Refitting ships costs more than building new ones: What the hell?!

[Pyromanuel (OP)]

Hey, first I read this thread
hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php/topic,2387. 0. html
and it helped me a lot, but it didn't explain why refitting the ship actually costs more than just building it.  I'm currently refitting an old ship for 150% cost.  I take it that this means the cost of the new ship, not the cost of the stone-old ship.

If minor changes save time and money, that's cool.
If mayor changes save money but cost time, it's still worth considering.

If it takes longer and doesn't even pay off monetarily, where is my advantage??
You also mustn't forget the ressources I would get for scrapping the old ship => a "discount" if I build a completely new ship
So I think refitting should never cost more than building newly minus scrapping-refunds.

So maybe if refitting takes longer and is more expensive than [scrapping old ship + building new ship], than it shouldn't be possible at all and the game would tell you something like "This is a stupid idea.  You might rather want to refit that ship. "

Is there anything I missed?

Oh, of course this way you can keep the crew, but this doesn't look realistic to me:
At the shipyard, the crew leaves shipA, travels along some catwalks, enters shipB.  => wooops, this took 3 months and also minerals equivalent to half a battleship 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

The game does a confirm prompt if the refit cost is above a certain % (50?).

In real life it's not always or even usually cheaper/easier to refit instead of build a new ship/plane/what-have-you.  Only relatively minor changes are plausible. 

In any case, keeping the crew grade and TF training level can often be worthwhile, even with expensive refits. But it has to be weighed against the cost of having a newer ship AND an older ship.

And hey... this game allows you to make alllll sorts of dumb mistakes. Why should shipbuilding be any different?

If you want to scrap and build a new ship, then do so. That takes more time than just building a new one, and really no reason for it to be automated....

[chrislocke2000]

I always read that refit cost percentage as compared to the cost of the orginal ship. Given the increased costs of more advanced components I've been happy to have high relative refit costs when it has meant that I've been able to keep my 100% trained crew.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Also: you can cancel a refit, its not like you're committed if you press OK.

[Thiosk]

Usually new engines are what does it for me-- you can pull out the missile launchers, or maybe stick some shields in there--
but replacing the engines are a big deal.  They take up a third or more of the space on these ships, and its not like dropping a jet engine and tacking a new one onto a b52.

However, if I've already trained the ships up to 100% task force training... a lot of times i'll just pay the 150% to keep all that training and crew grade.  Its worth it.

[Vanigo]

It's silly, though, whether it's worth it or not. Why refit cost isn't capped at the cost of a new ship is beyond me.

[Pyromanuel (OP)]

And hey. . .  this game allows you to make alllll sorts of dumb mistakes.  Why should shipbuilding be any different?

This convinces me

I think I'll just cancel the refitting then.  Don't care for the crew grade of my freighters.

It's silly, though, whether it's worth it or not.  Why refit cost isn't capped at the cost of a new ship is beyond me.

That's exactly what I meant.  If I were the shipyardmanager I'd just preted to refit that ship, build a new one, scrap the old one AND THEN take all the surplus ressources for me Hey, mabe the shipyard-dudes are just doing that.  Greedy bastards! No Christmas allowance this year!!!

[TheDeadlyShoe]

well... i can see at least one potential abuse with that.   Build small commercial ships, do TF training for minimal fuel/no MSP cost, then refit to a combat ship. 

[Thiosk]

Well, its like major home repair vs new home construction.  Take an old, non historically important house, tear the bedbug/termite infested wood out, fix the broken leaky foundation, and replace the lead pipes with PVC, deal with the lead paint and asbestos--- or... just build a new one from new materials. 

Don't refit freighters.  Thats just silly (in my opinion!

[Goron]

It's silly, though, whether it's worth it or not. Why refit cost isn't capped at the cost of a new ship is beyond me.

Refitting a rowboat to a destroyer will cost more than just building a destroyer; mostly in the fact that you have to move the old rowboat out of the way.
It makes perfect sense for a refit to cost more than a new build as long as you take "refit" to mean "refit" and not "build new" (in which case you should have selected build new instead of the aptly named refit).
Trying to fit 'new' components into an older system can come at great cost in any scenario. Try 'refitting' and old laptop to use new, high end desktop PC parts. Good luck there... you will spend more time and/money trying to reshape the frame than it would cost to just buy a new, full size case; and you'll spend even more money trying to adapt the old DDR2 socket to accept DDR3, and so on...
See, once you actually think about it it makes perfect sense...

Now, refitting a slightly used desktop PC to take some brand new desktop PC parts may not be all that hard. Pull out RAM, put in new RAM. remove powersupply, put in new powersupply. Done. And much cheaper than building from scratch. Same goes for ships in the game.

[Antagonist]

well... i can see at least one potential abuse with that.   Build small commercial ships, do TF training for minimal fuel/no MSP cost, then refit to a combat ship. 

It would have to be small commercial ships with same or more crew than the combat ship.  I dunno how it works, but if commercial has 100% training for 50 crew, and you refit to a ship with 100 crew you'd end up with only 50% training.  How it actually is calculated however I dunno.