Retrofitting a ship

[dslwraith]

can you take a ship that is already built and retrofit it with something such as a warp opener or closer? instead of waiting 15 turns to build one?

[rdouglass]

Retrofitting has a few limitations. The first is hull size - they must be the same. The second is that the cost of the retrofit can be no more than 50% of the cost of the ship being retrofitted (unless you mod the setup files).

There may be others, but those are the two I know of....

[dslwraith]

What is the cost , what does that take into consideration? as in the total cost of allresources to build the ship or what?

[Suicide Junkie]

Ship cost is Minerals + Organics + Radioactives.

You also have to pay resources to do the retrofit: something like 20% of the cast of the parts you take out, and 50% of the price of the parts you put in.

[PvK]

Er, I believe the cost is 100% of the new components' cost, plus a fraction of the cost of components removed. However, as long as you have enough resources in your reserve, the switch takes place in one turn, and all new components start out damaged.

There is also the 50% increase limit in total resource cost, per retrofit - so you have to have a ship that's at least 2/3 the resource cost of the one you are refitting to, or the refit won't work.

Still, if you have a ship worth at least 2/3 of a very expensive ship like one with stellar manip components on it, and you have enough resources in storage to handle the retrofit, they yes, you can shave (well, lop off) many turns off the time to acquire a very expensive component.

PvK

[Atrocities]

I would say no. If the new design is greater than 50% the cost of the old design, no deal.

Better to just wait the 15 turns.

[Suicide Junkie]

Having just pulled out SE4 for some empirical testing, I can confidently say that it costs you 10% of the original price to remove a component, and 70% of the normal price of the component you are installing.

A retroseries is a completely valid method of rush building a big expensive item.

Take a 100,000 resource SM design.
Start with a 9,000 resource ship (3000/3000/3000 of M/O/R) which can be built in 1 turn.
9,000 resources are spent building the starting ship in one turn.
retroseries to a 13500 point ship.
Cost: 9000-900+9450 = 17,550
retroseries to a 20,250 point ship.
Cost: 17550 -1350 +14175 =30k
retroseries to a 30k point ship
Cost: 30k-2k+21k = 49k
retroseries to a 45k point ship
Cost: 49k-3k +32k = 78k
retroseries to a 67k point ship
Cost: 78k -5K + 47K = 120k
retro to a 100k point ship (final)
Cost: 120k -7k +70k = 183k

So in order to build that 100K resource cost planet creator in two turns with a retroseries, you pay twice the cost in resources.

Unless you have lots of spare resources, that extra 100k minerals on the price tag are going to hurt your empire.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 01 June 2001).]