Bug: Special resources need to be paid over and over again with each ship upgrade

Agreed.  The admin cost has been fixed in this way (e.g., a colony ship upgraded to a constructor no longer costs an extra admin).  Resource costs should be handled the same way.  It just makes sense.

That sounds like a personal preference/want. Not a bug from programming mess-ups.

My personal preference is to have the extra cost so the cost to upgrade is more causing you to not get the advantage of the ships placement unless you are willing to pay big.

@ForesterGC: How would you think about this if the same happened when upgrading starbases? Like, you have a starbase with several modules worth 5 Durantium, 3 Prometium and more - and then you add a module and have to pay all that again, on top of the cost of the added module? And don't tell me it's not the same - it is the same: you upgrade your starbase when more and improved modules become available, and that is exactly what I'd like to do with ships.

I think the problem that ForesterGC is addressing is that ship upgrades happen nearly instantaneous (the 2 or 3 turns it takes don't count as much here). It would be more logical if ships needed to go to a starbase to be upgraded (what should be quite cheap) or be upgraded by special constructors (which could then be relatively expensive, unless somebody at SD feels like implementing some logic to keep track of the cargo such a constructor is carrying ;)).

You ask yourself is it really worth it.

No it isn't. It makes way more sense to just build a new ship. But then you'll lose experience, and you may have to shuffle your fleet composition because you can't afford to fit the old ships and the new ones all into one and the same fleet.

Given that, the entire concept of either upgrading ships, or building ships that need special resources is put into question.

I don't think that this is what the designers intended, and that is why I reported it as a bug. Of course, there's a chance that either the designers don't consider it as much of a problem as I do, and therefore decide not to put any effort into fixing it. But I'd like that to be a conscious decision on their part and not simply an aspect of the game that remains potentially unbalanced because no one ever noticed.

They have gone to extremes to close doors in the past. ie game designs can not be used as  cheats. I am guessing this is another one.

On top of this upgrading ships can be prohibitively expensive.

 

I see a parallel between upgrading ships and upgrading Apple computers. Upgrading is easy! All you have to do is take your ship, throw it away and go buy a new one.

Looks like this very topic has been discussed last year already, with same results (i. e. people disagreeing on how it should be and no fix/rebalancing): Resource usage for ship upgrades.

I have now shifted my opinion towards: single ship augment modules should not require special resources, but for fleet augment modules it's ok. I've found that many (most?) ship augment modules alrerady do not require special resources; therefore, to be consistent, those that do should be changed.

If fleet modules still require special resources you can avoid the upgrade cost simply by creating pure support ships. Then you can just upgrade the actual war ships that it suppports.

P.S.: As for prototype weapons, I've yet to see one that is worth using a special resource! Some are even less useful than similar, normal weapons that do not require special resources, and available at the same tech level. Either these weapons need significant boosts to make them stand out against the normal weapons, or the special resource cost removed!

I agree with your original point that ship upgrades are to expensive, or my point on this. I also agree that if you upgrade a ship that cost resources, and the upgrade no extra resources then you shouldn't have to pay extra resources on the upgrade.

Making it so expensive that it is not worth upgrading just causes me not to upgrade ships. This train of logic to shoot yourself in the foot to do something just destroys the purpose of a feature; especially one that has been around a long time.

As far as requiring resources to do something I think that is a good idea.

Have to disagree with the special weapons.I think they are useful until the tech is upgraded. I think the problem is that the special weapons needs to be upgraded with better tech instead. I agree with the original post, not with the new point.

Exactly my point. I'm sure it wasn't trivial work to make ships upgradable, and the fix to admin cost proves it's a feature SD cares about. But when people don't want to use it because it's better to just build new ships means all that work was wasted.I've seen too many special weapons which are not better overall than normal weapons of the same tech level. And those that are, are often worse than normal weapons of the next level.

Maybe that's just a symptom of my aggressive expansion and technology play style: even with research set to very slow, by the time I reach the Age of war, half the techs I can choose to research will be finished within a single turn. And then I'd rather not waste my scarce resources on ships that may be outdated before I can finish their construction.

However, there are a couple of special weapons that simply don't hold up to their normal counterparts available at the same level. These may just be balancing issues: I'll try to put some examples together and post them in a separate thread.