[Discussion] Retrofit exploit by building empty hulls and retrofitting them

Draco18s

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 4:14:18 AM

kisliy wrote:
> That produces an exploit by using incremental changes

It's just new cost - old cost. How it can be exploited?

Just worked through the math, and ended up with a 1 dust savings, likely due to rounding.

It may have been my chosen numbers, I am not sure. I would need more time.

Agr

Newcomer

Agr

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 25, 2012, 8:06:11 AM

Lechai wrote:
Retrofit is needed, or the ships that have gained all the xp from battles then become useless as the tech levels rises. Just double the retrofit costs and issue sorted.

How about this? Or more exponential cost formula for experienced ships.

Draco18s

Newcomer

Draco18s

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 25, 2012, 12:11:19 AM

Lechai wrote:
Retrofit is needed, or the ships that have gained all the xp from battles then become useless as the tech levels rises. Just double the retrofit costs and issue sorted.

Refit costs are currently linear. Buyout costs are currently exponential. No amount of "doubling" will reduce the exploit.

Lechai

Newcomer

Lechai

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 24, 2012, 11:24:45 PM

Retrofit is needed, or the ships that have gained all the xp from battles then become useless as the tech levels rises. Just double the retrofit costs and issue sorted.

VIPflipstar

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VIPflipstar

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72 500g2g pts

13 years ago

Jul 24, 2012, 8:07:49 AM

I use this for rapid expansion

, works wonders for establishing border outposts up close to the enemy.

Cheers!

Agr

Newcomer

Agr

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 24, 2012, 7:18:05 AM

Just prohibit to refit any ship cheaper than 70% of new due to its obsolescence. It will work with any race specific traits too and won't impact on current game balance much. Also include XP lvl into old design cost formula depending of XP: 2lvl=cost*1.20, 3lvl=cost*1.30, 4 lvl=cost*1.40 etc. So you will be able to refit highly experienced crews to latest designs freely, because highly confident crew can help with refit.

TheSushiFly

Old Vaulter

TheSushiFly

Old Vaulter

43 600g2g pts

13 years ago

Jul 24, 2012, 7:07:39 AM

good to know, will try this in my next game

MODNosferatiel

Informer

"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." Nerv Motto, Neon Genesis Evangelion

MODNosferatiel

Informer

47 300g2g pts

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 10:14:10 PM

Renamed the title.

kisliy

Newcomer

kisliy

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 5:33:02 PM

> As long as this system accounts for the industry cost reduction of the Masters of Illusion perk

there are plenty of perks like this, e.g. Masters of destruction, Sophon affinity etc.

> An improvement to this idea would probably be to essentially have this but also have a sort of penalty for swapping modules to those of a different type

it's too complicated imho.

Maybe it would be better to remove retrofit from the game and give a small dust reward

for scrapping a ship, e.g. 0,1*IND (but of course less then 0,25 because of IND-DUST conversion)

Draco18s

Newcomer

Draco18s

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 5:01:05 PM

Good to know.

That's what I was going to do this afternoon sometime.

Shido

Confirmed Survivor

Shido

Confirmed Survivor

20 400g2g pts

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 4:32:49 PM

Draco18s wrote:
Just worked through the math, and ended up with a 1 dust savings, likely due to rounding.

It may have been my chosen numbers, I am not sure. I would need more time.

I ran it through a quick excel spreadsheet because I was bored and hey, knowing things beyond doubt is always nice.

I had 4 hypothetical designs; one had 50 Ind, the next 350 ind, then 600, then 1000. In each case the ship started as the 50 ind design and was upgraded to the 1000 ind design, with each combination of intermediates being tested - in each case, the cost was the same at 3832.08 dust (rounded to 2 dp, of course).

As long as this system accounts for the industry cost reduction of the Masters of Illusion perk (though the exact numbers used in the formula would be up for debate), I can only see one thing wrong with it. This system could actually be exploited since drastic redesigns to your ships would be incredibly cheap if the industry costs of the ships were kept around the same level (at the very least it would be a lot cheaper than what we have now) which would give a defender a significant advantage if the enemy is at their door; the attacker can't take advantage of this since you can only retrofit in friendly territory.

