Ship design poll: I can't answer it

from Stardock Forums
My answer isn't a simple yes/no, and I really can't say that I don't know yet. MoO2/MoO3 style ship design will not work, and I'm not interested in making it work.

On the other hand, maybe having the options of different payloads or weapons selections would help diversify things more. Maybe take a dreadnought and cut down the weapons, but increase the shielding for something that is a better defensive ship for the late game. Or reduce ship stores (range) for an increase somewhere else.

Maybe even go so far as to diversify weapons and defenses so that different attacker/defender combinations result in combat effectiveness which isn't quite the straight line "X is better than Y in almost all cases" combat we see now.

Another idea might be to allow for ships that are faster but more expensive, etc. You could even go so far as to say that if you're mixing and matching too much, the maintenance of all your ships goes up due to lack of interchangeable parts. This way, each race might settle on what they consider to be their main ship type, and while there would be exceptions, you'd know that in a certain game, race X is pushing out a lot of cheap ships to get numerical superiority.

The ideas I've got aren't about actually designing a ship as much as influencing the goals of the design. While I'd expect StarDock to do a better than average job of the ship design AI, I've never seen an AI that designs ships as well as I do (once I'm used to the game). But making strategic decisions of what types of ships the AI wants to have available should be much more within the AIs grasp of the game mechanics.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah...it'd be better to have 'offensive', 'defensive' and different configurations like that...

Maybe even changable when the ship docks for different mission payloads (Ie. when somebody declares war on you and there's a juicy resource starbase nearby...)

Putting individual components on the ships ala Stars! or Starships Unlimited would really be different from GalCiv...

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
The combat system is too simple for ship design beeing senseful! So please leave it out!
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
The combat system is too simple for ship design beeing senseful! So please leave it out!
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That depends on how a ship design is realised.
Alpha Centauri has a similar combat system, but still you can construct your own vehicles.
A complex ship construction like in Stars! or MOO2 would not fit into Galciv, but a simple design system where you can customize the given ship parameters(attack, defense, speed,...) would be a good enhancement.
I also like the idea to give my ships special abilities or modules - for example, the still useless cloaking tech comes in my mind...

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
#3 by Citizen AIL.ST - 7/10/2003 1:54:13 AM The combat system is too simple for ship design beeing senseful! So please leave it out!
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ever play "spaceward ho!"? you had fairly simple space combat and simple ship design. you just adjusted the speed, range, def, offense, and other. the cost of the ship would go up and down depending on how you pioritized. simple fun. or just choose the default.

i also read that the cost per ship would go down the more you made, but i never remembered or paid attention to that.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
There are many now useless techs that could easily be implemented. As Galaxor said cloaking is one, Star Creation is another....
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Some simple ship design options I think would add value, but as other shave pointed out lets not go overboard and bog the game down.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm against it.

If people feel the current ships don't offer enough variety, then Stardock should just add a few more ships to the game to fill whatever gap is currently missing.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
In Gal Civ, you are already researching techs (and spending bc) to get +10% offense, defense, speed, range, etc, etc. You are also researching techs to get you to a newer class of ship (corvette -> battleship, transport -> combat transport etc, etc) to which these other bonuses are added. I'm not sure what other "customizing" is being envisioned but to me it does not seem like it would work in the current framework of the game.

The additional ship topic has been discussed before and I think is valid. How about a ship that travels in a fleet that is a "sensor" ship, lighty armoured but fast with range? Or ships with ranged attack? Or ships that tell you the winning Powerball number?
:)
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Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
It seems i'm outgunned here :)
I think ship design would be great. But not MOO style. I think something like Alpha centauri would be excelent. You would have the alternative to build the kind of ship you wanted and have the resources needed to build it increase. For example, if you want to make a strong defensive ship, it will be cheaper than a ship with a strong defense and strong atack. Then you can adjust the ships to your desires and not limit yourself to the ship desin. Of course you could have automatic models made out for you if you don't want to deal with it (like in Alpha Centaury), but having the choice to do it... i cannot see anyone resist it for long. Can you resist having a megaultraextrasuperubership? Even if it bogs down one of your planets for ages? :)
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I like the way the ships are currently in GalCiv. It reminds me of Civ which I liked quite a bit also. Having more isn't always better. SMAC did do a good job with customizing the military units with modules, but implementing that in GalCiv might not work quite as good.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
I like the idea of designing your ships. Nothing too complicated though.

What I would like to see though is some change in how battles work. It feels like the only purpose is to build the biggest ship around, when you have the tech for that there is no reason (unless I guess you are pacifist and in dire need of money) to build smaller cheaper ships. Or did I miss something?


