Suggestion Regarding the Ship Designer

I've logged more hours than I care to admit on the ship designer in GalCiv II, and enough in GalCiv III to know the similarities/differences. Something that really bothers me is that every time I develop a new technology, I have to go through all my custom ships, trying to remember which uses what, and update them, marking older versions as obsolete. Worse, the next time I play I might take a different approach to research; in one game I may have a hyperwarp drive and photon torpedoes, but in the next I may spend time on armor instead of engines. Thus, the ship I built in my previous game with hyperwarp and photon torpedoes is no longer available because I do not have all the same techs. My options are to do research exactly the same way every game, or to flood my list with a hundred odd ships that are almost identical.

What I would like to see is a generic 'slot' option for each component. Instead of designing a ship with warp drive and stingers, then upgrading it later to hyperwarp and photon torpedos, I'd like to design it with an "Engine" and a "Missile Weapon" on those hardpoints. Each time I develop a new tech in one of these areas, my design "Ship M<n>" becomes "Ship M<n+1>", which has the new technology. This would save me quite a lot of time and headache, without taking away any of my control. Thank you, Stardock, for reading and for making a fantastic game.

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Well, that would be really great. Upgrading your high tech fleet takes otherwise HOURS...

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If you make your design a template you can access the design in subsequent games regardless of what research paths you choose.

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But at some point, even that isn't enough. Not having to go through the designer to choose a template and then put all weapons back where they belong (It's impossible to remember all the time), but instead having a new ship version with all the lasers replaced by particle guns (when it's possible, the particle gun requires more mass than the laser, so when you first discover it, you may get the issue of getting 5 particle guns for 6 lasers), is a much easier and user friendly thing.

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Quoting The Sisko,

reply 2

If you make your design a template you can access the design in subsequent games regardless of what research paths you choose.

That's helpful, but it doesn't solve my problem. I still have to upgrade the darn thing every time I get new techs.

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I was thinking the same idea as well. Gets annoying having to "build upgraded designs". It's already been demonstrated in the game that there is a way to do it with all of the default designs.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

There needs to be more flexibility in designing ships. In GalCiv 2, I too have spent many many hours just editing my designs to use the latest techs. It came to be huge relief when the AI ship designer was released for the TA expansion so that the game designed ships for you. Long before that, I had switched to a system where I would choose to research multiple ship parts before updating my ship designs. It was too time consuming for me to make an update for every new ship part I got.

Of course, the AI ship designer for GalCiv 2 didn't have the best interface for controlling it. You could pick the balance of weapons and the balance of defenses, but you could not pick what percent of the ship was weapons, defenses, sensors, engines, life support, etc. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it couldn't use atlas modules or fleet warp bubbles, and didn't use much HP boosting modules. Also, certain designs didn't update, like constructors or survey ships.

GalCiv 3 is a little better off where it can design a larger variety of ships designs for you, every hull size gets at least 1 combat ship per weapon type, as well as a number of utility ships that had little to do with combat, and now we get designed carriers. The down side is that you no longer got to choose the balance between weapons and balance between defenses.

The real kicker is the designs for the GalCiv 3 ships are stored in text files. It literally says what part types are required before the game will even consider designing them. It also says what part types to add if you have room beyond the minimum. It even has a list of stuff to add as filler if you still have room to fill (like just add more guns or life support). The only thing preventing you from designing blueprints that the AI ship designer can use is that the game isn't designed to make such edits.

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