Matrix Games Forums

I have a bunch of fleets with basic hulls,
now I researched next generation of specialized larger hulls, ie. fast cruiser, command cruiser etc.

it seems it's not possible to upgrade basic cruiser to ie. fast cruiser, instead a brand new design must be made and built, this means old ships go obsolete and unusable as the game continues since they are limited to their smaller hulls sizes.
This means all these ships and fleets with smaller hulls need to be scrapped and new larger built right?

I see no option to upgrade hull sizes of existing ships.

I think you are honing in on the design side of things rather than the actual ability to retrofit to new designs?

When you make reference to the word 'upgrade' I am understanding you are referring to upgrading a design from a legacy hull to an 'improved' hull.

I do find it interesting that you make reference to cruisers when you probably would have had this hurdle with improved escorts, frigates, and destroyers.

If you play with automated designs as a policy and never design your own ships, the AI will take care of designs for you. The game, at this time, will design one and only one version of each ship type referred to as 'Roles' in DW terms by choosing one of the most advanced available hulls your research has enabled.

If you play with automated retrofitting as a policy, the AI will take care of retrofitting existing legacy ships to the more advanced hulls designed by you or the AI. The caveat being, if you design your own ships, and have multiple designs for the same ship 'Roles', only Fleet Ships can be retrofitted to your predefined design choices if you use Fleet Templates and specify explicit designs; for non fleeted ships the AI will retrofit to the latest design for that ship's 'Role'.

I see no option to upgrade hull sizes of existing ships.

Can you explain with more detail what you are asking here? (Make reference to the games interface and concepts to be more specific)

Thank you and I appologize for confusing the terms, yes I'm talking about retrofitting designs, I see what you're saying.

What you're saying is that the AI will retrofit designs as follows:
1. from frigate (lvl 0) to -> fleet frigate (lvl 3)
2. from destroyer (lvl 0) to -> fleet destroyer (lvl 3)
3. light cruiser (lvl 0) to -> fleet cruiser (lvl 4)
etc..

in other words it will retrofit hulls to the highest hull level in addition to retrofitting components.

is this correct?

I'm designing ships my self but only military ships, thus if I want to manually retrofit all I need to do is create higher level hull design?

I have just tested this and it works!
What made confusion to me is that it's impossible to use "Upgrade" button is designer because this does not upgrade hull, only components.
to upgrade hull a brand new design needs to be made and components manually readded and then ships can be retrofitted to new design. (it will offer multiple designs to upgrade)

thanks for helping!

Glad I could help!

Originally from the thread subject, I was thinking you wanted to change the Hull's component layout and modifiers by designing a new hull .

I would argue that the game should allow the player to upgrade a design of unit of lower tech level to a higher tech level hull. In fact when I am designing new improved ships I always wish I could upgrade to hull name. It is not a trivial task to implement of course but they did provide all these interesting game mechanics .

zebanovich wrote: Wed Oct 05, 2022 3:48 pm Thank you and I appologize for confusing the terms, yes I'm talking about retrofitting designs, I see what you're saying.

What you're saying is that the AI will retrofit designs as follows:
1. from frigate (lvl 0) to -> fleet frigate (lvl 3)
2. from destroyer (lvl 0) to -> fleet destroyer (lvl 3)
3. light cruiser (lvl 0) to -> fleet cruiser (lvl 4)
etc..

in other words it will retrofit hulls to the highest hull level in addition to retrofitting components.

is this correct?

I'm designing ships my self but only military ships, thus if I want to manually retrofit all I need to do is create higher level hull design?

I have just tested this and it works!
What made confusion to me is that it's impossible to use "Upgrade" button is designer because this does not upgrade hull, only components.
to upgrade hull a brand new design needs to be made and components manually readded and then ships can be retrofitted to new design. (it will offer multiple designs to upgrade)

thanks for helping!

Sorry, I missed an important question. "Is this correct?"

I've not had any success with controlling 'the latest design' when it comes to automated retrofits of solo ships. I use Fleet Templates to control fleet ship retrofitting by specifying explicit designs, tedious, I know!

I am not sure about the line of thinking with respect to Role Levels to be honest. The game is focused on the latest available design for the role, I think, ignoring role level when retrofitting.

Based on what I understand, the game's XML data does not define Hull retrofit progression explicitly. The choice of wording 'Level' may have been chosen as a thought of doing the former but was lost as implementation progressed and became more of a Role variant, a way of identifying and referencing a different hull within a Role. As new technologies are researched, new Hull variants become available for Roles.

I do not know where the "new choice of hull for automated designs" is defined, and is probably hard coded, or as you suggested, the "highest level" valued hull is chosen.

I'd like to see the game automatically design each new hull. But that is moot if the game has no policy context with respect to what variants to build for what purpose.

My suspicion is that the names of these variants are telling and possibly just may be where the game is heading .

arvcran2 wrote: Mon Oct 10, 2022 3:12 pm Sorry, I missed an important question. "Is this correct?"

I've not had any success with controlling 'the latest design' when it comes to automated retrofits of solo ships. I use Fleet Templates to control fleet ship retrofitting by specifying explicit designs, tedious, I know!

...

Yes, we're on same track, and maintaining multiple hulls for same role whether by fleet template or solo ship obviously requires manual retrofit of designs, otherwise it doesn't work as intended since latest hull level is chosen by auto retrofit.