Retrofit Rant

[Slick]

A general strategy I use is to build ships that are a split between latest tech but sub-optimized to build them faster based on spaceyard construction rate. They are complete enough to go into battle if necessary. When they are built, I send them to one of my Ship/Fleet training centers for 3 purposes: 1) to be trained to 20/20, 2) to be retrofitted to the latest design, 3) to be put into a fleet. A ship can continue to be trained while being retrofitted.

Typically at one of my training centers, I have several Space Station Spaceyards which provide repair capability for all these retrofits and are always building ships or, more likely troops, to support my fleets.

I normally build ships in a set ratio. If I have the time, each fleet gets at least 1 troop transport (for capturing planets), 2 minsweepers (for redundant minesweeping capability, total usually >100), 2 spaceyard ships (for field repairs, field retrofits and field building of replacement troops), 1 aux ship (supply if necessary, anti-cloak, long range scanning, repair if necessary, and maybe medical bay), and finally enough combatant ships to take on enemy fleets and capture planets - starting around 20-30. I'll also build the occasional infrastructure ship (planetmaker, warp opener, warp closer, pop transport, etc.)

So my internal spaceyards churn out these ships. Then they are sent to the training centers which are a revolving door of new ships coming in, with retrofitted, trained fleets leaving. While being retrofit and trained, the large number of ships at the training center provides defense for this most valuable sector. When new ships arrive, they are temporarily placed into a "holding" fleet where they instantly get the 20% fleet training bonus for sector defense and to unclutter the ship display. In these systems, I commonly move all the warp points into this sector as well to force any incoming enemy to face a large number of ships no matter where they came from.

So, retrofitting is a key element of my play style.