Upgrade automatically

[yarin1401]

could you make an Upgrade automatically ships the latest design? when you have a Breakthrough in tech?

[zakblood]

speaking as a player and not a mod, little point or not worth the effort, as most wouldn't use it, as altering the design is one thing, but to have it made you first need to place it in doc, (your ship etc) which is manual anyway, then decided if you have the resources to do it, one ship not an issue, but mid to late game you'd never have the resources to do a whole fleet at a time, all the time, as you may be building or running low on one thing or another, to automate it, like searching, planet finding, and even fuelling for that matter, would make the AI do more work as for me to make the game no worth playing, then again could be wrong, request it and the developer may give a different answer or reply, as it's his game, above is just my opinion

[TheFlemishDuck]

could you make an Upgrade automatically ships the latest design? when you have a Breakthrough in tech?

You shouldn't just upgrade ships according to new technoligy or new modules, it's bad in terms of ship specialization, effecient use of power/weight/room and especially resource cost.

I make my ship designs very particulary so that i can build a lot of ships with the resources i have, and it takes quite a bit of attention to do that well. As a result i have plenty of ship designs that wrok perfectly good even if they have a lot of "obsolete" components on board. Certain componenets have for ex a high gravitonium or reidium costs which you might not be able to afford in those quantity's but which function can be replaced by cheaper components.

There are just so many issue's that could happen. For ex.

- fill up youre ship's room to the brink with components and it might be hard for auto upgrade to find room for components that might be more effecient in a sense but are bigger or have a different shape.
- there is weight an armour for ex. There are lighter variants of certain types of armour that even if they are not the newest or strongest armor you have available might be still very important for ships that are meant to be fast. The weight of armor can make a huge difference on ship speed and a ship that can outmaneuvre it's opponents does not the strongest armor.
- New components: Should the Ai add missile traps to youre designs from the moment they become available?
- Components with specialized function. the 2nd model of missile rack takes a rediculous amount of extra power and holds less missile's in stock, probably only usefull if you want very quick reload and better combined with a few standard racks i figure.
-Weapons and range/dammage: in their type's weapons do not nessecarily improve in all fields as you discover new ones. A newer genneration weapon might be more powerfull for ex. but have fewer range, lower range of fire or might be less useful against certain types of ships. For ex. the difference in range, power and function of thermonuclear rockets VS Mirv. Mirv is more like a shorter range rocket more usefull against fighters whereas thermonuclear rockets are longer range and probably better against somewhat bigger ships.

But even regardless all these considerations, cost in terms of resources is the most important one imho. I maintain a high amount of Ion corvette's from the start of the game that serve long past their theoretical date of obsoletion, simply because in the sheer mass that i can make them they can be still quite functional. Ion corvette's are cheap 1 engine minimal range ion gunbeds, they have an extremely low price in terms of gravitonium, reidium and plutonium and have most of their cost in steel, as a consequence i can easily build 50 to a 100 of those in the early game until i can rush fast IR corvette's which are pricey in terms of plutonium but which will wipe the floor with everything for a good century. If the game would auto update all my ion corvette's i think i would eventually lack the gravitonium and perhaps plutonium to build my legions of fast IR corvette's. The Ion corvette's only serve a a homeguard force to me, i have a resource cheap homeguard force that i can easily build in large numbers and a Starfleet that is more advanced and build for offensive opperation and that works really well for me but i wouldn't want the Ai to upgrade my homeguard.
My homeguard is but a cheap stopgap, they defend my territory when my starfleet is on expedition, if an enemy attacks such a force i would easily loose some of their numbers but the Ai usually doesn't muster enough force to kill the whole bulk of them and i don't care for loosing such ships are they are designed to be dirtcheap.

My IR corvette's are basicly corvettte's equiped with IR-lasers and some PD lasers and build to be light as to reach a speed of around 9. IR lasers are the longest range weaponry in the early game allowing you to easily kill ships withought IR lasers from range withought them being able to shoot back at you. Enemy ships would need to close to be able to hurt these but at 9 speed my corvette's are kinda hard to catch. The only thing that is a threat then is fighters but they are not the most effecient weapon to counter corvette's which are bassicly overloaded with what are essentially anti-fighter weapons. The ai would however upgrade this ship with pontentially much heavier components like stronger armor which could make the speed drop significantly while a ship like this doesn't need that mcuh armor as it can keep out the range of most weapons but require's mobillety to do so.