Ship Design Policies Please!

[mordachai]

One of my biggest wishes and frustrations with DW:U - which remains true in DW2 - is that the ship design Ai algos have no settings for me to control.

Either I let the AI design them - or I have to sit there and fiddle with every component on every ship class - and manually deal with new tech, etc. This is not my def. of fun, albeit I'm sure it is someone's - not knocking that - just sayin' - for me - I want the AI to do the minutia, ... but

I want to be able to tell the AI what militarily relevant roles a given ship class should be designed for.

e.g. -- I want to say

• favor heavy, medium, or light hulls
• favor speed over efficient engines (or vice versa)
• favor anti-ion armor over ablating armor.
• favor some set of weapon-classes (e.g. pulse weapons and energy torpedoes, or fighter bays + missiles)
• favor minimum, moderate, or heavy PD.
• favor bombers, fighters, or interceptors (or set mix ratios?)

It is disheartening to have the Ai constantly select loadouts I really don't want. It's probably space-dps efficient? or fits the ship's constraints? but it leaves me completely out of the decision loop in terms of "what military tactics do I want to aim for?"

You could do something similar for exploration and bases - where you could have some controls over asking the AI to design cheap vs. heavily armed & armoured (or balanced).

But in this game -- Military is where the real fun is at. I mean, the sim aspect is insanely cool! But in terms of being able to PLAY A GAME - which necessitates MAKING DECISIONS THAT MATTER - leaving me out of the design-goals for ships is a real bummer & lost opportunity, IMO.

Thanks for a great game - hope to see see something like this in the future!

[Franky007]

What frustate me the most is that in the early game, the Ship designer will put only 2 reactors on Colony ships; that result in these ships having only an Hyperspeed of 71 with a Warp bubble (instead of 200).

We need to be able to change that !

[Dudok22]

Yeah that would be really nice, I posted similar idea to the suggestion thread.

1. I would love an in game "ship design template" designer. Basically a menu where you select on what criteria should the ai designer base their design on.
For example:
Cruiser Template
Combat Style: Medium Range/ line
Priority Weapon1: Missiles
Priority Weapon2: Railguns
Priority Weapon3: Tractor Beams
Reactor Preference: Efficiency
Engine Preference: Raw thrust
Shield Preference: Shield Recharge
Armor vs Shield: More shields
Hyperdeny: Yes
Long range scanner: no
...
etc.
...

I feel like there is huge potential and depth in this game thats getting somewhat wasted because 90% of the time it's too cumbersome to interact with the systems that are in the game, so the vast majority of players will just let AI deal with it. But right now the ai needs way more modularity and customization instead of AI on or AI off and 4 settings from low to very high, to be interesting. I want to feel like I am creating a policy as a ruler of an interstellar empire, not just telling someone to take care of something without my input.

[Franky007]

There is a file in the data directory named: DesignTemplates.xml, but it seems unused for now...

[Emperor0Akim]

I would like something like this as well.

[AKicebear]

Ditto!