Retrofitting Bases - Ouch

[Greybeard]

Did you know that you can't retrofit a space yard component into a space station? I found out the hard way. The message says it's impossible to add a space yard component into a station unless it originally had one. Now I have two nearly useless stations...
This caused a huge hit to my production schedule.
I guess now I'll retrofit them into killing machines.

[tesco samoa]

you have to turn that feature off in the settings file...

[geoschmo]

This wasn't always this way. It was added in a patch, I think 1.60, at the same time the restriction against adding a colony comp to a ship was added. It was done to nerf the retrofit tactic a bit. Otherwise you could build cheap empty base hulls over your homeworld and retrofit them to space yards and exponentially expand your construction capacity. You can still do the same thing, but you have to spend some points to your empire setup to get a construction rate that will allow you to build a space yard base in one turn.

[rdouglass]

It's still not that bad. I found that with the construction bonuses I take at game setup, I can still build a minimal SY I base in 2 turns from a colony with any pop and a SYIII planet facility. Then I can retrofit to SYIII's in 1 turn.

It's not THAT big of an impact (except of course with your existing plans ).

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

But what's REALLY iriitating is the retrofit cost limits - I know you can modify them in Settings, but still it's irritating.

Before I knew the limit was 150% I once built a ship (think it was Destroyer or something) with just a Master Computer, then tried to retrofit it into an actual warship, but then the darned message sadi the cost difference had to be less than 150%. I did the above to try and emulate SEIII-style construction. That was very good, with unfinished ships lying in orbit waiting to be repaired, while they were vulnerable to enemy attacks AND you could see what your enemy was building by looking at the new ships above a planet next turn.

[rdouglass]

Yeah, I liked the SEIII style better also - buy empty hulls and everything is a retrofit.

That was fuel for much debate when SEIV first came out.