how to update a ship once i change it's class design?

[joeclark77 (OP)]

I accidentally ordered some ships via "Fast OB" before realizing that I needed some more engineering spaces (I thought it was a civilian model but the grav sensor made it military).   I've updated the design in the class-design window.   Now, is it possible to re-fit the ships I previously ordered to match the new design?  Or is scrapping them and doing it over my only option?

[Brian Neumann]

If you go to the F6 window and look at each ship individually, you should see the designs updated.  I am not sure if the extra supplies will be loaded by doing this.  You might want to check that after updating the designs.

Brian

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Are you saying that all already-built ships of the class will receive the upgrade instantly and for free?  That's generous if a bit unrealistic.   That seemed to be what happened, but I thought it might be because I was in spacemaster mode at the time.

[Hawkeye]

This is a SM function which allows you to "cheat".

If you want to do a proper refit, you have to make a new design, not edit the existing one, tool a shipyard to the new design (if the changes are small, you might be able to build both versions from the same yard, i.e. you can use the yard tooled to build the old design) and start a refit for the ships you want to change.

[Mel Vixen]

This is a SM function which allows you to "cheat".

If you want to do a proper refit, you have to make a new design, not edit the existing one, tool a shipyard to the new design (if the changes are small, you might be able to build both versions from the same yard, i.e. you can use the yard tooled to build the old design) and start a refit for the ships you want to change.

Like Hawkeye said but to spare you some tedious work use the "Copy design" button. Then you just replace the parts you want with newer tec.

[sloanjh]

This is a SM function which allows you to "cheat".

If you want to do a proper refit, you have to make a new design, not edit the existing one, tool a shipyard to the new design (if the changes are small, you might be able to build both versions from the same yard, i.e. you can use the yard tooled to build the old design) and start a refit for the ships you want to change.

There is also a computer science issue here.  Each Ship instance effectively points to (in a relational DB sort of way) a Class Design instance.  It also has some cached local data that depends on the design data.

When you change a design, you're changing the corresponding class instance.  Since the ships point to that instance, you've just changed their state.  This is why "locking" is present for designs - it effectively puts the design instance into a read-only state, so you don't get a side-effect on the ships if you change it.  When you unlock the design and modify it, you're doing something the program doesn't really intend for you to do.  The way it's intended for you to change the design of a ship is to do a refit to a new, modified design.

The reason this is important is the cached local data in the ships.  It does NOT get updated when you change the design.  Instead, it gets refreshed at other spots in the code.  This is why (I'm 99% sure) Brian told you to look at each ship - the act of viewing the ship updates the local cache.

So one thing to be aware of:  please do NOT log bugs if you've unlocked a design and modified it and the ships that are using it are acting weird.  You're skiing out of bounds the moment you modified a design that ships are using....

John