Civilian Ship Retrofitting

[forsaken1111]

Mostly a question for the devs:

How difficult would it be to add in automated retrofitting for older civilian ships? It should use PRIVATE sector cash to perform the retrofit, and players should have no control over it, but I think it should happen. Later in the game your shipping gets bogged down by older designs which cannot keep up. They're slower, less fuel efficient, and have outdated defenses.

[Setekh]

I very much would like this also. Whilst it is somewhat realistic that older designs would still be in use years after they were first created, it would be nice if ships using a design 3 or 4 generation old were to be updated using private sector cash.

It's not like we all drive around in 40 year old cars is it?

[Spacecadet]

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

Mostly a question for the devs:

How difficult would it be to add in automated retrofitting for older civilian ships? It should use PRIVATE sector cash to perform the retrofit, and players should have no control over it, but I think it should happen. Later in the game your shipping gets bogged down by older designs which cannot keep up. They're slower, less fuel efficient, and have outdated defenses.

DW has done this since at least 1.0.2.x

[forsaken1111]

ORIGINAL: Spacecadet

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

Mostly a question for the devs:

How difficult would it be to add in automated retrofitting for older civilian ships? It should use PRIVATE sector cash to perform the retrofit, and players should have no control over it, but I think it should happen. Later in the game your shipping gets bogged down by older designs which cannot keep up. They're slower, less fuel efficient, and have outdated defenses.

DW has done this since at least 1.0.2.x

If that's true, why do I have freighters running around my late-game empire with their original start-of-game configurations?

[elmo3]

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

If that's true, why do I have freighters running around my late-game empire with their original start-of-game configurations?

Did you turn off automated ship design? If so that might affect civilian designs too.

[Spacecadet]

ORIGINAL: elmo3

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

If that's true, why do I have freighters running around my late-game empire with their original start-of-game configurations?

Did you turn off automated ship design? If so that might affect civilian designs too.

Yep, it absolutely affects Private ship design.
When you turn off Auto-Design you have to redesign ALL ships and bases.

You also will see some older model ships, but most of them should be newer models by late game.

[PaulP]

I've yet to see a civilian ship refit. They'll build the newer models, but they won't upgrade the old ones. I'm up to about the 9th design on my civ ships, with hyperfusion reactors and advanced hyper drives and engines and the mega fuel cells and cargo bays and such - yet I still have a few hundred civ ships flying around with the original model that the game starts you with.
 
Very rarely I see one of them set to be retired, but generally they just keep on going. The main cause of them upgrading is attacks by enemy ships - the newer models have a better survival rate, so generally its the old ones that get destroyed and replaced. I actually let an enemy blockade one of my ports for a while for this purpose even though they only had a couple ships there and I had a fleet in the next system - they blew up a bunch of old slow ships while the newer ones managed to jump out before being killed.

[forsaken1111]

ORIGINAL: elmo3

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

If that's true, why do I have freighters running around my late-game empire with their original start-of-game configurations?

Did you turn off automated ship design? If so that might affect civilian designs too.

Yes, I never let the AI design my ships. I do update the civilian ship designs though.

[forsaken1111]

ORIGINAL: PaulP

I've yet to see a civilian ship refit. They'll build the newer models, but they won't upgrade the old ones. I'm up to about the 9th design on my civ ships, with hyperfusion reactors and advanced hyper drives and engines and the mega fuel cells and cargo bays and such - yet I still have a few hundred civ ships flying around with the original model that the game starts you with.

Very rarely I see one of them set to be retired, but generally they just keep on going. The main cause of them upgrading is attacks by enemy ships - the newer models have a better survival rate, so generally its the old ones that get destroyed and replaced. I actually let an enemy blockade one of my ports for a while for this purpose even though they only had a couple ships there and I had a fleet in the next system - they blew up a bunch of old slow ships while the newer ones managed to jump out before being killed.

This has been my experience as well. I don't like seeing the old type 1 hyperdrive and engine when I have the super advanced versions of each.

[sbach2o]

Just a few points and observations. All of these are from game version 1.0.4.9 and before. I am now playing the expansion, but the game hasn't progressed enough yet.

* I always play with manual ship design, never let the AI do anything in this regard.
* I have never seen a ship of the private sector retrofitting.
* I *have* seen masses of retirements of private sector ships.
* Nevertheless some ships of extremely old design can hang along for a very long time.
* It is not uncommon to have exactly one specimen of very old ship designs (looking at the stats in ship designer with the filter set to 'show all designs'). Does/did the AI sometimes miss single ships when going on a retirement spree?
* In old game versions, retrofits tended to become more expensive than reconstruction quickly. So scrapping and rebuilding rather than retrofitting made sense. In the new version this may have changed because of auto-upgrading components, who knows...

[Orzelek]

This one is also kind of bugging me seriously...

Economy is very needed yet they are unable to adapt to new design which much faster travel and jump time drives and/or better cargo bays.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: sbach2o
Just a few points and observations. All of these are from game version 1.0.4.9 and before. I am now playing the expansion, but the game hasn't progressed enough yet.

We'll need these confirmed with either 1.0.6 and/or the expansion. Too many issues were fixed between 1.0.4.9 and 1.0.6 to go with older reports, unfortunately.

