Are Ship Auto-Upgrades Fixed Yet?

[76mm]

I've played this game a couple of times but quit playing after getting frustrated with the fact that whatever ships I designed would be completely over-written as soon as they had components upgraded. Has this been fixed yet? I saw that there is a recent patch focusing on fleet stuff, but didn't see anything about this issue. Or maybe it was fixed earlier... Can anyone enlighten me?

[AKicebear]

No, I don't believe this is improved yet. I also am waiting for a better automatic upgrade of manual designs before spending more time with this otherwise great game.

[76mm]

really disappointing that this wasn't included in the big patch of other fleet-related issues.

[Erik Rutins]

The game supports toggling auto upgrades on or off by hull type in the design list. That will prevent auto upgraded designs overriding yours. Or are you asking for something else?

[Jorgen_CAB]

I've played this game a couple of times but quit playing after getting frustrated with the fact that whatever ships I designed would be completely over-written as soon as they had components upgraded. Has this been fixed yet? I saw that there is a recent patch focusing on fleet stuff, but didn't see anything about this issue. Or maybe it was fixed earlier... Can anyone enlighten me?

There is a pretty good chance you might not understand how the game work in this particular part.

When you design a new ship do you switch it to manual upgrade or leave it to automatically upgrade?

I think you need to explain what the exact issue is and what you are doing or how you think it will behave based on your understanding. It is a very complex game and there are many ways you can do things "wrong" with design, upgrades and fleet management in general. So I do think we need more information to answer your question properly.

[76mm]

There is a pretty good chance you might not understand how the game work in this particular part.

Actually, there is an extremely good chance that I don't understand how the game works on this stuff! I was never able to find a good explanation, although I haven't looked in awhile--if anyone could point me to a good post on this topic it would be super-helpful.

Previously, I would design a handful of custom ships on various hulls for particular purposes...then as I understand it, I had two choices:
(1) leave upgrades on manual, but I never understood how to "manually upgrade" ship types while keeping a custom configuration, for instance, to upgrade from Frigate I to Frigate II while keeping my custom design, other than by re-creating the design on Frigate II, which would be super-tedious; or
(2) turn on auto-upgrades, in which case ship upgrades would basically completely overwrite my custom designs.

Either way, I had to either keep using obsolete but customized designs, or keep recreating customized designs every time I upgraded ship types. If I'm missing something please let me know.

[76mm]

The game supports toggling auto upgrades on or off by hull type in the design list. That will prevent auto upgraded designs overriding yours. Or are you asking for something else?

My understanding is that that turns on/off upgrades of components rather than ship designs? If so, I really didn't want to have to micromanage upgrading every component in every ship as I progressed through the tech tree. And I don't remember what happens when an auto-upgrade is not compatible with an existing design: whether the upgrade is just skipped, or whether the whole ship is redesigned to accomodate the upgrade?

My main point--if I remember correctly at this point--was that every time I upgraded ship (not component) types, none of the custom designs would carry over into the upgraded ship types, so you have to constantly either re-create the custom designs or use obsolete designs.

[AKicebear]

The automatic designer does not consider prior versions of a design. It merely designs from scratch as new components are available, disregarding the players earlier manual design.

The preferred behavior is the addition of an automatic upgrade (not redesign) which automates the function of of the upgrade button (use newest version of any component type within the same slot), but without the tedium of clicking that button once per design whenever a new research is completed.

I have some more detailed feedback in the link in my signature, from early this year (?).

[Jorgen_CAB]

There is a pretty good chance you might not understand how the game work in this particular part.

Actually, there is an extremely good chance that I don't understand how the game works on this stuff! I was never able to find a good explanation, although I haven't looked in awhile--if anyone could point me to a good post on this topic it would be super-helpful.

Previously, I would design a handful of custom ships on various hulls for particular purposes...then as I understand it, I had two choices:
(1) leave upgrades on manual, but I never understood how to "manually upgrade" ship types while keeping a custom configuration, for instance, to upgrade from Frigate I to Frigate II while keeping my custom design, other than by re-creating the design on Frigate II, which would be super-tedious; or
(2) turn on auto-upgrades, in which case ship upgrades would basically completely overwrite my custom designs.

Either way, I had to either keep using obsolete but customized designs, or keep recreating customized designs every time I upgraded ship types. If I'm missing something please let me know.

Yes, I think in your situation the best option is simply to use the Upgrade button. This should solve most of the issues you are having. Allthough this is not perfect as you still want to look over the new ship as just adding new module that is available might need some tewaking on the ship.

The problem that I see it is that and Ugrade function that keep the ship as you designed it from the start and then just auto upgrade the exact components will not work well as over time the design migh even become invalid due to lacking energy or you are wasting space becasue some component are not needed or maybee range of the ship become to long for what you need over time etc.. you always want to check the ship that everything is OK after each upgrade. You also might get weapons you did not want or they are of a different size than before and so on.

