[Ed Kolis]

As I was playing SE4, I noticed that I was able to refit one of my spaceyard light cruisers into a warship because they cost about the same amount. "This doesn't make sense," I thought. "Shouldn't the decision of whether or not you can refit a ship be based on the similarity in the designs, not on the cost? It's silly to be able to refit a PPB1 ship to a spaceyard ship but not to a PPB5 ship!" So here's an idea: Instead of (or perhaps in addition to, if the cost limitation is loosened) a cost limitation on refits, why not throw in a limitation on similarities in design? This wouldn't be too hard to implement - just take each component in the new design, search for a corresponding component with the same family in the old design, and if more than X percent of the new components don't have matching old components then the designs are compatible.

Of course, there could be a few problems with this... you could refit from class A to class B and be unable to refit back, so maybe it should check both ways... the component family limitation is extremely easy to overcome with a retroseries - if the limitation is 25% new (not upgraded) components, only 4 refits are needed to get a brand new ship.

Comments?