How to make good designs

[Copper8642]

Is the Technician skill of your Model Design Councillor relevant to how good your model designs are, or does it strictly improve BP efficiency and stuff like Str. Design is purely chance?

Is there any other way to get better designs other than "try a lot?" I'm 3 attempts deep in poorly designed light tanks and I would kill for Str. Design over 100.

[mroyer]

You're not alone. This has cropped up in the forums a number of times - that the player is sorta' designing blindly and that's not realistic.

I started one conversation on the topic here.

[Soar_Slitherine]

AFAIK structural design rolls are just pure chance for land units. For air units in the beta patches, there are some linear techs that can improve the design rolls, though.

EDIT: Grammar.

[solops]

I should not have to make a design and then check the results next turn to find out the engine is under-powered. The aircraft design screens are far better than their vehicle counterparts. At least they tell you the plane won't take off before you finalize the design and give you a chance to re-do the particulars.

[Janekk]

IMO what would help a lot is if field testing was at least partially contributing to some nation design score for particular model type instead of just completely randomly rolling on base design for each new model. That way if for example you roll poorly on your first artillery model even if it isn't ideal you can start using it right away since field testing you'll do won't be completely lost when you roll for a new model later with new tech available. As it is it can be very frustrating to roll poorly on structural design several times in a row and still end up with poor results. It also would help out a lot if you wanted to branch out and have multiple unit configuration for one model type later in the game. You wouldn't be starting completely from scratch and all your experience in building and using particular model type you have would count for something.