Question about refitting a found ship

[MartialDoctor]

I recently found a damaged ship floating in my home system. After repairing it, I found it to be an truly high-tech destroyer. The only problem is, it has no warp engines... so, I went in and upgraded the design on it, adding the warp engines along with damage control, which it was also lacking.

Unfortunately, it won't give me the option to refit the ship [:(] Has anyone been in a similar situation? Is there anything you can do other than just scrapping the thing?

Edit: When I say refit the ship, I mean refit the ship to that particular design. It will allow me to refit it to my regular destroyer design.

[Raap]

You can't really add things to a ship design...Not unless you have everything needed to make the rest of the design as well. But since you're saying it's 'high-tech', I'm assuming that means you don't?

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: Raap

You can't really add things to a ship design...Not unless you have everything needed to make the rest of the design as well. But since you're saying it's 'high-tech', I'm assuming that means you don't?

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. That's too bad. Guess I'll have to scrap this for tech instead.

[henri51]

Did you try to repair it with a constructor?

Henri

[BigWolfChris]

Yea it would be nice if we could retrofit ships containing tech we don't have (basically to add tech we do have that is missing from the ship)... but I feel this will give a major advantage to the human player as I don't see how the AI would be able to dynamically assess and pull this off themselves

[Mozo]

I found this to be a pain too. Just scrap it for the tech OR use it to guard your home system.

Mozo

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

ORIGINAL: Raap

You can't really add things to a ship design...Not unless you have everything needed to make the rest of the design as well. But since you're saying it's 'high-tech', I'm assuming that means you don't?

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. That's too bad. Guess I'll have to scrap this for tech instead.

You could always put it into a fleet set to stay at planet and guard your homeworld with it. If it has more firepower than you muster at the time it would remain useful in that role until you can build bigger and better ships.

[Bebop Cola]

I'm somewhat fond of the idea of having system defense ships that lack hyperdrive as a valid design type even late game.

I mean, the current game balance isn't in that direction so it doesn't make sense, but at risk of defining the imaginary I'd suggest that a device capable of moving a body in excess of the speed of light would either be bulky, expensive, or both. As such, it would reasonably be cheaper to build ships either without hyperdrives or with extremely low-powered hyperdrives for strictly in-system defense work. In the interests of keeping them cheap they may not be robust enough to fend off a proper invasion fleet, but against the odd pirate attack they might be the economical decision, saving the expensive big ships for gallivanting across the galaxy.

Well, that's my imaginary galaxy anyway...

[Speeder]

I wish too this could be done, I would promptly remove the super laser of world destroyers and replace them with boarding parties, troops, repair bots...

[Mesthione]

The one you find in your homeworld really gives you an early-game defensive edge because it has shields and decent firepower (compared to your likely-paper-made escorts pre-warp). Just let it sit on auto in your home system until your technology catches up, it won't do much damage and won't eat up your fuel if you stick it in an orbit.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Mesthione

The one you find in your homeworld really gives you an early-game defensive edge because it has shields and decent firepower (compared to your likely-paper-made escorts pre-warp). Just let it sit on auto in your home system until your technology catches up, it won't do much damage and won't eat up your fuel if you stick it in an orbit.

And then once you can build better ships of your own, retrofit it to your own design. You never actually have to scrap them.

[Bingeling]

The intact ship in the home system, is not that much better than the early frigate. It has a shield for sure, but given the ages it takes to return "home", the normal frigates probably have shield by the time it gets there, anyways. I prefer to retire it, and it seems to return a free, early, tech (100% researched).

I generally prefer to retire all alien ships for tech, unless they happen to be incredibly amazing (in which case I may retire them because they are too amazing).