Any Tips on using Different Designs with the Same Role?

[edpovi]

I wanted to make a specialized ship design (in this case a Frigate with Assault Pods to capture ships with advanced tech).
So I Added a new Frigate design, and built a few of ships and formed a fleet with them.
It worked relatively well in that I managed to capture a few pirate ships with the fleet.

But, then I noticed that my other ships were refitting themselves to this sub-optimal design, seemingly because it was the "latest design".

Is there a way to create a specialized design you only want a few ships to use, without other ships refitting themselves to that design?

Thanks,
-Ed

[Ranbir]

You'll have to turn off automated refits.

That way you can make sure you build all the different active designs you want and keep them that way.

[FlashXAron_slith]

Shoukd work when you change all settings to manual in the ship designer for that type, but sometimes, when you change anything in any of that design types (like scouts) it changes that settings back sometimes, so you have to be always careful.

Also the AI couldn't handle that, so he will use all the scouts the same ...

I gave up as it is enough to fight that your found high tech ships don''t change to crap ...

so I have a lot of such found ships in my roster.

Since DW1 we would dream of a LOCK THAT DESIGN "BUTTON" in the ship designer

[OrnluWolfjarl]

In the Design screen (where you see a list of designs) set Retrofit to Manual for your design. Make sure that the normal Frigate design has not been marked Obsolete (go to Active Buildable Designs, or to All Designs if you don't see it in the default list). That will prevent automated ships from using your custom frigate to retrofit.

However, the game will still consider your suboptimal frigates to be the latest design, so when you want to retrofit, you will need to retrofit each frigate in your armada separately, to choose the proper design. There are ways around this, but they also require micromanagement.

[edpovi]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try these out.

Maybe another item for the "wish list" is the ability to create a "Custom Role" , this way you can have "Frigate" as standard, but you can create a new role called what you like. In my case, maybe I'd name the new role "Assault FR", and the AI would consider them totally different types.

Then maybe, it would be extra nice if we can specify required components. For example mark the "assault pod" as required, this way when the AI upgrades the design, it will know the design must have that component.

-Ed

[StormingKiwi]

Maybe another item for the "wish list" is the ability to create a "Custom Role" , this way you can have "Frigate" as standard, but you can create a new role called what you like. In my case, maybe I'd name the new role "Assault FR", and the AI would consider them totally different types.

I think this is the best way to handle it too.

How I think this should be implemented is to have each ship be given a custom role, and then you specify the behaviour that role should follow.

Not just limited to attack stance etc. but also what missions the role should pick up. So for example, I want my assault frigates to be in fleets, my patrol frigates to be outside of fleets on guard missions, and my heavy frigates to be mixed between fleets and guard missions. I don't want any of them to be doing escort missions, I want my dedicated escorts to be doing that.

[100thMonkey]

What StormingKiwi mentionned is the ultimate solution for using different designs with the same hull/role. And I REALLY hope that it will be implemented in the game (of all the things that I'd like to be improved in DW2, and there are many, this is by far the most important for me).

In the meantime, here's how I go about using multiple designs for a hull-role. It involves some micro-management, but it doesn't require to retrofit ships manually.

Like edpovi, I've designed 2 different frigates: one "normal" and one to capture (but contrary to edpovi, I'm more interested in capturing stations, particularly caslon stations; that helps immensely when attacking other empires ).

So I created a template for the "Capture Fleets". And in it, for the "Frigate Role", I specified the design that I made for capture (instead of "Lastest Design for Role"). I left the templates using the default frigate design as they were (ie: using "Lastest Design for Role").

After that, and this is key, when I want to upgrade these two designs, I always upgrade and/or modify the capture frigate design FIRST. And only after that do I upgrade/modify the default frigate design. Lastly, I change the capture fleet template to make it use the new capture design.

That way:

- frigates using the default design will automatically retrofit to the latest default frigate design
- fleets using the default frigate design will automatically retrofit to the latest default frigate design
- fleets using the capture template will automatically retrofit to the upgraded capture frigate design.

Voilà!

It's not a perfect solution though. First, there's still some micromanagement involved (order of the designs upgrades, editing the capture fleet template every time the capture design is modified). Also, it wouldn't work if I had out-of-fleet capture frigates (these would upgrade to the latest default frigate design). But I don't use those, because I don't want to retrofit ships manually.

Hope that helps.

[Emperor0Akim]

Maybe another item for the "wish list" is the ability to create a "Custom Role" , this way you can have "Frigate" as standard, but you can create a new role called what you like. In my case, maybe I'd name the new role "Assault FR", and the AI would consider them totally different types.

