But the Centaur refit has Combat equal to its Defense. Just like the Constellation.
And it's true that the Constellations are more fragile.
If you want more defense than combat, the Connie refit would be more suitable (and it is tougher than both the other ships individually).
And... I don't get why you want to hold off building ships just because we might build better ships of the same class soon - if the Connie refit or the Constellation perform their job more efficiently (resource wise) than any other ships we can build to fill the same role, why not build them?
Just because the new LC design will be better than the Connie B or the Constellation, doesn't mean the Connies and the Constellations are bad investments now - nor does it mean they'll stop being useful ships after their successor comes out.
And while we're on on the subject of me being mystified, I don't see why people see it as a bad thing that the Connie B can't be refitted - refitting doesn't seem terribly resource or time efficient to me.
fasquardon
Refitting is HIGHLY resource efficient. We do not have the crew or resources or shipyards to constantly keep our fleet upgraded to the newest classes. So we use some shipyard capacity to bring older models up to spec for a pittance compared to replacing them.
The Connie "refit" is not a refit. The Connie is creating a new design that we know will be totally obsolete in 8 years. It's a waste of PP that could go into improving existing assets.
The Constellation refit, on the other hand, significantly improves a class we already have a bunch of.
And while we've only got a couple Centaurs, the Refit Centaur is basically a mini Light Cruiser that we can build faster and for less crew than a Constellation. I'm going to push for sending both Centaurs for refits as soon as that project is done, then grabbing the Constellation and Miranda Refits while we wait for LC Tier 2 tech to finish, then starting on the Renaissance/custom LC.
If you wanted to save pp, I could see your point, but the argument here seems to be between "refitted Centaurs", "refitted Connies" and "refitted Constellations", all of which cost about the same in terms of pp. And to my mind, they're all about as good as each-other in terms of being good long-term investments.
As far as it being bad that we can't refit them again, why would we want to?
Why is it a bad thing that we wouldn't want to build more of them?
And once we had the Renaissance, why would we build Centaurs either?
fasquardon
We would build Centuars after getting the Rennie, because Centaurs are not Light Cruisers. They are Escorts. They are not competing.
And the problem with the Connie Refit is that it does not improve existing assets. Regardless of whether we actually plan on building more Centaurs/Mirandas/Constellations, the refit lets us upgrade the existing ones. The Connie Refit does NOT do that.
Seriously farsquardon, we do not have option to replace all our existing ships with the newest ones of their type. We never will have that option. We haven't even phased out the Soyuz yet. Hence, it is desirable to be able to refit.
Refit ships are generally inferior to new models. However, the comparison is NOT one refit to one new model. It is the capability gains from 5+ refits of an existing ship vs the capabilty gains from one new model.
] Begin the Ambassador-class Explorer project.
