Designing ships...

[Ignus]

... is really frustrating.

I like playing with the ship designer, it's flexible and fun. However, I find it almost impossible to keep track of my designs after a while.

Now, I'm not doing anything crazy but I like to have two of each combat ship: one with fancy weaponry and one budget laser-boat style thing. The problem here is that only the latest one shows up on the list unless I uncheck the little box up top. Not a huge issue, granted, but tedious after upgrading a few ships. I thought a good way to get around this little problem was to use the "Upgrade" button, which as far as I could tell just updated the equipment and added a number to the end (did the patch fix these being almost entirely random? They seem to be sequential now), all well and good unless you upgrade two Destroyers, for example. In this case they get upgraded but renamed to be the same. Grr!

So I got tired of upgrading by hand and assumed the AI would be neater. Unfortunately it spammed some more versions of the ships and removed the names from all my Space Stations. Boo!

Also, why can't I edit ship designs? It seems odd that I have to make a clone of it and remove the old one.

Has anyone else had problems with these issues, or am I just being dense and missing something obvious? If so, what should I be doing?

(Note, though I sound negative this is the only issue I've had with this game )

[Nemo84]

I agree, it can get really impossible to manage multiple designs of the same class. I think what the game needs instead of the "show latest only" checkbox is a "show obsolete" checkbox. Default view gives all currently active, buildable ship designs, with the "show obsolete" checked the game will also add all designs the player deemed obsolete but haven't been deleted.

Two more issues with this:

- The checkbox really needs to stick. It's incredibly annoying that I have to uncheck the "show latest only" box again and again every single time I modify a design.
- The ship designer needs to remember how many deployed ships still have a design that's been rendered obsolete. Right now, the number simply becomes zero when you obsolete a design. This could give the player an easy overview how many ships are of a certain obsolete design and need refitting.

[Webbco]

I don't know about you guys, but I can't count how many times I've wanted to literally wipe all designs and start from scratch due to the messy nature of the designs list.

E.g. I have about 8 cap ship designs called 'Mahajanga' (so Mahajanga I, II, III, IV etc etc). Most, if not all, are AI designs (if I manually upgrade, the name is auto-chosen anyway!).

A quick look across the columns reveals that some of these are the same price, same size, same maintenance costs and so on.

I have to open up the designs screen and fiddle with it to find out which ones are the most upgraded design.

Then, I have to manually go through and retrofit the ships individually.

I would love the AI to upgrade my personal designs automatically whilst keeping the names of the ship I gave them originally!


I think I've read this issues a few times already, I hope it gets resolved with a patch in the near future.

[Ignus]

I'd like ship design automation to have two levels: one would be pretty much identical to the one we have, plus one that was just "Upgrade outdated components automatically". All the fun of making Death Stars minus the tedious clicking on every one of your designs and upgrading them.

[Gertjan]

I really like the ship automation design by the AI, but at some point, when I master the other aspect of the game, I might want to try to design my own ships. However the current system is not so useful/appealing as e.g. Galciv2's system. I will wait for an upgrade/patch to fix this aspect of the game before going deeper into it.

[Ignus]

I prefer this system to GalCiv2's, I always hated having to make my ships look nice and faffing around upgrading them every 30 seconds.

Also, yes the AI is good at managing the ship designs but only if it does so from the start. If you have made a pile of designs yourself and let the AI take over later, they will eat them all.

[Gertjan]

In Galciv2 the basic ships were quite pretty. You could just attach weapons to it and that was it.
What do you mean by they will eat hem all?

[PDiFolco]

I ended up managing all design "manually", the AI designs have several issues : not enough fuel and engines on many designs, mining bases unarmed, dubious weapon upgrades (bombs replace torps, bleh!), unmanageable denomination jungle... This still needs some work.

[licker]

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco

I ended up managing all design "manually", the AI designs have several issues : not enough fuel and engines on many designs, mining bases unarmed, dubious weapon upgrades (bombs replace torps, bleh!), unmanageable denomination jungle... This still needs some work.

Agreed.

And doing it manually feels like a waste of time, but it also feels necessary because if you don't the designs of certain ships turn out very odd (like packing bombard on space ports). I assume that the AI is equally handicapped by this.

[Gertjan]

Agreed as well. I hope this can be addressed soon (after the bug patch e.g.). If you do it manually, do you have to design the private ships as well?

[VarekRaith]

ORIGINAL: Gertjan

Agreed as well. I hope this can be addressed soon (after the bug patch e.g.). If you do it manually, do you have to design the private ships as well?

For freighters/mining ships I always add an energy collector, sometimes a few more engines.

[Fishman]

I add a ton more engines and the long-range missile launchers. This makes sure that my freighters are some of the deadliest things in space, in the same vein as a Spathi Eluder. No one smart messes with them.

[Mac Linehan]

Gents -

> Can ship classes or ship individual names be changed by the player? Or is this an AI only option?

Edit -

Thanks, I figured it out.

Mac

[Gertjan]

Varek, isn't it useless to put solar colectors on private ships, because they are moving all the time. I think that for solar collection to work, the ship has to be idle (i.e. not moving).

[BigWolfChris]

But don't they remain idle for a short while between missions?
Though, whether it's long enough to be worth placing them is another matter

[Fishman]

Placing collectors on private ships isn't USELESS, but on the other hand, why bother? You don't actually have to refuel private ships, they go and get their own fuel and are frequently, if not always, on the go. It's your manually controlled ships that tend to spend a lot of time sitting, waiting for something to kill.

[Interesting]

There is a problem with design.

When you manually make a design and later on you click "upgrade", the name you gave gets changed. Not only that, but it doesnt just upgrades to the best of what you currently have, in the same ammounts, it UPGRADES BASED ON THE DEFAULT DESIGN!!!

Then what happens?
A Research station you manually made for Black Holes (in deep space) gets things like "energy collectors", hospitals, entertainment modules.

Certain ships, intead of getting normal torpedoes, ends up getting those "bombs", that dont work against ships, only on colonies!

THIS PREVENTS PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO FINE TUNE THEIR DESIGNS, BECAUSE THE AUTOMATIC UPGRADE SCREW IT UP.

Suggestion?
Make upgrade only changes the components the design currently have for higher tech ones. WITHOUT ADDING NEW COMPONENTS BASED ON THE DEFAULT ROLE DESIGN. WITHOUT REMOVING COMPONENTS BASED ON THE DEFAULT ROLE DESIGN. WITHOUT CHANGING THE NAME THE PLAYER GAVE.

[marc420]

If components are required, just go ahead and add them.  Or at worst, give me one button click that adds the latest of the required components.  Adding Command and reactor modules may seem cool the first fifty times you do it, but not when you've done it thousands of times.  Put the minimum of the latest on there automatically, and I can always add extras if I want them.

[Fishman]

Also, it would be nice to see the components listed simply by quantity instead of a giant list, and the ability to, say, click on a component and drag a slider to indicate you want to add about 300 of the things. It takes FOREVER to build your own Death Star adding armor plates one at a time.

[D.W.O.H]

I have made a few my own ships which really at the lowest tech stages means more fuel cells really to get around refueling so much.

My question is when you make a ship and make it the most recent upgrade when your civ discovers a new material to upgrade something does it when you retrofit take you to the pre-exsisiting model where their will be less engines or will it base the new design off the one you made?