First, I am not really sure how the hangar is supposed to work. I tried to store my Starmaster, it said "current ship: Starmaster, stored ship: Starmaster". My confusion, I hope, is easy to understand: I only have one ship; either it is stored, or I "have" it.
Anyway, I went to the shipyard, to exchange it for a Talon. This was because I was going to swap the Talon for a military frame.
However, when I selected the Talon, the top of the screen showed that I'd be getting back several millions in exchange (because I was swapping a much more expensive frame, a Starmaster, for a Talon). Ok, but I thought I was _not_ selling my current frame? If I wanted to sell it, I wouldn't have stored it, would I?...
Anyway, in the end I said, ok, forget about all this, let's see how it works, so I took my Starmaster (after emptying its cargo bays) to the carrier. There, I chose the Ferret (mil rank 0 currently, so that's the only thing I can get), and I got an error message saying "Assembly points remaining -20", or something along similar lines. Ok, I thought, presumably the Starmaster has more assembly points than the Ferret...I then brought all my equipment down to level 1 (Engines, Shields, etc), but it made no difference. In the end, I was not able to swap my Starmaster for a Ferret, no matter what I tried. Every time I clicked on the Trade button, I'd just get the same error message as above.
If anybody can shed some light on what I was doing wrong, I'd be grateful
Also, another question: I've paid attention to the impact some missiles have during combat. I've had cases where the 8 Excals made 4-5 "impact noises", but the enemy ship did not get destroyed.
Let's do a little math: biggest shield is 1000 or 1500, can't recall precisely. Add 250 for the Boosters. So that's 1750. Biggest hull armor is 385, and these were civvy ships, but let's say 400.
So, just looking at the raw numbers, 4 Excals should be more than enough, but this was definitely not the case more times than it was (basically, for bigger frames, an Excal salvo almost never kills them).
One possibility is that the AI may have access to other eq (better shields/armor), which would not be a problem, I would just like to understand what exactly is going on.
Ok, I know you'll say: "well, the Excals do have 800 nominal damage, but that damage does not apply to shields 100%, only a fraction of it". Sure, I thought of that, too. But then I looked at what was happening with the enemy ship _after_ the shield (usually front) went down. With the front shield all the way down (from the first few missiles), the next _two_ missiles that hit still did not destroy the ship. Again, this happened several times. The ship went yellow after the first one, and red after the second, but it did not die.
So, even accepting that missiles do not have full impact on shields (similar to particle vs. lasers against shields), one _would_ expect them to have full impact on armor, right? How can two Excals, with 800 damage each, not destroy a ship that has some 400 or less armor? I must be missing something here, obviously, but what is it?
And before you say it, I was paying attention and those missiles that hit _after_ the front shield was down, did not hit the other shields (which remained green, suggesting they were not hit), but the hull did get damaged (the bottom horizontal bar on the enemy monitor showed taking damage), so the last two missiles must have hit the armor, and not another section of the ship that was still protected by shields.
So, again, I'm a bit confused as to why the numbers don't seem to add up...what am I missing here?
Thanks in advance, and sorry for rambling so
I've always wondered how guys can manage to talley up effects of a string of missiles as they strike one ship while being surrounded by a dozen or more other hostiles. Especially since you'd probably need to also count the number of flares (or, at least, note whether or not the missiles actually hit the target ... which is not always the case, considering how well the CMs function) the target deployed in an effort to defeat those missiles.
Anyway, onward to military ships. They come pre-outfitted. A screenshot would help in determining why you received the warning about insufficient assembly points. Or a list of equipment installed on the Starmaster.
), it is much safer than staying close to the pack long enough, so I'm really never surrounded by them except when I'm flying through at 1800+ kps. 
It was probably the hard points. The entry level military ship doesn't have 8 hard points.