The case against Refits

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Was reading a thread on the steam forums talking about 'Superfleets' - the 4x phenomona where a faction masses virtually all its military power into one group and smashes every enemy it can reach. It got me thinking what causes this, why its so common, and why its effective. I came up with a lot of reasons, but one I want to talk about is refits.

There's been a lot of 4xs over the years with varying stances on refits. On some, tech often grants universal upgrades that instantaneously upgrade all your ships. On others, refitting is expensive, disallowed, or otherwise impractical. Most are of course inbetween these extreme, but I think most 4x lean towards a nominal-cost system where you can pay cash to upgrade instantly or pay at-cost or cost-differential production in yards. I think these 'easier' refit systems encourage superfleets and encourage the top dog to stay top dog; you can spend many turns churning out an enormous military. You never lose this top dog status since every time you tech up you can bring your whole military up to speed. Refits do have costs, but they are almost always and universally Worth It because of the enormous improvements research brings to the table. and gain an enormous advantage very quickly by refitting ships up to modern standards. If refitting did not exist at all, ships would have a natural 'half life' - as empires tech up, older ships become relatively ineffective, and during the time it takes to build an enormous armada parts of it will become relatively obsolete.

*shrug* !!!!

(p.s. Some games use expensive refits that are not practically efficient - they are typically done only to preserve a ships XP/quest bonuses, or just because its organizationally easier to refit existing ships.)

[Arioch]

Systems which have unit experience or promotions make upgrades much more important. We'd like to add that at some point.

Until then, the cost to refit should be appropriately competitive with building a new vessel. Right now refitting is a hassle, but we will add a "mass refit" feature that will make it much more attractive.

[Chasm]

The only issues I have with refits as current, in terms of cost, is that I think you should get metal salvage value on items you are replacing out from your hulls, and that shipyards should get the same cost discount that they get with new ships.

[Arioch]

The only issues I have with refits as current, in terms of cost, is that I think you should get metal salvage value on items you are replacing out from your hulls, and that shipyards should get the same cost discount that they get with new ships.

I agree with you on the latter point, but on the former, I'm not sure you really should get much salvage value when you're refitting a ship. The majority of the scrap value traditionally comes from the hull, and that remains intact during a refit.

[Chasm]

In game scrap value seems to be 1/2 the total systems metal value of the ship (Pirate light cruisers give ALOT). And by hull, would not armor (very metal heavy) be easily salvaged for scrap?

[Hanekem]

perhaps add some sort of limit to refits, some things should be easier and faster to retrofit than others, while others might be a no go or simply impractical.
I recall a game that added refit thresholds, basically you could only change so much % of a given hull at one time.

Maybe add the option to mothball ships? at a fraction of the cost, in a system with a yard or a dedicated facility, and would take time to reactivate.
That way one can have a small, lean and efficient peace time navy, and a lot of iron secreted away for a rainy day

[SilasOfBorg]

Generally speaking, parts and designs have shelf lives past which it becomes not only cost prohibitive but rediculous from an engineering perspective to 'refit' them.

I want to refit my canoe into a speedboat.

I want to refit my Model T into a Roadster.

I want to refit my Commdore 64 into an i7 based gaming machine.

I think it would be more 'interesting' if refit cost was based on hull tonnage and the cost of any different parts multiplied by an exponential factor based on tech differential plus a base "refit factor".

I think players would intuitively get this, but the problem with making the system more 'interesting' is that the AI would flounder. Getting rid of refits completely would be a better design choice IMHO. Of course the AI has to be able to deal with that too, perhaps by calculating a tech differential between its current navy and its latest designs and scrapping any ships that exceed some threshold.

I also think mothballing is a fun idea but adds micro that I for one would find annoying.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Some games have tried limited refits based on individual components; in an SiS context, this might mean you could refit lasers to turbolasers, but not to ion beams. Or you could change the Mods on a weapon but not the weapon itself.

I'm kinda taken with the notion of mods-only refits, especially since it would work well with an expansion of the mod system to give mods for systems. (Overcharged power plant, or armor that gives damage reduction to the front, or somesuch.)

[SilasOfBorg]

I just had an idea which I really like. It may or may not be too late to implement since it is mostly changes under the covers - ie minimal UI impact.

Each ship component type tracks a new number - call it "maintenance efficiency". It basically abstracts the navy's ability to source parts, fix, and generally, well, maintain the component. This includes hulls.

This can start out low - say 40%, for a new component which has never before appeared on any of the race's starships.

Each turn a component is "in service" it gains some ME. The "some" could be a complex calculation based on an empire-wide constant shared in a weighted fashion over all components in service, or a simple calculation like "5%". TBD? Max is 100%, though who knows, some races (*cough* humans *cough*) might have an edge/slight bonus due to their nomadic wanderings, etc.

Each turn a component is *not* "in service" it loses some ME, down to some floor.

Per-turn component maintenance is (nominal cost) / (efficiency). Ship maintenance cost is a sum of all component maintenance.

When refitting a ship, refit mineral cost is calculated for each new component as (new part - salvage value of old part). Hammer cost is a total of all new parts plus a 'refit cost' (20%?) - you have to both build and install those new turbolasers. That's work - hammers - right?

That's it. The credit/gold cost of refits is going to be paid indirectly if you are upgrading ships to all-new parts, because those parts are going to have lower maintenance efficiency and cost you more per-turn until your navy has more experience keeping them in service.

UI impacts:

* indication of maintenance efficiency for each component (hyperlink describing exactly what this is and does would be great too)
* current maintenance cost per ship design, ideally displayed along with other ship design statistics anywhere those statistics are shown

I wish I'd been a little more involved with the game a year ago, since my full expectation at this point is for sven and Arioch to say "That's interesting" and move on to actually getting the game out the door. Couldn't resist getting my thoughts down though.

EDIT: addendum: for thematic reasons, humans should probably start with ME of 100% for all starting hulls and components.

[Klydon]

I have seen that wholesale refits can be pretty disgusting in terms of dramatically increasing your fleet's capabilities in a short period of time as tech becomes available. Other games generally suffer from this issue as well in that it is typically more beneficial for the human than it is for the AI.

Perhaps something to look at that would not really affect the UI but help solve some of the issues is to simply declare that some items can be refitted (weapons for sure would likely be in this category) while others can't be (changing bulkheads out doesn't make a lot of sense and trying to scrape off old hull armor to put new hull armor would logically seem cost prohibitive to me). Things like engine/power plant change out could go either way. To encourage players to scrap older ships and build newer ones, the power plant could be on the "do not change out" list. On the other hand, it can make sense that power plants can be upgraded over time.

The idea would be to not make it so attractive to update your ships as a matter of course over building new designs yet leave it in place as something a bit more limited.