Retrofitting Captured Ships

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by SgtBigG:
I recently captured two dreadnoughts which had psychic weapons. The weapons had been destroyed in battle. I then designed a new ship which had the same components as the captured ships and subbed in different weapons. Then I retrofitted the captured ships to the new design. The question is, is this cost effective? Would I be better off scrapping the captured ships and building new ones from hull up? Thanks.

G

IMHO, what you did was a better deal. I don't know what scrapping returns, but the Ultra Recycler I is needed to get 40 % return (maybe it's 30 % return by default?)

I often don't even build dreads, a shipyard 1 can take 7 months for an advanced design. But retrofiting a captured ship can be done in two turns or less.

[rdouglass]

Yeah, in terms of speed (not necessarily resources), retrofitting with a few repair bays in the same sector is faster, especially with DN's or other large ships, than building from scratch. Smaller ships can many times be built from scratch faster if you have no repair bays handy and you're replacing / upgrading lots of components. It's purely a function of the build / repair model: build time(s) is based on required resources and SY output and repair is based on numbers of components (disreguards resource amounts).

[Suicide Junkie]

In terms of retrofit resource costs, you have to consider:
- the build price of the new ship
- the retrofit cost for swapping components
- the maintenance costs while repairs are conducted
- the unmothball costs if you use it to save money on maintenance.

Some other questions:
- Is it worth tying up a yard's queue to rebuild a ship if it can be retrofitted instead? If resources are not critically low, two ships are better than one.

[capnq]

Is it worth tying up a yard's queue to rebuild a ship if it can be retrofitted instead? If resources are not critically low, two ships are better than one.

This question doesn't make sense to me. Retrofitting doesn't tie up a yard's construction queue; the yard continues building whatever's in its queue. Retrofit/repair is a separate function and capacity.

[Suicide Junkie]

Precisely:

Option A:
Scrap the ship and build a brand new one at the ship yard.

Option B:
Refit the ship while building a brand new one at the ship yard.

Even if refitting costs more than rebuilding, you may be willing to pay that price in order to end up with two ships instead of one after tha same amount of time

[Arkcon]

Ummm... I'm missing something here. Maybe I could test it out, but if you could all just answer simply...

When would retrofit cost more then building?

1). When you retrofit, there's no cost for the hull, unlike when you build.
2). And even if you changed every component, don't you get some of the resource cost of those components applied to a discounted cost of the new components (or something to that effect -- that was a thread a while back)

I do realize that a multi-retrofit series ends up costing you more, but I'm talking about a one time retrofit -- for example, capture a Krill dreadnought, full of Plasma Missiles and retrofit those to Anti Proton Beams -- leave control, shields, etc alone -- is this not a discount in cost as well as time ?

[ December 12, 2002, 13:00: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Krsqk]

New/changed components cost 120%
Old/removed components cost 30%

You're paying to take out the old stuff, and then paying 20% over cost to install the new stuff.