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Would it be advisable to make it possible to swap KEB ratings around without requiring a whole prototype, etc?

For example, if my empire has a class of heavy cruiser with KEB 5/2/2 and I want to make a variant to fight a specific enemy who uses energy weapons, making it relatively cheap and easy to either convert ships to a KEB 2/5/2 variant, with no other changes.

-Emiricol

This sounds like a refit VBAM SE 2.3.2 - Starship Refits.

Effectively, you would bring in one of the base ships, refit it with the new weapons, and now it would become [heavy cruiser] A class of ships. You could then build that class of ships straight from the shipyard.

Ah! Thanks! That fits perfectly.

I guess it depends on how your campaign setting approaches defenses. Let me explain...

Since in Starmada, there is no cost difference between a ship's defense of 5/2/2 and a 2/5/2, one could state that a refit is the only thing needed to change the ship's defenses. This option assumes that it is relatively easy to remove all the defenses needed for kinetic defense and switch them to Energy defense. If this option is chosen, one should probably make the refit cost as if you removed (and replaced) the total shield value. I don't have my books in front of me so I couldn't tell you how much that would cost.

On the other hand, you could say that the defenses of the ship is a major design component and that it isn't very likely that a ship's defenses could easily switched to something else. In that case, the design would have to go through the whole prototype process. But once the prototype is complete, I guess a refit as above would be possible.

Personally, I like to think that the defenses chosen for a ship is a major design decision and having a ship that is high in Kinetic defense is going to be wasted against a foe with an affinity to energy weaponry. If an empire wants to hedge its bets on a certain type of defense, it should be prepared to have to deal with a foe that isn’t using that weapon type, but that is just my way of thinking.

-Bren

I would tend to agree with Bren. Changing KEB defense values on Starmada ships via refits doesn't feel right, since doing so has no necessary cost associated with it, really. I think in Jay's refit calculation you would be figuring the amount taken off and then the amount added back on, but I am not sure that would be a very high price to pay on most ships.

Of course, I am really not a major fan of allowing tech levels to be modified on older classes, either, as being able to do that makes it so that you can just progressively upgrade a single class for centuries. Sure, it will be costly after awhile, but not terribly so (remembering from when I ran some numbers).

Of course, I am really not a major fan of allowing tech levels to be modified on older classes, either, as being able to do that makes it so that you can just progressively upgrade a single class for centuries. Sure, it will be costly after awhile, but not terribly so (remembering from when I ran some numbers).

For some settings that might be appropriate though- look at the Klingon D7/K'tinga, in service from TOS-era to DS9-era, that's a little over a century, iirc (and if you count it's appearence in Enterprise as canonical it's been in service for more then 2 centuries!)

-Will

wminsing wrote: if you count it's appearence in Enterprise as canonical

You know we don't!

My idea is that the skin of the hull is applied in layers (like the new Boeing plane), each layer is paper thin and dozens of layers make up 1 KEB point. To change the armor numbers around, the vessel is merely re-skinned. It isn't as simple as bolting on new composite plates (that's the Armor special equipment...) but it doesn't require a total overhaul either.

I absolutely don't mind refits that keep a ship modern, by the way - it is practically demanded by my house rules for Maintenance There's some real-world examples of refits to keep a vessel modern, though not forever. I may use a multiplier on the refit cost each time a class is Refit... not sure yet.

Wait a minute...

The refit cost is (cost of refit-cost of original)+1. Therefore, if all that needs doing is a simple switchover of a ship from primarily kinetic to primariy energy defences, all it would cost is one EP. So it would cost something to refit the ships.