Ship Design Improvment Ideas

[Canute0]

Since Erik want overhaul the AI Design we should give him some hints what he can do.
Normaly i play with my own Design ideas and dont let the AI design at their own. I just use the Update design but check them afterwards if it is at my wish.
But i played now a few games just with AI design's (and got frustrated) to see how it can be improved and that would improve the AI empire's too.


-With Starting Research not enough reactor energy for full hyperspeed. +1 reacter when reactorenergy < Hyperenergy, Cancel when this extend max. size.

-Freighter Slublight enignes are not strong enough, special when they run out fo fuel they chase a faster planet forever. Personaly i do 10 Engine on any private ship, but more then 2 it should be.
Alternativ, all ships should leave hyperspeed before the planet, so ship and planet come together and the ship dont need to chase the planet.
Mosttimes freighter spend more time to dock then at Hyperspace.

- Sometimes Carrier and Monnitor designs are missing on start. Ok i notice Monitor Station appear later when you got Long range scanner, i think same with Carrier.

- Not enough Engines when a Race research primary shortrange weapons. Pirates with Torpedo weapons sometimes are faster.

One big thing what frustrate me and other players.
- The AI ignore player design, it allways reuse and improve just the AI design. If a player got an idea and add or remove some thing to an AI Design, the AI just improve their old design.
Thats basicly the reason why Player designs are orange/red now at the list to see that these designs arn't improved by the AI.
I think the AI could these Player ideas at the design, and take these over to the next design they made.
The AI should notice what the player changed (On destroyer - 1xtroop transport, + 2x fuel cell at example) safe that to an internal file, and use that when they improve the destroyer next time.

The AI only should ignore Player newly created design, but not modified existing designs. Maybe there should be an option to reset the player modifies too.

Ok thats my ideas, maybe other got some ideas too.

[feelotraveller]

I would like to be able to control the parameters of the automated designs from a saveable settings file (like policy). That way we can mod the races ship designs to our own liking. Saves CodeForce/Matrix puzzling over the makeup of the designs (and not being able to please everyone). Lets modders implement their own design makeups. And we can look forward to different ship design sets being produced by our fellow forum members. [:)]

[Gelatinous Cube]

Ease-of-use in the actual ship design screen is always good. That's one intimidating screen. Pride of Nations cried the first time I clicked the "Ship Designs" button.

But perhaps the most important one would be the ability to seemlessly integrate your special designs into the existing automated system. The reason I never use designs is because I like most of my fleet to be auto-designed, and I have not found quick and easy way of designing your own ships that wouldn't add MUCH more micromanagement than i want. I spend lots of time creating intricate defenses and interesting fleet postures, so if I ever got over the intimidation of the design screen and the apparent added micromanagement overload, I would be very interested in finding ways to mix in special designs and whatnot.

Also, the entire resource system is tied in to ship design in bigger ways than I (or most people probably) realized at first. If getting into the ship design system was a bit more user-friendly, then by association getting into the nitty-gritty of the resource economics will become easier too.

Also, auto-retrofitting. When I overhaul my fleet, it's usually just clicking "Approve" on the suggestion box, since I make sure my fleets are positioned (ideally) in places that allow them to spread out to my spaceports. With good space port and fleet distribution, retrofitting like this is a cinch (and afterwards all your ships resume posture if they are automated). I don't know if custom designs will integrate seemlessly with this strategy, but if they will then I need to start figuring them out!

[Sepiche]

Yeah, I think my biggest wish would be for the AI to handle the bulk of the design work and more importantly the retrofitting, but allow me to still be able to tweak the base AI designs and have the AI still work with those designs from then on.

It seems like this could be accomplished to some extent by adding a flag to designs that mark them as "Primary" or something to that effect. Basically each ship type would have one Primary design that all ships of that type should be retrofitted to. Each time there is a new tech, the AI would go through and improve the Primary designs as well as it can, but the player could alter those or select a completely different design to be the new primary.

Not an ideal solution since it would rely on the AI to try to intelligently update player designed ships to some extent, but at least being able to specify a non-AI generated design to automatically update your ships to would be an improvement.

