left behind "debris" that could be surveyed... Hmmm, will have to check into that.

They do but you can't research it, only your enemy can do that. This leads to the rather ridiculous situation whereby you cannot gain any of the frigates tech despite have a fully working ship, but your enemy can when it blows it up.

It would be a nice addtion for there to be an option to dismantle the event ships for a chance to get access to the techs that they use.

 

[WLFobe]

I have noticed that after a battle, I can send in a science ship to loot the debris from the ships I destroyed. And my enemy sends in his science ships that do the same thing to some "invisible" debris that was apparently from my ships.

So sending a couple of corvettes to accompany my science ships is usually a good idea.

Also keeps the enemy's construction ships from rebuilding the wormhole generators that I just spent so much time and effort destroying.

 

[The Founder]

I have noticed that after a battle, I can send in a science ship to loot the debris from the ships I destroyed. And my enemy sends in his science ships that do the same thing to some "invisible" debris that was apparently from my ships.

To explain fully:
Debris is "tagged" for one player empire only. When you play cooperative with a Friend, you can easily see that by looking at the same system you attacked jointly.

The Prehoryn Queen is special, in that one speciel project is generated for every empire and there is a lot of event handling.

 

[macd21]

They do but you can't research it, only your enemy can do that. This leads to the rather ridiculous situation whereby you cannot gain any of the frigates tech despite have a fully working ship, but your enemy can when it blows it up.

It would be a nice addtion for there to be an option to dismantle the event ships for a chance to get access to the techs that they use.

Weird, I was sure I got some debris tech off a destroyed frigate. Was ages ago though, was this changed in a patch or always there?

 

[DriveBy]

The same is unfortunately true of the ether drake. When I got it I was using wormholes, once I got jump drive there was no way to upgrade, so my 14.4k power ether drake just sat in my home system, since he couldn't join the fun.

Are you sure it was impossible? In my case I was able to mate Automated Dreadnought with jumpdrive fleet. I've aquired it while using warpdrives and was pretty sure it won't work after jumpdrive introduction. But it worked!

Dreadnought still had warp drive listed, but the whole fleet moved with jumpdrive and psijumpdrive later on. Dreadnought didn't slow it down to warp, since I was moving 2 fleets and both moved at the same pace with the same windup/winddown times.

So probably Leviathans (at least AD) ignore their own drive and adjust to the fleet they are attached to.

 

[The Founder]

Are you sure it was impossible? In my case I was able to mate Automated Dreadnought with jumpdrive fleet. I've aquired it while using warpdrives and was pretty sure it won't work after jumpdrive introduction. But it worked!

Dreadnought still had warp drive listed, but the whole fleet moved with jumpdrive and psijumpdrive later on. Dreadnought didn't slow it down to warp, since I was moving 2 fleets and both moved at the same pace with the same windup/winddown times.

There is a known bug that happens if a fleet with a Leviathan has all the non-Leviathan drives Upgraded. The whole fleet is set to "uses Drive X, Tier Y". Despite one of them evidently not having "Drive X".
You can not merge fleets with different FTL drives. But there is no such check for changing the FTL drive type of a Fleet via upgrade.

The Dreadnought actually has 5 different versions in the game files - T3 Warp, T3 Hyperdrive, Wormhole, Jumpdrive, Psi-Jumpdrive.

 

[DriveBy]

You can not merge fleets with different FTL drives. But there is no such check for changing the FTL drive type of a Fleet via upgrade.

Good to know. Thanks for clarification.

But after upgrading Automated Dreadnought fleet with jumpdrives (AD left with warpdrive), I've merged that fleet with other jump-drive fleets without problem (did it multiple times, both manually merging fleets and automatically adding single, newly built ships).

So probably it works slightly different - maybe AD auto-upgrades itself, but doesn't show it? Or there is a bug allowing AD to merge? Or just AD ignores it's own drive while moving with better equipped fleet?

 

[The Founder]

So probably it works slightly different - maybe AD auto-upgrades itself, but doesn't show it? Or there is a bug allowing AD to merge? Or just AD ignores it's own drive while moving with better equipped fleet?

Simple answer:
Getting the FTL type of a fleet by going over every single ship every single time would just be ineffective. Especially as they propably need that value once per gametick.
So it is calculated once, stored in the fleet. And not really touched outside of joining, scrapping and upgrade operations.

This fleet FTL values is only recalculated after any of those operations.
A T2 Warpdrive in a T3 Warpdrive Fleet? Well, the fleet as a whole just moves as with a T2 Warp Drive then.
A Wormhole in a Jumpdrive Fleet? The game does not even consider that possibility. It just somehow figures out the Update went towards jumpdrive (or just finds the Jumpdrive first and rolls with that). Sets the Travel type to Jumpdrive. And then just looks for the weakest Jumpdrive in the entire Fleet (T1 or T2). That there actually is one with a unfitting drive type is kind of skipped.

It is a classical mistake to do the check for "valid FTL types" only upon joining a Fleet (or rather joining two Fleets). Not when upgrading the fleet.

 

[DriveBy]

You are right. I've just tested it. So if I have fleet consisting of warp dreadnought and psijumpdrive ships, I can attach new psijumpdrive ships. But if I detach dreadnought I cannot merge it back.

I've even tried to design new warpdrive ship, merge it with dreadnought and then upgrade to psijumpdrive. It was upgraded, but when ordered to join with psijumpdrive fleet, psijumpdrive ship was merged, but dreadnought was detached.

So probably I can merge new, SMALL psijumpdrive fleets with large warp/psijumpdrive fleet, but I cannot merge SMALL warp/psijumpdrive fleet with pure jumpdrivefleet. Strange and probably a bug.