~SDC~
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
It's odd that I keep seeing people mention SMAC as a good example of 'simple' ship design. It's been too long since I played to remember exact figures, but the combinatorics of that 'simple' ship design system ran into thousands upon thousands of possible unit designs and the AI fell apart completely because out of multiple thousands there were really only a handful of combos worth building. That is the downfall of any ship design system: there are always much more optimal paths and unless the AI is set to pursue those optimal paths, it just gets slaughtered by humans who figure out how to min-max any such system. We've already got that in the game in the form of the Phoenix which the AI builds by the ton lot in the late game at a total loss of resources and maintenance.

To me, ship design is largely pointless because after a short period of experimentation I will figure out what the best ships are and only build those. For the AI, one of two things will happen, either the metaverse data will be used to get the AI building the same ships the good players are, or it will be outgunned. In the first of those two, all the effort to implement ship design is effectively wasted, in the second, it ruins the game.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmm, I can´t imagine a more simple ship design system than offered with Spaceward Ho! or AC. The huge number of unit variants in AC even without doing modifications made it difficult to overlook, but it didn´t ruin the AI or the game...however I do remember inventing an almost invincible Psi-Air-Marine-Amphibious-Graviton-Flak-Particle-Chaos-Infantry ;)



Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
I remember AC. The choppers were way overpowered. I fitted them with the most powerful weapon and speed bonuses and no armor.

You could produce one, send it on a killing spree and let it crash and it would be well worth your money. In fact, most of the time it was better to just let it attack until it couldn't attack anymore and crash than to send it back to base for repairs.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Gengsta, I agree, except that since you couldn't capture enemy cities with them, I didn't care for them. I used gravships usually, and until I got them, needlejets and drop-capable mobile or hovertank units to capture (and raze) enemy cities.
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
If the decision is made to allow for custom ship designs, I hope that they will allow us to save our designs in a file for future use. This way, the custom ship designs could be re-used whenever you start a new game and it would become available automatically whenever all the neccessary techs were researched. People could also share their designs with others. :d

By making them re-usable, we could have custom designs, and it wouldn't slow down the game at all! :HOT:
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Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
I would like AI improvements rather than customs ships design. I also remember Warzone 2100 which was a RTS. I could customs thousands of troops but at the end I mostly just use the latest tech and strongest armor ,etc. Gal Civ custom part is in the starbases not in the ships themselves. It wouldnt hurt to have a few more ships to feel in the gaps though. So i vote for more ships than customs ones. Custom ships sound good but in the end it doesnt improve the game enough for the trouble. I notice the newer RTS didnt follow Warzone 2100 idea either.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
If the ai can't handle it, don't do it. And ship design lends itself to abuse easily.
I think it wouldn't offer much, since there aren't many special abilities.
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
i liked the ship designe in SE3, but i think its too late add it into GalCiv. the research tree would have to be re-done, the AI would have to be modified, and the userinterface would also have to be redone to accomidate ship customization. for a future GalCiv2, it would be more appropriate to add it on, but not for this one, it would require an enormous amount of work.
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
I would rather have the time spent on implementing stronger AI.
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
In my opinion, one of GalCiv's strengths is the complete lack of an in-game ship design system. It keeps the AI in the game and speeds play. bruinb77 makes a good point with the comparison to Civ, although GalCiv needs a better selection to round out the progression. (e.g. Civ's Phalanx defended at a 2, Musketeer def 3, Rifleman def. 5, Mechanized Inf. somewhere past that...)

If the decision is made to allow for custom ship designs, I hope that they will allow us to save our designs in a file for future use. This way, the custom ship designs could be re-used whenever you start a new game and it would become available automatically whenever all the neccessary techs were researched. People could also share their designs with others.
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Actually, I'm pretty sure that these tools are already available in the GC Mods section, IF one is willing to commit the time and effort to:

- Designing graphics
- Putting together numbers that are both useful and don't upset the game balance
- Making sure that coded AI tech progressions are either updated with the new prerequisite, or just not having a new tech as a requirement, to make sure that they can build the darn thing
- Figuring out a simple installer so that others can easily make use of the design without copying individual files into 93 subdirectories (poetic exaggeration)
- Playtesting to make sure that it works...

I think CDG's website has a couple of ships available - all unofficial of course.

Which brings me to my point. This is quite possibly a way for Stardock to keep interest in GalCiv alive for awhile. Most PC games have a playability life of a few months, tops, although we'll dust off the old favorites from time to time.

The glaring exception here is The Sims (ugh), which keeps popping out expansion packs with new features - and every one of 'em has "the best" player-created skins, objects, etc. This promotes the idea of a fan-driven community, as well as personal bragging rights - if something YOU created is in an expansion, you're definitely going to shell out another $30 just to get a copy. And tell your friends to do the same.

Stardock, if they're interested in prolonging the marketability of GalCiv, could do something similar. Introduce a series of expansion packs with new game features at 6-month intervals or so, each including the best half-dozen or so user-designed ships.

Apologize for the windiness. 'Nuff said.