An improvement to this idea would probably be to essentially have this but also have a sort of penalty for swapping modules to those of a different type, e.g. if there was a net change of a shield and flak being swapped with a deflector, only half of the shield and flak's industry costs would be taken into account. That would take care of just about any possible forms of abuse while also making minor tweaks to fleets a less painful and costly experience.

kisliy

Newcomer

kisliy

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 22, 2012, 3:19:05 PM

As we know, it costs (0,75 * industry)^1,25 to buyout a ship, so you need about 500 dust

to buyout a low tech destroyer (worth about 200 industry with no bonuses like Militarism).

But instead you can do the following:

1) create a new blank ship template (i.e. destroyer with 1 cheapest module) worth 30 industry

2) build or buyout a full fleet of these ships in 1 turn on any of your colonies

3) modify your template to full weapons or anything else

4) click retrofit to upgrade the whole fleet for just 0,5 dust per industry

sorry for bad english

kisliy

Newcomer

kisliy

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 2:24:33 AM

> That produces an exploit by using incremental changes

It's just new cost - old cost. How it can be exploited?

Draco18s

Newcomer

Draco18s

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 2:03:25 AM

kisliy wrote:
I think it should cost ((0,75 * new_cost)^1,25 - (0,75 * old_cost)^1,25) to retrofit

a ship regardless of modules installed. And if new_cost < old_cost then it should

be constant, i.e. 10 * ship CR

That produces an exploit by using incremental changes, which is how it was a version or two ago.

kisliy

Newcomer

kisliy

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 1:09:42 AM

I think it should cost ((0,75 * new_cost)^1,25 - (0,75 * old_cost)^1,25) to retrofit

a ship regardless of modules installed. And if new_cost < old_cost then it should

be constant, i.e. 10 * ship CR

Draco18s

Newcomer

Draco18s

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 23, 2012, 12:41:29 AM

Yet another reason why retrofiting should take into account how much of the design changed.

kisliy

Newcomer

kisliy

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 22, 2012, 10:15:04 PM

> So instead of waiting 3 turns for a system to build one ship, I could just have it build 6 cheap ships and then retrofit them?

yes, and with Masters of illusion trait you can build even more ships on an average colony with no industry improvements

gameshoes

Newcomer

gameshoes

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 22, 2012, 6:43:54 PM

So that I understand this...

This is a way to produce a massive fleet at a very low cost?

So instead of waiting 3 turns for a system to build one ship, I could just have it build 6 cheap ships and then retrofit them?

kisliy

Newcomer

kisliy

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 22, 2012, 4:41:40 PM

> http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/...ry-cheap-ships

oops, missed it

kisliy

Newcomer

kisliy

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jul 22, 2012, 4:39:45 PM

> (.75 * 30)^1.25 + .5 * 200 = 149 dust.

yes, but with 30 dust per ship (or 15 with cheap trait) you can build

a fleet per turn on almost any colony throughout the entire game,

so it's realistically 100 dust per destroyer.

thank god, it doesn't work with colony module

Agr

Newcomer

Agr

Newcomer

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?8356-EXPLOIT-retrofit-very-cheap-ships

13 years ago

Jul 22, 2012, 4:33:37 PM

Stalker0

Newcomer

Stalker0

Newcomer

14 000g2g pts

13 years ago

Jul 22, 2012, 4:24:18 PM

kisliy wrote:
As we know, it costs (0,75 * industry)^1,25 to buyout a ship, so you need about 500 dust

to buyout a low tech destroyer (worth about 200 industry with no bonuses like Militarism).

But instead you can do the following:

1) create a new blank ship template (i.e. destroyer with 1 cheapest module) worth 30 industry

2) build or buyout a full fleet of these ships in 1 turn on any of your colonies

3) modify your template to full weapons or anything else

4) click retrofit to upgrade the whole fleet for just 0,5 dust per industry

sorry for bad english

I'll assume your numbers are right, I don't know the upgrade numbers off hand.

So if we take an example:

If we were to buyout a 200 IND destroyer outright, it would normally cost (.75 * 200)^1.25 = 525 dust.

If we go the retrofit idea it would be:

(.75 * 30)^1.25 + .5 * 200 = 149 dust.

So by taking my fleet offline for one turn, I have saved 376 dust, or a 72% discount on the original price.

That does seem like a very extreme discount.

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