Building ships with refits

[nick]

So, having played the game multiple times I have a question over building ships.

Is there anyway to build a ship using one of the refitted designs rather than always going back to the base design and then running that through the refit?

I know fire control will prompt to update and it creates a refit for that but I often have a gun upgrade as well and it would be good to build that rather than creating another class from scratch. I understand that I might miss out on some minor improvements but it's simple then to not have to manage lots of designs.

Ta
Nick

[tbr]

In RTW2 there are more "hidden" factors, such as armor quality, than those in RTW (e.g. improved turrets) which only apply to your ships with a new design. A design should not be used for more than about half a year to , at most, a full year for newbuilds. Better to pay and wait for the the design completion and get the latest armor quality and machinery weight improvements.

[aeson]

If you right-click on a ship and select 'open design' rather than 'open design for rebuild,' you can create a design based off the existing design which will get a discounted design study if the 'new' design remains close enough to the old design. Main battery gun quality, secondary gun caliber and quality, AA armament, and fire control tend to be things that you can change while keeping a 90% discount on new design cost, the design study will probably only need a month to complete, and the 'new' design gets whatever improvements you've made to the 'hidden' attributes that you'd get with a new design and won't get using the old.

Regardless, if you want to make refit designs buildable, then go to Rule the Waves 2\Save\Game# and find [Ship class name] ([refit year]).#0d, where # is replaced by the Arabic numeral corresponding to the save slot you used for the game. Open the file with a text editor such as NotePad or NotePad++, find the line Ready=0, change it to Ready=1, and save the file. You should now be able to build ships to that refit design, though you may need to re-load the game first.

[ulzgoroth]

Yeah, making a 'new' design that's based on the refit is the way to go. Cheap and fast and lets you use all your latest technology.