Upgrades - some ideas, your own Flagship in SP

[Thunderchild]

I have some ideas that may be interisting for some modders here and that i want to share:

1. Upgrade your starbase:

For this you have to use normal "build a starbase"-function from the game. You handle them both(outposts and starbases) as one station and make no diffrence between them. Than you build a normal outpost. The Upgrade for it have to be a starbase(now outpost II). When you research outpost III(again a starbase) you use the autoupgrade function from the game to "upgrade" the starbase "outpost II" to an outpost "outpost II" so you can upgrade it with a trooptransport to "outpost III".

2. different upgrades for the same ship

You can have different upgrades for the same ship if you set different techlevel for them. Example:
Galaxy I 7/8/8/7/8/7
possible Upgrade1 Galaxy II (maybe Venture-Refit)9/10/10/9/10/9
possible Upgrade2 Galaxy-X 10/9/9/10/9/10
This way you can choose how your already existing ships are upgraded. The other Version that you haven't choosen is available too when researched, but have to be build new. You can combine this with different stats for the different techs, maybe stronger weapons for advanced weapontechnology, stronger shields for advances in energytech and so on.
I write this because i hate it when in UDM my akiras are upgraded to prometheus' and so i can decide to upgrade my akiras to version 2 and build new prometheus-class vessels while others can upgrade to the prometheus-class.
I think you can use this for different starbases too, if the starbase with the lower id(which would be the standard modell) is researched later then the second version with the higher ID(which would only be buildable as long the other version isn't researched). But i haven't tested it yet.

Your own flagship in Singleplayermode:

Set the namegroup from the shipclass your flagship should be to 0 and edit the name (original "UPN INVALID")to whatever you want. If you have build your ship save the game and reset the namegroup so that the class uses its normal names. The namegroup 0 has the advantage that there would not appear an A, B, C ... behind the name. So you could build your USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E for example This will only work for singleplayer-games because in a mp-game all would have to have the same shipname.bin .

I hope all i have written now is understandable and some of you will find it usefull.

[DOT]

I had tried to create different upgrades for same ship but it didn't work because the upgrade must be the ship above the "base ship". The second choise upgrade will not be threaded as an upgrade option.
Nethertheless I like this idea.

Flagship I will test in the near future... :-)

[Thunderchild]

The second choise upgrade will not be threaded as an upgrade option.

It will work as long both upgradeversions have a higher ID as the first version. And your ships will be upgraded to your first researched ship. That is where the different tech-steps come in ;-)

[MrD]

You mean like making two ships with nearly identical tech requirements like this:

Miranda Mk1 all tech 2 as starting point
then you choose:

Miranda Mk2 all tech 4 except energytech 5
OR
Soyuz all tech 4 except biotech 5

So you research all the way to tech 4 and then you decide whether you put your points into energy OR biotech right?
However what happens when you reach both areas on 5 in the same turn?
Will the game then select a random one or will it select the one with the lower ID?

[Thunderchild]

the one with the lower id.

[Peter1981]

mmm............interesting...................