Retrofit defense base UI issue?

[jacozilla]

From the ships & bases screen, i can select the type from the drop down (construction yards, research stationa, etc) and retrofit one or many via the easy UI steps of click 1 or ctrl / shift click to grab however many i want, and then simply click retrofit button which then allows me to pick what design to use via another small popup menu dripdown.

But for defense bases only, it seems either a bug or some UI issue i havent figured out how to get around. I can pick select, then pick defense base i want to retrofit, but the retrofit design deopdown always has zero designs, even though i do have a new, non-obsolete design to use.

The issue isnt the design - i can still manually select a defense base on the normal main play screen, then right click on it to retrofit - works fine that way.
Or, i can also use the ships/bases screen to view my entire list of many defense bases, pick one, click select ship to highlight that base on my lower left active view pane, and then in that pane click the retrofit button - that tooo, also works

What doesnt work is the first method and easier one of picking one or more from the list and just use the retrofit button from that ships/bases list screen. Works for all other types, but not defense bases.

It's clearly not a general UI issue bug because like i said, i can single select or mass select dozens of starports, research stations, etc. from the ships and bases list screen, ghe just click omce on the retrofit button to pick from the design dropdown popup. Its just specifically with defense bases only that i cant seem to get yhis function to work

Anyone else able to confirm they can retrofit defense bases this way? Or is this a known outstanding bug ?

It wouldnt bother me as much if i rarely used defense bases but to save on spaceport costs, i spam cheaper defense bases instead over colonies, and the retrofit issue makes mid game or later a nightmare to upgrade one by one.

[Aeson]

If I had to guess, my suspicion would be that you might have some defensive bases which aren't over a colony and so are constrained by the three times the normal build size limit whereas your other defensive bases are all over colonies and thus can be built to (almost) whatever size you desire. However, I don't know that the retrofit option in the ships and bases menu actually filters for that based upon the selection, and I also don't know why you'd have a defensive base not at a colony without having intentionally built it, which would suggest to me that you'd know about it. Plus, from the sounds of things, you're using a small base design and so I'd tend to expect that that would fit within the noncolony station build size limit.

[jacozilla]

Maybe I figured it out - or had it solved for me by accident. Seems maybe the issue is buggy max size interpretation / function?

a) All my bases are over colonies - so the 'max base size when not at colony' limit should not come into play - but maybe it does in this one menu drop down. Like it doesn't know how to check whether the base you picked in this drop down mode only is in space or over a colony and just applies the max size limit even though it shouldn't.

b) I've designed my defense bases to be cheap versions of spaceports, but they aren't tiny. It's just my spaceports are so big, the defense bases are relatively cheap compared to them. So I build SP over a cluster of systems only, and spam defense bases as my auto-build whenever landing a colony.

My starter defense base is about 1k in size, and at beginning of game when I noticed this, my max size said something like 690. I couldn't retrofit via this easy list screen. But could do it one by one manually as I said.

c) However I've finally now gotten a game to last long enough where I am tech'd up to max base size 1950 when not at colony - and my defense bases are now smaller than that limit. And I just checked and I can just the ships and bases screen to single or mass select from the list and retrofit them all.

So conclusion is that it seems the game applies the max limit when not at colony function correctly when you manually retrofit each base one by one via the large play screen by picking base, then right-click from he options there. But the ships/bases screen with the easy list and drop down retrofit seems to consider either all bases as not at colony, or doesn't know they are at colony and restricts showing anything in the design list popup unless it is smaller than your max size

As bugs go, I can kinda live with this as the manual click fest to do it one by one is annoying but not that bad in early game as I have less bases. Now that I know I just need to accelerate my construction tech first, I can make sure to have my max size be larger by the mid game when I have defense bases everywhere. It still won't let me build super bases since I'll need to stay under the size limit, but that's what I use my massive spaceports for so at least I get around that too

[Bingeling]

I assume that you can give the retrofit order even if the design list is empty? With one or more defensive bases selected? The list is always empty if you got different classes of ships/bases selected (there is no single design to pick for all), but retrofitting still works fine.

The default design to build/retrofit to is always the latest non-obsolete design, so pay attention to what design they actually retrofit to (whether they refuse to retrofit to the larger design).

I often retrofit by selecting groups of stuff from the ship list. In the early game it can be "select all" and retrofit, in later game it can be "all bases" to retrofit after a tech upgrade.

For your own sanity, try to avoid having multiple types of defensive bases (or any other ship/base class) at the same time. It makes retrofitting awkward as they will have the same default design, but should end up on different designs. The star base is an unused design class that gives one simple alternative.

[jacozilla]

I only use 1 design of a type at a time, maybe when i am more expert in the game i will try my hand at multi designs per current class (e.g. Missile base vs fighter/bomber base)

So when my drop down is empty, i'm not mixing bases of different design or design generation. And even if i dont multi select, just pick 1 single defense base from my list and click retrofit button to pop open the drop down to pick design - i see nothing in that list if the base size is bigger than my max not at colony size (despite all bases being over colonies)

I do see design in list if my max size is larger than design.

But i didnt try just clicking anyways even though no designs are in list. I will try that - would sure save some time. Sounds like youre saying even if list empty, it will apply whatever is my latest non-obsolete design.

Good tip, i will check that next game