retro-multi-model construction???

[Wardad]

There are more modest ways to use a retroseries.

Colony Ship two step:
Build it with the bare requirements plus whatever will fit without costing an extra build turn. Then retroseries more engines and storage. Meanwhile your cranking out another ship.
Very handy if your HW can build 3650 minerals in the begining of the game.

Full Utilization:
A cheap two step series. Simply remove a componant or two so it uses nearly all of a turns capacity, then retrofit. ex. turn rate of 2000 minerals = 5 turns for 9850 minerals vs 6 turns for 1050.

Not Yet Researched:
So you have Combat sensors II, but you will get Combat Sensors III soon. Build it without them and then refit. Great when combined with Full Utilization.

Generic Plus:
A generic configuration (usually a large ship) with a portion empty (about 100K). The empty portion is later filled to counter specific threats or to attack opponents weakness. While still generic the maintenance costs are lower.

Training Plus:
A generic plus that may not even have weapons. Usually in route to or sitting over training, refit, and resupply waypoints. The maintenance savings will usually pay for the refit costs.

Remeber,
You can refit mothballed ships, but they must be re-activated for training.

[ January 28, 2003, 00:26: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Merry Jolkar]

What is the cost of the retrofit? Say I have a 1000 kt ship and I want to retrofit to a 2000 kt ship. I ask because I'm currently receiving word that I cannot finance the refit, despite having more than twice the cost of the target ship set aside (e.g., > 4000 kt set aside in the above example).
Thanks,
Merry

[Slick]

Originally posted by Merry Jolkar:
What is the cost of the retrofit? Say I have a 1000 kt ship and I want to retrofit to a 2000 kt ship. I ask because I'm currently receiving word that I cannot finance the refit, despite having more than twice the cost of the target ship set aside (e.g., > 4000 kt set aside in the above example).
Thanks,
Merry

I recommend asking a question in only 1 thread, so that we can just answer it in 1 thread.

From the other thread where you asked:

The relevent numbers are as follows:

Cost to add a component: 120%
Cost to remove a component: 30%
Maximum amount of change in ship cost: 150%, being total cost. i.e. new ship (M+O+R) can't be more than old ship (M+O+R) x 1.5. It is not on an individual resource basis.

These values can be found and modified in settings.txt:

Retrofit Cost Percent For Comps := 120
Retrofit Cost Percent For Comp Removal := 30
Retrofit Max Percent Difference in cost := 50

Slick.

[rdouglass]

Originally posted by Merry Jolkar:
What is the cost of the retrofit? Say I have a 1000 kt ship and I want to retrofit to a 2000 kt ship. I ask because I'm currently receiving word that I cannot finance the refit, despite having more than twice the cost of the target ship set aside (e.g., > 4000 kt set aside in the above example).
Thanks,
Merry

You're saying 1000kt to 2000kt; are you trying to retrofit between hull sizes? That can't be done. You can't retrofit hulls - only components in the hulls.....

[Suicide Junkie]

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]

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]

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.