Uprading ship design (hull relatad)

alasyr · #1 February 19th, 2001, 05:31 PM

From my expirience I could only upgrade a ship (base) to a design based on a current ship's (base's) hull i.e. destroyer to new destroyer design (spacestation to ne spacestation design).I know that this is how things work in other games of the genre (MOO), but I wonna be sure is this really the case with SEIV or I am missing something ? I know that new design must not cost more than half the current design but does this apply on value on total resources used or every resource individualy ?

Triumvir Emphy · #2 February 19th, 2001, 05:34 PM

you are correct as far as i know, you must stay with in your hull class.

Markavian · #3 February 19th, 2001, 05:54 PM

I would have thought that 50% of the current design upgrade limit would apply to individual resource types, rather than the sum of the totals. That seems mroe sensible, and likely.

rdouglass · #4 February 19th, 2001, 07:21 PM

The upgrade "50% limit" seems a little hokey, but does prevent a cheat I've tried before. My thought was I could build a StarBase with just a Master Computer. Then upgrade to a SB with a MC and a Sphereworld Generator. Then repair it in 1 turn. Sphereworld in 5 turns!!! WRONG!! ...can't be done!! That would have been a killer cheat. However, I have heard of the "incremental" cheat - where you continually upgrade a ship / base over and over on the same turn, increasing the value / cost incrementally each time to circumvent the 50% limit.

Haven't tried it but I think others have...

Daynarr · #5 February 19th, 2001, 08:08 PM

quote:
Originally posted by rdouglass:
However, I have heard of the "incremental" cheat - where you continually upgrade a ship / base over and over on the same turn, increasing the value / cost incrementally each time to circumvent the 50% limit.

Haven't tried it but I think others have...

Well, it is true - you can do that. That also makes the whole point of '50% limit' completely useless because you can get from any design to any design just by making several 'in between' designs, which just makes you do extra work. Because of that I have just changed the limit to 100% to save me that extra work (on several occasions I was getting message that my design is more than 100% different then previous one!

).

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 19 February 2001).]

Triumvir Emphy · #6 February 19th, 2001, 08:40 PM

i could see you use "loopholes" like this against other human players because you could assume they are doing the same thing and it doesn't unbalance the game because most loopholes are published in forums and your opponent is probably digging them up just like you.

but to use these on the AI and then claiming the AI sucks is pure cheese.

Nyx · #7 February 19th, 2001, 08:45 PM

The cheat only saves time, if you look at the cost to refit all those times, you do pay an awful lot of extra resources to accomplish this. Then again, if you have the resources stored (and many players will accomplish this) you can do hideous things in just a few turns.

------------------
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rdouglass · #8 February 19th, 2001, 09:33 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Daynarr:
.... Because of that I have just changed the limit to 100% to save me that extra work ...

Forgive my ignorance, but exactly which file do you change to acomplish this???

Daynarr · #9 February 19th, 2001, 10:25 PM

quote:
Originally posted by rdouglass:
Forgive my ignorance, but exactly which file do you change to acomplish this???

Settings.txt file, line 'Retrofit Max Percent Difference in Cost'.

geoschmo · #10 February 19th, 2001, 10:48 PM

quote:
I would have thought that 50% of the current design upgrade limit would apply to individual resource types, rather than the sum of the totals. That seems mroe sensible, and likely.

I might agree this is more sensible, but it is not the way it is right now.

You could build a ship that is completely, or nearly completely, minerals for example, and and upgrade it to one that has a mixture, as long as the total of all three resources of the new ship is not more than 150% of the total of the resources of the previous design.

Of course you are still spending the difference in all three resource types, so it's not like you are getting something for nothing.

Personnally I would like to see the 50% limit removed, but have repair bays and space yards repair components based their resource content just like consturcting them does.

To have it one way for construction and another for repair doesn't make sense to me. Having them work the same way would eliminate the problem.

If the idea is to not have repairing a component "cost" anything additional, then simply don't remove the resources from the treasury while repairing, but use the same principle when deciding how long the repair takes.

It's kind of ludicrous that it takes the same amount of time to repair a Gravitational Quantum Resonator V as it does an Armor I component, even though it is 10 times as large, and 2400 times

as expensive.

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 19 February 2001).]