I think this is the best way to handle it too.

How I think this should be implemented is to have each ship be given a custom role, and then you specify the behaviour that role should follow.

Not just limited to attack stance etc. but also what missions the role should pick up. So for example, I want my assault frigates to be in fleets, my patrol frigates to be outside of fleets on guard missions, and my heavy frigates to be mixed between fleets and guard missions. I don't want any of them to be doing escort missions, I want my dedicated escorts to be doing that.

Yup, this is on my wishlist and regular Suggestions as well.

[Wenla]

In the Design screen (where you see a list of designs) set Retrofit to Manual for your design. Make sure that the normal Frigate design has not been marked Obsolete (go to Active Buildable Designs, or to All Designs if you don't see it in the default list). That will prevent automated ships from using your custom frigate to retrofit.

However, the game will still consider your suboptimal frigates to be the latest design, so when you want to retrofit, you will need to retrofit each frigate in your armada separately, to choose the proper design. There are ways around this, but they also require micromanagement.

Thank you for this information, very helpful. I was fighting with this issue also and was frustrated because I couldn't get it work.

[Wenla]

Grrrrr... I was too hasty. I have start from the beginning.

I have researched Advanced Frigate (IIRC name) and got three different types of frigate: heavy, fast and fleet. I like to use heavy only.
- I do "Add design" and pick "Heavy Frigate"
- I retrofit all frigates as "Heavy Frigate"
- I set old "Frigate" design as "Obsolete" so that only "Heavy" stays "Active"

I assume that this is correct way to implement what I want, bur after next research there is NO Heavy Frigate as "Active", but two Frigate designs, Frigate X (old 'small' frigate) and just Frigate which is 'new' frigate but "Fast Frigate" - design. Heavy frigate is located to "All designs" column and marked as "Obsolete".

After that I have tried several methods to get done what I want, like:
- I deleted ALL frigate designs except "Heavy Frigate" from column "All designs" and checked that those don't exist anywhere. Result: after next research "Heavy" design set Obsolete and 'new', wrong (fast) active
- I set both 'wrong' and 'heavy' designs to "Active" state and "Manual" retrofit state hoping that if both stays Active-list as upgraded I could retrofit "Heavy"-ships manually. Result: as above

Currently only way get what I want is:
1) manually pick Heavy Frigate
2) manually make design changes
3) manually retrofit ships

and repeat this after next time when you like to upgrade your frigates (and other 'wrong-type-designed' ship classes/sizes).

So, what I do wrong? Please help me before I get nuts...

[Emperor0Akim]

In the Empire Settings turn off Automatic Ship Design.

I wrote in more detail over here.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1&t=381972

[AKicebear]

Set the old design to both manual and obsolete. If it is still set to automatic it will make a new design eventually that is not obsolete.

[MichaelJ007]

The core problem is the Fleet Template.

If the Fleet Template would allow to add/remove multiple designs per hull, it would all be taken care of.

I easily have two or three ship designs for the same hull, e.g, beam destroyers, missile destroyers, carrier destroyers. But you cannot have two different designs in the same fleet, because the moment the fleet retrofits it will retrofit all destroyers to the design specified in the template. You can however have two fleet templates with different design combos specified, and the retrofit will respect the template.

[AKicebear]

Yes, I agree its a big problem - but not easy to get around for now. Until the mechanic is improved, I'm using only one design per role.

My hope is eventually upgrades/refits will be along a design name, not a role name - e.g. "Heavy Escort v2" from "Heavy Escort v1" rather than "Escort v10" etc etc. This would be more flexible than limiting it to just by hull type - e.g. what if I want 2 designs using the heavy escort type.

[Wenla]

Still lot of to learn.

Setting Autodesign and Retrofit as Manual is just enough to getting not optimal but suitable result. Some manual work with each upgrade, but I can live with that.

Thanks everybody for information and being patient with me!

[Mercbeast]

What would be a fantastic QOL addition, would be the ability to set ships to only retrofit in-line with the current templates upgrade path. As one of the posters was highlighting, he was having issues with his boarding frigates upgrading into a generic template, until he set the fleet template to only use the boarding frigate, and then learned he'd have to re-upgrade the generic template after each upgrade of the boarding frigate.

However, it would be great if there was a tick box or something for the ship to only retrofit to the upgraded version of whatever their current design is. In the ship editor screen where you can set ships to obsolete etc, if there was another box that said "retrofit to latest design" or "retrofit to upgraded design". That'd be awesome. Something that achieved that basic outcome.