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Anyone think they should be redisigned somehow similar to carriers? Carrier could be bigger then your ship-size tech level by 50% but must consist 40% of fighters bays. Or let say designating ship as frigate give him 20% sublight speed bonus, while same design but designated as cruiser - 20% to shield str. Battleship - twice as big but 3 times expensive both in build cost and maintance.

My point - i wish to build all ship types with my current tech levels, and wish they benefit from their role. Carrier - good example of such mechanic.

ORIGINAL: new_bee

Anyone think they should be redisigned somehow similar to carriers? Carrier could be bigger then your ship-size tech level by 50% but must consist 40% of fighters bays. Or let say designating ship as frigate give him 20% sublight speed bonus, while same design but designated as cruiser - 20% to shield str. Battleship - twice as big but 3 times expensive both in build cost and maintance.

My point - i wish to build all ship types with my current tech levels, and wish they benefit from their role. Carrier - good example of such mechanic.

This idea has some merit. I generally only start using Carriers and Cruisers at the 300 space lvl and Battlehips at the next build level. I does seem that ships built with a specific role should get the advantages and detriments of the role (ship speed for the smaller ships for example).

Indeed. In mean time I use my own role bonuses.  Like frigates are my first defensive ships, max space / current tech and no troops bays, while destroyers are similar but with troop bays.  Escorts are always smaller and faster, and I dont fleet them, so they escort.  

ORIGINAL: new_bee
My point - i wish to build all ship types with my current tech levels, and wish they benefit from their role. Carrier - good example of such mechanic.

I'm totally against this.
I really don't see, why some people want more emphasized ship roles. The role is just a guideline for the AI. In my opinion introducing dedicated ship types and roles is not adding something to the game, but is REMOVING something.
What benefit do you get by restricting the player to design certain ship types with strict constrains? (and giving a "role bonus" is also some sort of constrain)
There is no need for role bonuses and dedicated ship types. You can design them freely. No one forces you to design always ships with maximum size. You want fast light frigates? Go for it! Want a battleship? Do it - it will have 3 times higher maintainance easily.
My point is: you can do all this fancy fleet role ship type stuff without actually hardcoding them into the game. Just design the ships in a way you like them to work and they will do their job accordingly. With the benefit that in the way it is now you have all freedom to create any kind of weird ship types without resrictions.

Agreed with Sylian. I very much like the freedom that ship designer gives the player.
The only way I think the restrictions could work would be to add optional side-role researches on different research trees. Kinda like the current carriers. For a simple example, missile boat designs could be bigger but could only be fitted with missile weapons and would need to have X% of their size fitted with engines.

The only thing that currently need enhancing are the AI designs that don't take full advantage of all the components and size limitations. I know there's some RPing aspects on AI designs but they still could be better in many cases.
We'll see what the next patch is gonna bring.

I agree with Sylian to, and for the reasons he states. I wouldn't want to have ship designs limited to 20th Century naval analogues.

I'll add my voice to Sylian.

I would like to create my own "classes" actually.
I just hate the current system! When the AI overrides your design! Yet you must tell him to retrofit automatically unless you want the micro all your bases and fleets.

In my dreams i design a specialized "carrier", full of fighter bays. Slow as hell with almost no firepower and full of troops as well! And i would create it as a class of its own!
Separate form the default-capital-ship. So that the AI wont "update" it all the time.
Separate so i can easily construct them without having to flick over the ship design, considering it docent go completely obsolete because the damn AI says so.

Current system really bugs me, not once i ordered the wrong type of ship to be built because i wasn't paying attention.

Hope you get my drift...

I too agree with Sylian. I like to design ships for specific roles within ship classes: eg. PD Frigates, Torpedo Frigates, etc.

Unfortunately the current design screen is not well suited for this. It assumes there is only one type of Cruiser and one type of Destroyer, etc. Multiples of each class can be done manually but they're not easy to keep updated.

And as soon as you enable auto-ship design/upgrade: "poof" goes your multiples in each class.

ORIGINAL: Sylian


I'm totally against this.
I really don't see, why some people want more emphasized ship roles. The role is just a guideline for the AI. In my opinion introducing dedicated ship types and roles is not adding something to the game, but is REMOVING something.

So what exactly AI does when it see my cruiser and battleship? And i believe you against dedicated carriers?

ORIGINAL: Sylian
You want fast light frigates? Go for it! Want a battleship? Do it - it will have 3 times higher maintainance easily.

I'm start to play with tech level sets to starting. I'm really cannot design anything bigger than a destroyer. Ok let say i design a ship with hull size 300 and name it a BattleShip. 10 maxos blaster 1 concussion missile 6 corvidan shields and a cruise speed 20. pretty good. But how i should design my destroyer? It should be smaller faster, ok i remove 3 shield and 7 blaster - size 235 c.speed - 26 much less firepower and shields but 30% faster. Now where to put frigates and cruisers? Even smaller frigates? I don't want to put 1 reactor on them cuz it slow down my hyper speed. Cruiser inbetween of destroyer-battleship, what so special?

My approach: i'm name forementioned 10-laser ship as destroyer. then remove those lasers and place 1 fighter-bay - now it's my cruiser, serving a role of escort carrier. Now im discover tech that allow dedicated carriers, set those cruiser as carrier... WOW i can add another 3 F.bays! Now it like my 4 cruiser-carrier in firepower, and without such invention i cannot build a ship with 4 fighterbays, cuz it size 4x50=200 and with max hull 300 - there is no space for reactors, engines etc.

if you liked those dedicated carriers, why you against a bonuses for every ship type?

