SE IV question on refitting

[Romulus68]

Construction question - Has anyone tried building a ship with just a bridge, life support and crew only, then after its built refitting to a combat role? Since the ship has fewer components it will build much faster, correct? Once built it will be at a planet with a planetary shipyard, two base shipyards and a repair ship. With all that available for repairing. The refited ship should become fully operational in one turn of repairs.

Will that work?

Do you think its more timely building a fully loaded ship versus a shell ship then refitting it?

Last question: Has anyone tried that?

[GuyOfDoom]

Refitting generally only allows you to refit up to a certain cost of the ship and if you have a really cheap model it won't let you update past half of what the ship cost.

[Captain Kwok]

It's called "Retro-Series" building and is a common tactic in PBW games. However, there's a maximum of 50% difference in cost between two designs in order to retrofit, so you'll probably need a few more components or a couple of designs.

[douglas]

I have used it to great effect in multiple PBW games, but it's a bit tedious, requires multiple steps to really take advantage of it thanks to the 50% cost difference limit, and is only really useful if you have more resources than space yard capacity or have an emergency.

[Romulus68]

douglas said:
I have used it to great effect in multiple PBW games, but it's a bit tedious, requires multiple steps to really take advantage of it thanks to the 50% cost difference limit, and is only really useful if you have more resources than space yard capacity or have an emergency.

I'm making 190K minerals a turn more than i can spend or save. I'm a trade race with lots of treaties.

By chain refitting you mean: refit to one class a little bigger then again a little bigger than the second and so on? Sorta scaling up the designs through the 50% limits getting bigger as you go.

I plan to use this on battlecruisers built from Base shipyards. Right now they take FOREVER from the starbase, but with refitting I could shave A LOT of time of them.

[Romulus68]

Captain Kwok said:
It's called "Retro-Series" building and is a common tactic in PBW games. However, there's a maximum of 50% difference in cost between two designs in order to retrofit, so you'll probably need a few more components or a couple of designs.

Oh!! Is that why i couldn't upgrade my Starbase shipyards this turn? It said something about insufficent resources, but I have resources coming out my ears! Its a Level 1 base going from shipyards 1 to shipyards 2 (refitting).

[Fyron]

You could also not use starbases; space stations are much cheaper and allow you to field more SYs.

Unless I'm playing a mod that has huge HW production levels, I usually only use retroseries building for stellar manipulation type ships. Stock rarely calls for retroseries necessity.

[Suicide Junkie]

Romulus68 said:
I'm making 190K minerals a turn more than i can spend or save. I'm a trade race with lots of treaties.

Right there is your problem.

Retrofits use your stored resources.

Build a bunch of resource storage facilities, and your retrofit woes will evaporate.

[Arkcon]

Romulus68 said:

Last question: Has anyone tried that?

Yes {clicky pop}

[se5a]

it's an interesting tactic, one you've got to be a bit more carefull of in SEV+BM since the resorces are a tad more balanced.