Probably as soon as we can muster up the pp.
The only fundamental problem here is the political will cost. It'd be a no-brainer if it weren't so expensive in those terms (because hey, stronger ships, for minimal cost and no extra crew required).
That... is a very good idea.
Just as a heads up: the refit cost mentioned on the refit project description is just the cost to refit old ships. Upgraded ships don't cost any more BR to make, and SR costs go up by half the refit SR cost, rounding up. So the Constellation A costs 70/45 and the Centaur costs 80/70.
We'd be paying ~45 PP, 160 BR, 80 SR, and 8 years of berth time for a total of +8 C, +8 S and +8 D.
The thing is that the Constellations are already good enough for rear area garrison duty, and keeping them in that role makes their combat upgrade almost completely irrelevant, meaning we'd effectively pay 45 PP plus refit cost and time for +8 S and +8 D. Which makes the refit an even worse choice by a rather large margin.
I don't think that's actually advisable, it's tricky to achieve. 3 years prototype, 2 years construction, and a decent escort weight science ship will require a high stat-over-scale fudge factor, 5 if you want to get the best out of it (which I would if it was supposed to bridge the gap between Oberth and Intrepid and stay in service for about 50 years). So that means the team needs to be at least skill 5 and there is no room for any delays of any sort at all.
Which might be an acceptable in between if we want to design a better science ship a decade alter, but not anywhere close to good enough as a long term solution.
Um, why exactly do we need to have to use PP if we already have the resources and technologies required to refit the ships? Sorry if this is a bit naive but the only thing I can think of that would require their input would be for passing safety regulations. Any other reason that can be thought of why we can't have them refitted ourselves?
It's a fairly major program.
7 science (+1 after a refit, which I left space for), is as good as an Ambassador. Sure, the durability will be relatively bad in 20 years, but the Oberth has served for 50 with far worse.
I prefer refitting the old Centaur-As, because it conserves crew and resources for (short term) when we start building Constitution-Bs and (long term) our continued production of Centaur-As and Excelsiors. Also, war is likely more than a year away- but might be less then 3-4 years away. Any ships we can refit now, it'd make sense to refit now rather than waiting.
So long as we have the cash, that sounds great to me. We get new hulls, tweak an existing ship to make her more competitive, and show the Council that our new shipbuilding complex over Mars wasn't just a boondoggle.
Ok, so the problem is that you don't understand how stats work in this game.
You'll have my vote... assuming there's a good reason to work on Yukikaze in a three-megaton berth, and I assume there is.
Being an improvement over current alternatives is a bare minimum to enter consideration at all. I wouldn't mind using this ship for a decade, but it's definitely not something I'd still want to build more of in 2330, even assuming a refit adding +1 to 2-3 stats. I also doubt science would be one of those 2-3 stats.
So what statline would YOU like for an intermediate between an Oberth and an Intrepid
