retro-multi-model construction???

Suicide Junkie · #1 February 27th, 2003, 06:41 PM

That's one of the problems involved in measuring everything in KT

Take a look at the projected retrofit cost; just before you click to select the design you are retrofitting to, look to the right, and you will see the price in each resource.

Note that you need to have the resources in storage.
Even if you are generating a 200,000 resource surplus, if you've only got 50,000 storage, you can't do a retrofit that costs 60,000 in any one resource.

spoon · #2 February 27th, 2003, 08:19 PM

I find it strange that this isn't considered a bug/exploit/cheat. Being able to build a Warp Opener in two turns seems, well, unbalancing...

In simultaneous turns it takes longer (~8 turns), but still, I think the (probably intended) long construction time of those vehicles is part of the balancing.

-Spoon

jimbob · #3 February 28th, 2003, 02:24 AM

I tried this too, and found to my dismay that the cost of the warp openning component was so large that it exceeded the maximum retrofit limit of 50% for any conceivable ship I could build.

see: Retrofit Max Percent Difference in cost := 50

And so, for very very expensive components, you will find it exeedingly expensive to retroseries them into a ship.
If you really want the component in the fewest turns possible however this is what you must do:

i) build a ship that is really really expensive through several retroseries
ii) once the cost of your ship is equal to double of the cost of the component you want, go ahead and replace most of these expensive components with the desired component.

You will still find this takes a fair bit of micromanagement, and will significantly increase the time it takes to play a round of the game (for most of us this is a good thing

). Is it imbalanced, well no, becuase it'll still take you a longer time than two to three turns, and it will cost your empire a huge amount of resources to do.

Fyron · #4 February 28th, 2003, 02:36 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by spoon:
I find it strange that this isn't considered a bug/exploit/cheat. Being able to build a Warp Opener in two turns seems, well, unbalancing...

In simultaneous turns it takes longer (~8 turns), but still, I think the (probably intended) long construction time of those vehicles is part of the balancing.

-Spoon

It is most certainly not a bug, as MM has already addressed retrofits by adding the cost difference limit in the first patch or so (or was that in the initial release, added in a later beta patch? I forget). It is not a cheat, as it is well within the game parameters to do it. Most do not consider it an exploit because of the huge costs involved in doing it. It costs a lot more to build a ship with retrofits than it does to build it normally.

The high maintenance and high build cost prevent you from getting very many stellar manipulation ships in service, regardless of how you build them. Using extensive retrofits does shave off many turns of build time, but it does magnify the overall cost to build by several factors (depending on how many retrofits you use).

[ February 28, 2003, 00:38: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

spoon · #5 February 28th, 2003, 03:24 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

The high maintenance and high build cost prevent you from getting very many stellar manipulation ships in service, regardless of how you build them. Using extensive retrofits does shave off many turns of build time, but it does magnify the overall cost to build by several factors (depending on how many retrofits you use).

You only need one warp-opener to cause considerable harm. The cost of retrofitting a single ship isn't that great. By retrofiting, you lose the long-build time balancing factor.

Again, look how retrofitting works in non-simultaneous turns. You can build a bare bones ship in one turn, and then, in the next turn, retrofit it all the way up to a star destroyer. This isn't buggy behavior???

Fyron · #6 February 28th, 2003, 03:30 AM

It is difficult to get such a retrofit series enabled. Even if you do, it costs a huge amount of extra resources to do so.

No, it is not at all buggy in any way. Gamey, sure. But for it to be a bug, it would have to function contrary to how it is intended to function. MM already addressed retroseries in a long ago patch, so this can not be considered buggy. Turn-based games are almost always just against AIs, so doing that only possibly hurts yourself, not any other players. It is not nearly as dramatic in MP games.

spoon · #7 February 28th, 2003, 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

No, it is not at all buggy in any way. Gamey, sure. But for it to be a bug, it would have to function contrary to how it is intended to function.

I disagree. I don't think it was intended to be able to build a Star Destroyer in two turns. And if it was intended, then I call that a design flaw, which is just as bad as a bug.