Talk:Blueprints/@comment-26435534-20150526083202/@comment-86.128.201.235-20150603150709

Ouch! Ok, to refit a ship: go to dock, find a ship you want to refit (it must be already in a fleet), and click on it. This gives you a sort of info page for that ship. At the bottom are 2 buttons, "Refit" and "Scrap". Press "refit". (NB: this used to not be available for the lowest-level hulls like marauders, now it can be done for ALL hulls)

You now get the shipyard window (assuming the shipyard isn't busy), except now instead of building a new ship, you're changing stuff on an existing ship. This is refitting. When you've made your changes, click "build". Adding items takes same amount of time as including them when you build the ship, and replacing existing items takes a bit longer. You dont HAVE to refit to use blueprints, you can use the blueprints when building soemthing from scratch, but if you want to change the equipment on a ship you already have, that's how you do it (and "I got a great new weapon blueprint" may be a good reason to do so)

As for using blueprints that you see in the intel lab: in the shipyard, when you get the dialogue box for selecting equipment to put on your ship (or for selecting a hull), there's 3 tabs at the top, for using researched items/hulls, or blueprints, or limited stuff. Click "blueprint" tab and you can use your blueprint equipment instead of cutlasses etc. Believe it or not, there are more powerful weapons than that available... Yes this also explains how you build the hulls you claim are nonexistent, although not how you get them in the first place! Raids, campaigns, and weekly mission will get you those hulls, if you work at it. At L50, you might want to ask your sector if someone over L60 wants to help you with raid "strike" campaign, as it'll give them relatively easy points for doing so whereas you might find it a smidge tricky on your own with only research hulls. You should also be able to do a tier or 2 of weekly mission with what you've got at least- find strongholds you can manage, and hit a bunch of them; unlike raids, you dont choose your prizes but many will be useful.

Hope this helps, good luck -Spangbeard