I think smaller ships should at least get a defence bonus. It should be much harder to hit a small ship vs a giant capital ship.

Space Empires did this fairly well.  Different hull types had different bonus's for attack, defense, cost, whatever.   Overall the Distant Worlds design works pretty good, although I find artificial size limits rather...unrealistic.  A neat way to do it is would be to have the hull costs act like multipliers.

Say average sized early tech ship (size 300) has a hull cost factor of 1.  Lets say your ship costs 5000 credits.  5000 X 1 = 5000
A larger, early tech ship (size 400) has a hull cost factor of 1.5.  5000 X 1.5 = 7500, until you research some tech to bring it down to 1.2 or something.

ORIGINAL: jalapen0

I think smaller ships should at least get a defence bonus. It should be much harder to hit a small ship vs a giant capital ship.

Why on earth do you assume that is not already the case? Have the developers stated otherwise?

ORIGINAL: new_bee

So what exactly AI does when it see my cruiser and battleship? And i believe you against dedicated carriers?

Yes i'm against dedicated carriers. I don't see what they add to the game. I could make ships with lots of fighter bays before, without now have to have 40% or so fighter bays.

ORIGINAL: new_bee

I'm start to play with tech level sets to starting. I'm really cannot design anything bigger than a destroyer. Ok let say i design a ship with hull size 300 and name it a BattleShip. 10 maxos blaster 1 concussion missile 6 corvidan shields and a cruise speed 20. pretty good. But how i should design my destroyer? It should be smaller faster, ok i remove 3 shield and 7 blaster - size 235 c.speed - 26 much less firepower and shields but 30% faster. Now where to put frigates and cruisers? Even smaller frigates? I don't want to put 1 reactor on them cuz it slow down my hyper speed. Cruiser inbetween of destroyer-battleship, what so special?

I don't know what's your point. If you think your destroyer design doesn't look like what you want it to be then don't use it. Maybe if you do not have the tech to design bigger ships you're not meant to use them. Its not like any crappy little space empire can build and support a fleet with battleships. Or do you see every little coastal land in the world building aircraft carriers and destroyers? If you absolutely have to have every ship type in your fleet from the beginning then name your little nutshell a capital ship, i don't care.

I stick to my point: fixed roles add nothing, they remove freedom.

How the AI handles designing and controlling ships is a completely different matter. I agree that there has to be some improvement.

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

ORIGINAL: jalapen0

I think smaller ships should at least get a defence bonus. It should be much harder to hit a small ship vs a giant capital ship.

Why on earth do you assume that is not already the case? Have the developers stated otherwise?

Why on earth do you think it is?

Yes i'm against dedicated carriers. I don't see what they add to the game. I could make ships with lots of fighter bays before, without now have to have 40% or so fighter bays.

Exactly. The only reason I like dedicated carriers is that that they add a separate ship class to the game. This means they can can have their own graphic and their own category in the ships list making them easier to find. They make it easier to build carriers since you don't have to scroll through the drop-down list searching for the "fighter bay enhanced" cruiser or cap ship design to build.

Hopefully the upgraded ship design mechanics in the next release will allow this for all the different ships classes, including a different ship graphic for each (?) (if you want, of course)

ORIGINAL: Howard Mitchell

I agree with Sylian to, and for the reasons he states. I wouldn't want to have ship designs limited to 20th Century naval analogues.

And actually those naval classifications from the 20th century depend on the country that is classifying the ship. Some go by displacement (size in DW terms) while others go by function (role) in DW terms. A good example where this is shown in real life was the case of the UK where a frigate (sub hunter) might very well be larger than a destroyer (air defense). The US system would go by size where a destroyer displaces more than a frigate.

I like it just like it is in DW...using the function system independent of the actual size of the ship.

The problem of Ship Design in 4x games are always the same. People tend to maxed their ship size to the design limit. That's because design feature always favor to the bigger ships, instead of balancing both big and small one. The example of these are :

1. The more weapons you put on a ship, the deadlier your ship will be
2. The more shield or armor you put on the ship, is also making your ship unbeatable.
3. Weapons can fire 360 degree around the ship

These two reason are the reason why we always favor cruiser to small frigate, and battleship to other design. With these rules, Death Star that have 1000 size will automatically able to beat frigates that have 200 size. There is no drawback for the Death Star because of it's huge size.

So how to solve these problems?

So how to solve these problems?

By Newtonian physics

The relation of force and mass defines the velocity.

a = f/m; v = x/t

A quantification for the mass solves the problem.

The game simulates inertia (by giving components being placed on a ship a "weight" which effects on the speed of the ship can reach).

The problem of the "hullsizes" has insofar already been solved. [;)]

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So how to solve these problems?

By making big ships hugely expensive to build, operate and maintain....just like in real life.

The fix is rather easy actually.

You cap each ship roles size, then make each successive size ship exponentially more expensive.

So if we compare a frigate to a cruiser:

Frigate is size 230 at cost factor x 2, where a Cruiser could be size factor 920 at cost factor x 8. That way the cruiser is 4 times as powerful, but at 8 times the cost...you'd still want to build a few to counter larger enemy ships, but you'd also build a lot more frigates due to their lower cost.