Hi! I'm running a game for RP purposes, and I want to build a training fleet made of frigates (basically a 3500t hull with a very economical engine and the cheapest possible weapons, FCs and sensors, plus an Auxiliary control and a CIC). When necessary, the crews would graduate to a newly-built ship of the same size, but designed for combat. Most basic components, including armor, are the same. Most new components: weapons, FCs, sensors and powerplants, would be pre-built and available to speed up the refit.
To implement this in Aurora, where crews and crew ratings are tied to the hull, I intend to use the Refit function. That is, converting the Training Frigate to a Combat version, once a possible opponent is found. That's because they *do* want a fleet *now*, but currently their weapons tech is ridiculously low (poor research stats, high costs of research installations, and also high priority to economy and just colonizing the bodies in the same system).
So I saved the game and SM'ed a version with future tech to play with, to see if the strategy would be viable. However I found that the final cost of refitting was higher than building the combat version from the outset. (the combat version is armed with an expensive particle lance and max-ranged FC, plus a powerful engine for 2x racial default speed). The 20% overhead cost above explains part of it, but not all. Because the refit cost was closer to 120% of the *total* cost of a new ship!
I got curious, and I SMed the Training Frigate already built into a mostly empty hull, with all the components specific to the Training version ripped off and replaced by fuel tanks (most everything except for armor, bridge, engineering, CIC, crew quarters), and saw what the shipyard would report as the cost of refitting to the combat design.
Now, instead of a 20% overhead of the cost of a new ship, it fell to only around 5% more. . . So there's something missing in that formula, and somehow the original extra components that are being ripped off count somewhere?
Or, maybe, there's something in the calculation about the endurance of the crew? Because of course the training frigate has an extra-long endurance while the combat ones are between 1-3 months?
The shipyard, for this test, was retooled to a design (of the same size) carrying the combat FC and the most expensive components of the three combat designs I intended to try, because I was also testing for a single shipyard able to build all three, for maximum flexibility. Does it make any difference what the shipyard has as build design?
Another question, in the same subject: how would the availability of the new components, pre-built in the planet, such as engines, FCs and weapons, change the refit cost formula? Would the full cost still apply in the calculation, with the cost of each pre-built component being deducted from the total cost?
Thank you for your help, and sorry for the long post!