This is why a complete auto upgrade that just upgrade components would not work. Therefore you need to go into the designer and select the design and press Ugrade button .The AI will give you a new version of the same ship but repace older module with new ones, so essentially the same ship with newer modules. But you have to check so weapons are what you want and the energy, fuel, shields and armour are what you want as these modules can vary allot in size and performance etc...

I hope you understand that if you make your own designs there is no good way to allow the AI to auto upgrade them without you the player at least checking the new design out first. Either that or allow the AI to build the design as they seem fit.

Me personally I mostly copy the design and replace the module by hand on most designs as I don't always like what even the upgrade button do to my designs, I want the component of all ships be in the same order, but I have OCD issues when it comes to that so that is my problem.
But, using the upgrade button is the best middle ground for manuall designs.

[fruitgnome]

An improvement would be a button on all single chosen components "don't upgrade this" or "fixed".
So we were able to fix for example an chosen hyperdrive component.

And maybe a button fix this weapon type or maybe this shield type or hyperdrive type. Hope it's clear what I mean.
Buttons could be two icons in list next to each other.
"Fixed"
"Fixed type"

[thegreybetween]

Yeah, I think this is one of the more common areas where the game often behaves contrary to what a player might expect, but that to sync up the system with expectations would take some elaborate workarounds.

I think the expected behavior is: I design a ship with this [category of weapon] and this [type of shield] and this [reactor class] and so on. Once designed, the expectation is that the AI will be able to maintain that basic loadout and auto-upgrade components in that category as newer versions are researched [Build a missile boat, and the AI auto-upgrades to newer missiles as they become available and never swaps them out for "better" weapons, for example].

But as JorgenCAB said, this approach has some inherent flaws that would eventually lead to nonsensical designs that require player oversight anyway, so even if the system did what you expected it to do, it would ultimately face the same criticism of not being fixed.

FruitGnome is on the right track. To really fix the system, you'd need to have a fairly elaborate checkbox system that allowed you to inform the AI of your intentions. EACH component on the ship would need a policy with items like:
- Always upgrade this component with superior components of the same (research tree) type
- Upgrade this component to a superior component only if the design can support it [i.e. reactor power, etc]
- Notify me if a superior version of this component is available (and hopefully a related "Don't tell me again")
- Never upgrade this component ("I want this version of this thing all the time!")

Then you could set it to, for example, always use the latest reactor, use the best [weapon class]/[shield class] that the loadout can support, and never change from a particular hyperdrive. That, I think, would better align with the expectation of auto-upgrading. Of course, that's quite a system overhaul and a degree of niche specificity that would intimidate a lot of folks away from the system. But, it would work very well for players keen on designing and then not micromanaging ships.

[76mm]

The problem that I see it is that and Ugrade function that keep the ship as you designed it from the start and then just auto upgrade the exact components will not work well as over time the design migh even become invalid due to lacking energy or you are wasting space becasue some component are not needed...

This is why a complete auto upgrade that just upgrade components would not work...

I hope you understand that if you make your own designs there is no good way to allow the AI to auto upgrade them without you the player at least checking the new design out first.

Thanks much for your detailed response, and yes, I totally understand what you are saying.

That said, I found the whole fleet management issue, particularly ship design & upgrades--rather overwhelming. Usually I don't play space or 4x games, so even understanding the tech tree is a serious challenge (it should be much easier to understand the purpose of the various tech tree options, for instance). Same for ship design--I could not find any clear explanations of the process, and there were design options (I forget which ones) whose meanings I could only guess at.

I will probably try another game soon--I do enjoy it--but at the same time playing the game can be kind of a chore, so I need to be in a particular mood to play!

[fruitgnome]

But this is the greatest thing of Distant Worlds and Distant Worlds 2 it can play itself, you can automate all and in this the game is in my opinion really clever. So automate the things that are at first to complicated and only set one thing like design on manual and play with the designs and components. In Distant Worlds 1 I spent so much time in designing ships and bases and had a lot of fun.

Edit: And I want to repeat myself. The components have weight, you can check this by the speed of your ships. But unfortunately the game shows nowhere the weight info.

[Ax]

FruitGnome is on the right track. To really fix the system, you'd need to have a fairly elaborate checkbox system that allowed you to inform the AI of your intentions. EACH component on the ship would need a policy with items like:
- Always upgrade this component with superior components of the same (research tree) type
- Upgrade this component to a superior component only if the design can support it [i.e. reactor power, etc]
- Notify me if a superior version of this component is available (and hopefully a related "Don't tell me again")
- Never upgrade this component ("I want this version of this thing all the time!")

I fully support a system like this. Especially in late game the auto designer and the upgrade button always want to place the latest equipment, which means using a lot of rare resources. Putting a high Hexodorium count on your hundreds of freighters means there won't be any left for the navy for years to come. The "leave as is" checkbox would really be a requirement to avoid replacing dozens of fuel pods in the designer over and over again.

[fruitgnome]

I have nothing against to check the auto upgraded ships and maybe fine tune a little things that would be fun, so for me would it be enough to have "fixed" and "fixed type". Hexodorium is a good point.