Ordnance Upgrade/Refit & Missile Series

[netfires (OP)]

I tend to design incremental upgrades of what are essentially the same missile systems in game.  As my base warhead technology impoves for example I might take a previously designed size 4 missile and use the new tech to achieve the same damage with less mass.  I would then use the weight savings to add more fuel, a larger engine, more agility, etc.

The design philosophy of the missile remains the same.  I would like to be able to take missiles and remanufacture them to the new standard.

If I recall VB6 also had missile series that allowed ships to automatically load other versions of missiles in the same series if the primary selection was unavailable.  Reintroducing this would also be a logical way to govern what missiles can be refitted into what: missiles could only be refitted into missiles of the same series of the same size (and maybe only within a certain multiple of the cost of the base missile).

[liveware]

Something similar to the ship refit mechanic would be nice. Say you can only change 10-20% of the overall tonnage of the missile for each new generation or you have to instead build an entirely new missile instead of refitting it. Maybe also add the option for ships to auto-refit missiles if new designs are available.

[Droll]

Something similar to the ship refit mechanic would be nice. Say you can only change 10-20% of the overall tonnage of the missile for each new generation or you have to instead build an entirely new missile instead of refitting it. Maybe also add the option for ships to auto-refit missiles if new designs are available.

I think for missiles this should be very restricted and basically only apply to technology upgrades.

So lets say you have a missile with an old size 1 strength 3 warhead. If you design another missile that is identical but otherwise has a more modern (size 1) strength 4 warhead then all you have to do is swap out the warheads on the old missiles and presto.

[liveware]

Things get a little weird with missile upgrades because of how the engines scale with technology. It used to be the case that you needed to design missile engines, now they are auto-designed in the missile design window. So, for example, if you design a size 1 missile in year 2000 and then want to upgrade said missile in 2010 with a newly researched warhead, if you have also researched another engine tech by 2010 your new missile will require smaller engines for the same speed than the old design because the newer engine tech will be faster.

I just ran into this problem and basically had to redesign and rebuild all of my missiles empire-wide to ensure they would still all travel at the same speed and continue to be useful in mixed size missile barrages.

[esavier]

i could imagine that every part in the working missile could be scrapped down to resources, so upgrades would not go against the lore. I think that it would be cool to upgrade missiles.
Lets assume there would be some kind of pointer between missiles like in missile series mechanics. I think that game should check what parts are inside and if there is similar size AND tech (for example warhead) between the missiles, part should be reused and no additional labor should be required, otherwise parts need to be scrapped for 95% of material cost.

[Migi]

I tend to design incremental upgrades of what are essentially the same missile systems in game.  As my base warhead technology impoves for example I might take a previously designed size 4 missile and use the new tech to achieve the same damage with less mass.  I would then use the weight savings to add more fuel, a larger engine, more agility, etc.

The design philosophy of the missile remains the same.  I would like to be able to take missiles and remanufacture them to the new standard.

The only part of a missile which has no tech changes is the fuel, which means maybe 90% of your missile would be replaced.
The old warhead gets swapped for new warhead, the old agility gets swapped for new agility and the old engine gets swapped for a new engine.
What you are proposing is completely different to refitting a ship, where the majority of the ship stays the same.

Secondly missiles are disposable so I don't really see why you should be upgrading them.

I could also see the argument for having a construction option called "recycling", where you build missiles and scrap them at the same rate to make the missile effectively cost less.

[StarshipCactus]

There should be a way to get 100% of your mineral investment back from scrapping a missile.  All the metal can just be melted down again, the warhead disassembled and other components carefully taken apart.  Maybe you could make it a function of the ordinance factory?

[Jorgen_CAB]

It is highly unrealistic to get anything close to 100% recycled material from anything. The game usually give us 25% of anything scraped so we have to live with that.

If you also think you can reuse a component just because it is the same tech level in another device seem a bit unrealistic too, this is not how engineering works in real life. Things tend to be specifically designed for the purpose and environment it is in, especially for really small quite complex stuff.

The game also don't account for things becoming old and wheres out, even if not used. Everything has en expiration date in real life, especially missiles. No one would fire a 100 year old missile that has been just lying around in a warehouse.