Bugs caused by ship models from previous games

from GalCiv2 Forums
I've seen some other posts about this, so I know this problem is affecting other people too. Why are old ship models from previous games leaking into a new game? Shouldn't ship models be completely encapsulated within the saved game file, and only make it into (a) computer memory while playing, and (b) temp files while playing? It seems pretty bizarre that I find a shared folder where new games will conflict with old ones:
\My Games\GalCiv2\ships

I have some habits (perhaps a bit compulsive) when naming ships, where I always use the same names, like "Colonizer I" and "Constructor I". I am continuously prompted to confirm if I want to overwrite an existing ship design, even though I am playing a new game. What does that do to the old game (if I tried to reload it)?

Is this problem under review to be fixed? It seems like a design flaw rather than a simple bug, so I'm hoping that we are just seeing a transition phase during development that will be addressed later.

This bug is my top complaint, because it is difficult to workaround while testing the game.
6,509 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Yea, it's definitely annoying and we're still working on it.  It's really annoying when you play as different races and see things showing up.  It's on "the list".
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Cool.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I disagree. I've got standard designs that I WANT to have show up as soon as I have the tech for them in every game, to remind me that better stuff is available. In fact, I've considered sitting down and designing various constructors/colony ships with varying speeds and range for various paths through the tech tree.

GC2 probably needs a seperate saved directory for each hull visual type in order to keep this functionality since different ship styles would make the ships incompatible (AHA! I'll be that's why those ship designs of mine were freaking out until I managed to get my custom race to stick to the Calmari hull designs!), and probably an option to not ask about overwriting a design if it's a design from a previous game. Would that work for you, ProudCanadian? Frogboy, what solutions are you working on? (just curious).
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I have some habits (perhaps a bit compulsive) when naming ships, where I always use the same names, like "Colonizer I" and "Constructor I". I am continuously prompted to confirm if I want to overwrite an existing ship design, even though I am playing a new game. What does that do to the old game (if I tried to reload it)?


I disagree. I've got standard designs that I WANT to have show up as soon as I have the tech for them in every game, to remind me that better stuff is available


Same for me: it would be pretty annoying to have redefining new colony ships with better engine at each game. But you should see the ships that are compatible with underlying the basic design. When you spend time to design a ship with lotrs of extra, it would be desastrous and defeat the whole idea of having shipyard with extras if you can't use your our custom ships in others games, as long as the hull shape is the same.

I guess we really need a "ship library manager", to be able to see the designs already made and that can be available.

I think we need to watch for:
- designing ships and be able to use them in more than one game
- be careful that upgrading and obseleting ships have a meaning only for your current game since it is linked with your technology state in your current game
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
BTW, there isn't any fun to redefine the same ship over and over in each game you are playing. It will even reduce the number of extras that will be used to defined them: Why to bother to make a cool looking ship if you can't use it in another game?
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
What I'm talking about is a bug. What you're asking for is a new feature that isn't implemented yet. It was stated months ago that there will be a feature for saving ship designs, it just isn't in the beta yet.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
The ship hulls and extras break down into 5 styles, so we only need to break them down that far, we don't need a seperate directory per race. However, I'm pretty sure the connection points and jewelry radically change between those 5 styles, so that's probably why some of my ship designs turned mutant when I used them in a later game.

Being able to pull up a design from another style and make it fit the current style would be nice, but I'm not sure the work would be worth the reward.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
a checkbox would be great whether to save the design to a global library of saved ships or to save it to the current save game only.

certain things like constructors and colony ship design translate well from one game to another, because you're only dealing with engine and life support tech advancements, whereas offensive and defensive ship designs are based more on the situation at hand: your current (engine/support/offense/defense) tech level/ production capacity vs. the AI tech level.

i've come up with a nomenclature similar to bmw, hahahahahah. i'll typically have two designs to choose from during aby given game. (k = constructor, c=colony ship)

k1 versus k3nr -- speed one with added range vs. speed 3 with no range
k7 vs k10nr -- same idea
k16 vs k4r23 -- speed 16 vs speed 4 with range 2.3 parsecs, for grabbing those resources in BFE.

these sorts of designs translate well from one game to the next while military designs do not.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, I think that are 2 things when considering a ship design:
- the things that cost something and are linked with your technology (sengine/support/offense/defense)
- the extra which translate generally into lots of time to have something looking good.

It might be very nice to be able to reuse ships that have only the extra allowing them to have "family" of similar ships.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
It might be very nice to be able to reuse ships that have only the extra allowing them to have "family" of similar ships.


That would be excellent. Its easy to drop your guns and components on, but it is time consuming to make the extras look good.