Edit: Also how about adding an easier way to mark ships as obsolete? Couldn't that be a button on the design listing page like the delete button? That way we could mark multiple designs as obsolete at the same time.

[cookie monster]

Edit: Also how about adding an easier way to mark ships as obsolete? Couldn't that be a button on the design listing page like the delete button? That way we could mark multiple designs as obsolete at the same time.

On the design listing page all you need to do is click on the far right of the design and then it will be designated as obsolete.

[Sepiche]

Thanks! I never noticed another button over there, but I'll take a look tonight.

Edit: Another idea while I'm thinking about it...

This as alluded to in another thread, but when designing a new ship how about making Shift+Left Click add 5 of a component, and Ctrl+Left Click add 10 or something to that effect?

[balto]

The Ship Design (commerical and military) and Space Port design is the best part of Legends and it allows you to really dominate outrageously in the game. The micromanagement takes forever as stated above.

The way the Tech Tree splits off into new weapons, and components, etc.., (which is great) and the fact that you need to retrofit in cycles and that you really do not want all the components you research and that size does not matter for ports, etc., etc.., etc.., .., , I really cannot think of how to make this awesome facet of Legends less time consuming without destroying the awesome tech tree.

If the designers find a solution for reducing the micromanagement of the ship design, please make that optional so that they do not take away the power of full time designers such as myself that want to goof around with everything.

Legends is really something else. I cannot wait until the love of Legends wears off because it is killing my real life.

[Keston]

Carrying the orange idea further: when you open the design window for an upgraded class, the components that have been changed in the update could have their own color code (green for added, red for removed or reduced) to show at a glance what changes teh AI did so they can be modified. OR the AI could suggest an upgrade and display what changes it would make - then players could accept, reject, or go into the design interface to modify.

[Gelatinous Cube]

ORIGINAL: Keston

Carrying the orange idea further: when you open the design window for an upgraded class, the components that have been changed in the update could have their own color code (green for added, red for removed or reduced) to show at a glance what changes teh AI did so they can be modified. OR the AI could suggest an upgrade and display what changes it would make - then players could accept, reject, or go into the design interface to modify.

Oh, dear, yes!

Internally, we already know (if you have AI Ship Design) that the AI is creating new ship types. If there could be a popup EVERY TIME (or evenbetter, every time it equals the shiptype/role that we CHECKBOXED!) asking if you could "Please look over these designs, sir, and modify or approve them." If you then choose to modify them, it should integrate seemlessly with your system as though the AI designed it itself--no mucking about with "Oh, crap, now its internally flagged as something different."

For me this would be HUGE, wouldn't take away from anyone else's micro-management, and would probably be easy to implement (maybe-ish).

[the1sean]

The entire interface is being redesigned by Elliot, and the "obsolete button" should be easier to find in the new iteration. What I am hoping for is a vastly more robust ship design section of teh Empire Policy screen where we can toggle whether individual ships are AI or player designed, and even specify minimum speeds, ranges, components, etc for the AI to prepare; plus I want to toggle whether designs are armed or not. We'll see what we get pretty soon!

[J HG T]

"The entire interface is being redesigned by Elliot..."

Color me very interested.
I'm one of the rare DW players who have never had any serious issues with ship design screen, so it's interesting to see what Elliot has in store for us.

[sveint]

Just please give the AI better ship design. More fuel, enough reactors to power its weapons, and a good mix of weapons.

[ASHBERY76]

Open up ship and base design so modders can optimise the A.I designs.

End.

[w1p]

opening it to modders would be best, although that is the answer to pretty much any feature request imho

[Texashawk]

Any chance we can get a, um, preview of said redesign? [:D]

ORIGINAL: the1sean

The entire interface is being redesigned by Elliot, and the "obsolete button" should be easier to find in the new iteration. What I am hoping for is a vastly more robust ship design section of teh Empire Policy screen where we can toggle whether individual ships are AI or player designed, and even specify minimum speeds, ranges, components, etc for the AI to prepare; plus I want to toggle whether designs are armed or not. We'll see what we get pretty soon!