This is suggestion to change the mechanics, but first of all I want to know your opinion.
Why are the old ship components simply deleted during refit? If I want to replace some expensive Fire Control on a huge dreadnought, it is more economically profitable to scrap the entire dreadnought and reassemble it. Why should it work like this?
I understand that using pre-made components allows you to refit in a very short time, and rebuilding a ship is an exchange of time for resources, but in situations like this, when you need to replace only 1-2 components, it looks more like a very strange solution.
Rebuilding takes a lot of time, regardless of the number of components being replaced. I suggest changing the refit procedure by adding the cost of replaced components (Wealth) to the cost (and, accordingly, time) of the task. Such a task will take from x1 (pre-built components) to x2 of the base time of the current refit task.
Maybe also save the old refit task and rename it to “Emergency Refit” or something similar? In this case, the choice is to refit your ships economically or as quickly as possible (about x0.1 of time with pre-built components).
I don’t like the idea of rebuilding a ship to refit it economically. If I want to replace some components, I need to waste the old components resources or time rebuilding the entire ship and lose the list of its achievements. I don’t like both options. Changing the refit task could solve this problem, but not allow to economical refit in one day.
What do you think about this?
1 Like
What else would one do with them?
Let’s take the FC example, if there is a better FC option out there, what is the point/purpose of keeping the old one? The parts will become scarce very soon after adoption of the new FC. All new ships will have the new FC, and changing out the old FC for a new FC, well what to do with the old FC?
Not going to sell it, not even to allies. The versions one would have for allies/sale would be different in some fundamental ways, and that’s a different line/plant.
Not going to keep it, maybe one for a museum.
So one is going to scrap it, using an authorized Defense Sub who can handle the proper disposal to make sure the tech nor materials makes it back out into the world in any sort of use of the original. That is how it works today, take a 500,000 value piece of equipment and then pay 500 to have it properly disposed, subcontracter gets the scrap value.
Scrap it into resources.
This may seem like a minor waste, until you need to replace a hundred of them.
This is especially true for engines at a later stage of the game. The total cost of all the engines in your fleets can be millions of Gallicit. In order not to lose these resources, you will need to scrap each ship. More work than I would like.
You can also save old 10cm Railguns, different sized Missile Launches, and so on.
Yeah, governments don’t do that.
To avoid retreading old ground, previous discussion on this suggestion was had in the main suggestions thread and can be found here.
1 Like
This seems entirely reasonable though? Why does the materials simply vanish into the ether? That makes zero sense. Does all the steel, copper, etc. from old milsurp simply get tossed into an anomalous black hole? No. So… why here?
For “interesting decisions”? Ok, fine, so it needs a downside. Do according what Pedroig outlined, and give the contractor the “salvage value” out the empire’s wealth. It’s not like wealth is doing very much right now. So then, refitting and retaining components becomes very expensive. Not enough wealth? Can’t keep your components. Simple enough!
EDIT: Even better idea. Have a little tickbox, says “Scrap Components on Refit” If you have the wealth up front, it is subtracted from the treasury and you get your minerals. Easy enough. But! If you don’t? The wealth is subtracted from the treasury all the same, but because of partial payment, the time to refit increases proportionally. The shipyard shows how long a task will take, so the task timer goes up, reflecting the change immediately. The wealth screen would also show the expenditure. And of course, all surplus wealth would being going into that production so wealth growth would effectively cease. No surplus? Running a deficit? The refit doesn’t progress until you can pay the contractors. Simple enough methinks! 
I’m sorry, but that whole discussion reads like “I don’t like change”, IMO. It’s not hard to make an option and add some downsides, not conceptually anyways. As for “governments don’t do that”, it’s Aurora, let the player playing decide what governments do rather than insert an argument of “not realistic” into what looks like a very good suggestion!
4 Likes
Well, the ‘milsurp’ kinda does. I’ll give you an example from real life. Back in the 1960s, the Soviet Union sold Finland a bunch of T-55A tanks. Finland kept those tanks for decades and in the 1990s paid a hefty sum to upgrade them to T-55M tanks. Details don’t matter but so far we’re very much following Aurora rules for ships. Then, in late 2000s, Finland got the opportunity to buy a whole bunch of used Dutch Leopard tanks. Which meant that there was no need for the old, albeit somewhat modernized T-55s anymore, and keeping them in use was a waste of resources, since they needed maintenance and soldiers would have to be trained to use them and nobody was making spare parts for them and so on. Again, sounds quite familiar to Aurora players.
So Finland decided to sell those T-55M tanks to Vietnam, which already operated a significant fleet of T-55 type tanks and could always use them for spare parts and such, but before the sale could go through, Vietnamese government realized that buying more T-55s was a waste of money since it was already the 21st century.
So Finland ended up selling the tanks for scrap. Literally for the price of scrap steel and iron. They did not salvage the tracks nor the road wheels nor the optics nor the radios nor the antennas or anything like that in the hope that it could be reused. Everything went to be slagged off.
So scrapping a ship with all its components is actually very realistic. Of course, it seems counterintuitive in Aurora because a Bridge component from 2025 and a Bridge component from 2225 are exactly the same, game mechanics wise, but in reality these would be two entirely different bridges with wildly different equipment and all. So no, my suspension of disbelief is not strained by the fact that the materials all vanish. Especially since in my headcanon - and I know this does not count but bare with me - everything that ‘vanishes’ or is ‘scrapped’ by my Aurora empire goes straight into the invisible private sector that works under the hood.
1 Like
It does vanish though.
What would be nice, is to see that private sector. Somehow.
For example, the sum cost is converted to points towards the next ship / cmc, in a different system of civilian shipping line generation than the current random chance.
It doesn’t though. No gain is seen. Not an increase in wealth, population growth, minerals, nothing. It quite literally vanishes.
My dudes, that’s why I wrote:
“in my headcanon”
Well yes, but the point remains that headcannon or not, the materials just ACTUALLY vanish.
And it would be nice if they didn’t vanish. Especially for things like engines, which can be re-used, or old sensor suites, which again can be used.
Having the option to buy those minerals if we want to/need to.
My whole point is that this is a good suggestion and I think the points raised against it are either vapid, subjective, or just wrong. It can be done, and it can be done in a way that doesn’t make it “optimal”
It’s not “lore breaking”, nor useless, nor OP if it’s given even somewhat of a limitation, like costing a Wealth proportional to the cost of the minerals/ship. Or yielding less scrap then a full on scrapping would, since it’s a refit after all. Or, well something, eh?
I support this, and would like to see something like it implemented. Having the mineral wealth of the ship components automatically lost to me if I refit with no option reclaim, purchase or acquire it is railroading at best. It offers no agency other than “just don’t refit then bro”
Why should refit be especially bad, or extra costly, or nerfed compared to building or scrapping? It’s not even close to OP, hell outside of RP it’s basically pointless. Cheaper to scrap and build new despite historically it being cheaper to refit. Unless the ship was like… super old, but even then it still occurred.
1 Like