Regards,

- Erik

[James009]

I've seen the private sector using newer designs of my updated freighters. However, I cannot tell if they have been updating and retrofitting the old ships (or just replacing them). I'm using the new expansion.

I'd suggest implementing a sort of "civics" system that allows the players to have some more control over the private sector. For example, allow the government to pay some money (at player discretion) to update and retrofit old ships. Also, having the AI check once a year to see if they need to retrofit their ships.

I don't think its bad to have some old designs of ships, I still see old cars, trucks, and planes all the time. However, the game shouldn't be dominated by them as most ships should be of a newer model to keep up with changes.

Lastly, does the AI pick only ONE ship when implementing new ships or are they smart enough to pick from a variety of freighters (perhaps one focused on speed, cargo, defenses, or cost)? That'd be awesome to see some variety with respect to their missions.

[Data]

good ideas, James, i second that

[Setekh]

I do see older freighter designs get retired occasionally, but there are far too many that plod around the galaxy with ancient hyperdrives and other tech that I wish were removed from circulation.

An option to have ships that are 2 or 3 generations old be ordered to retrofit would be great.

[PDiFolco]

Maybe what's missing is decommissionning of too-old-ships after some years, as it occurs IRL, things get broken !
For state ships it occurs because the player wants to upgrade the designs, but for civvies a game "obsolescence/end of life" feature would replace it.

[Data]

when feasible and not to much effort is involved i use the editor to delete the old ones and let the AI build the new ones
i don't tend to think of it as cheating (i obviously gain some money of it) because by that time money is no longer a problem and i simulate a feature that should / will be implemented
but again, i do it only when it doesn't imply to much effort. For example when i start the game and i redesing the freighters to be more power / fuel efficient (add collectors, additional reactor etc); then it's really not cheating because if you do it you'll observe the AI does not rebuild all the deleted freighters (forgets about the large ones) so the money i make in the process is not that significant

[gmot]

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco

Maybe what's missing is decommissionning of too-old-ships after some years, as it occurs IRL, things get broken !
For state ships it occurs because the player wants to upgrade the designs, but for civvies a game "obsolescence/end of life" feature would replace it.

This I like. I think it's reasonable that the private sector would be flying older ships - just like we see freighter ships that are 20-30 years old on the seaways. It's typically cheaper for the owner to keep an old ship running than replace it (or even do a major retrofit). It's not like these are military ships, so upgrading to the latest weapons is not an issue.

But at a certain point, those too-old ships should be decommissioned once they become too slow and inefficient to keep up with the newest private ship models.

[Data]

great suggestion, gmot, to keep the game more balanced and not to leave out any feature; maybe the AI can compare the designs to determine when is an older one too old. This way we can also indirectly influence this capability by deciding when to upgrade / modify the civ ships designs so each one of us can be satisfied.

[sbach2o]

ORIGINAL: sbach2o

Just a few points and observations. All of these are from game version 1.0.4.9 and before. I am now playing the expansion, but the game hasn't progressed enough yet.

* I always play with manual ship design, never let the AI do anything in this regard.
* I have never seen a ship of the private sector retrofitting.
* I *have* seen masses of retirements of private sector ships.
* Nevertheless some ships of extremely old design can hang along for a very long time.
* It is not uncommon to have exactly one specimen of very old ship designs (looking at the stats in ship designer with the filter set to 'show all designs'). Does/did the AI sometimes miss single ships when going on a retirement spree?
* In old game versions, retrofits tended to become more expensive than reconstruction quickly. So scrapping and rebuilding rather than retrofitting made sense. In the new version this may have changed because of auto-upgrading components, who knows...

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

We'll need these confirmed with either 1.0.6 and/or the expansion. Too many issues were fixed between 1.0.4.9 and 1.0.6 to go with older reports, unfortunately.

My expansion game has now progressed a little past the 20 years mark (slow going because I am micromanaging a lot).
1000 stars galaxy. I have ~300 colonies and am nearing the end of the research trees in most branches. My empire is far ahead everyone in the galaxy economically and everyone but the Ancient Guardians technologically (this comes from micromanaging too much).

I have taken over three big rival AI empires with all of their assets including many private sector ships.

At this point in time:
* no mass retirements of the earliest freighter/passenger ship/mining ship designs have happened yet.
* I have seen the occasional single ship retireing.
* I have also seen the occasional freighter with retrofit order! (Edit: I am not sure it was more than one, the one may have been damaged)
* consequently most early game private sector ships still remain.
* I think I could delete a small handful adopted freighter designs and the like. Of course, it is unknown whether these were freed through retirements/retrofits or just attrition.

One other thing to note is that my private sector is extremely wealthy. I am taxing them very low (on manual) to encourage growth. Anyway, they are not using their wealth to upgrade their shipping.

When mass retirements came to my attention in an advanced 1.0.4.9 game it was because most of those retiring freighters were streaming to one and the same space port in my empire (first the home planet, later another one). They completely clogged up the space yard there with at times more than 100 ships waiting to be disassembled.

That bahavior was similar to tourists who were all going to the same Resort Base or migrants who were all picked up from (but not necessariy going to) the same planet. Migration and tourism have been spread out more in the current version (probably 1.0.6 too, it was in one of the patch notes back then). Hopefully the same is true for any mass retirements that may happen.