Super Refit

The Solar Federation is the only race that can upgrade the tech levels of old starships. A ship that is built with low-tech parts can later on be refitted with the best parts money can buy. The Super Refit mission must be set on a ship, and is not a starbase mission.

Super Refitting a ship
If a Federation ship sets it's mission to "Super Refit" and is at a Federation starbase for one turn, the chief engineer will remove the engines, beam weapons and torpedo launchers and place those parts in the base storage rooms. He will then go through the base storage and find the highest tech full sets of parts he can find to put on the ship. If no set of parts higher than the original set is found, the old parts are placed back on the ship's hull. If no full set of parts is found, no parts are put on the ship. If a ship with an incomplete set of parts (4 beams while the ship can mount 6 beams, for example) is set to Super Refit, the incomplete set will be removed from the ship. Then, if there is no full set of parts available at the base, no new parts will be put on the ship - the engineer will find the old set of parts, but because it is incomplete it will not be put on the ship. It is possible this way to strip an incomplete set of weapons (tubes or beams) off a ship and replace them with a full set of lower tech parts, or leave the ship without weapons. It's also possible complement the parts already at the ship by adding the amount of the same type needed to make it a full set.

It is possible to refit only the engines, only the beams or only the tubes of a ship, or even only beams and tubes but not the engines and so on. As long as the criteria stated above are met, the ship's parts will be refitted.

Super refit is performed in order of Ship ID, so if multiple ships at a base are set to superrefit the lowest ID ship will be refitted with the best parts available, then the next ship will be refitted with the best parts that are available then, and so on.

Since Super Refit is a ship mission, a ship needs fuel to be refitted. Refitting does not burn any fuel.

As can be deducted from the host order, refit happens before movement. It is possible to refit a ship and have it fly away in the same turn, fully armed with new weapons and high-tech engines. The ship can even be fully armed, as the Super Refit mission automatically loads torpedoes of the right type to the ship's cargoroom, if there are such torpedoes available ofcourse and if the ship has room in it's cargobays. Refit happens after cloning. It is possible to clone a ship and refit it in the same turn, resulting in one refitted ship and a cheap clone. After refitting, the clone can be used for further cloning ofcourse.

Example:
To Super Refit a Nova Class you have built without any weapons you need at least 10 beams of any type, at least 10 torpedo tubes of any type or at least 4 weapons of a better tech than the Nova's current engines on the starbase. Normal ship building takes place before the super refit, so if some other ship uses the refitting ship's parts before hand, the super refit will not take place and the ship will be left with no weapons and it's old engines, unless there was another set of 10 weapons or four engines available at the base.

If the Nova has 10 torp tubes and 10 beam before the super refit, it will have the same weapons afterwards if there was no full set of better parts on the starbase.