Poll: Are the Changes to Ship design good?

[Almora]

So I think change is a good thing, and healthy for a game, especially when this one wouldn't negatively impact those that DO already like it

How would changing the game mechanics not negatively impact those that prefer them? They'll just pretend they are still constrained?

We get it - you want it another way. Don't try to tell us we are wrong for liking it the new way, and to just suck it up as you insist abandoning the current game mechanics.

Because Removing the the module category restrictions (only change being advocated for here) doesn't negatively impact anyone. If you read what I said you'll see that I like having good constraints on whats possible, I just want the constraints to be wholistic to the ship, and not based on individual modules, as that allows for more interesting and specified variants

[Almora]

So I think change is a good thing, and healthy for a game, especially when this one wouldn't negatively impact those that DO already like it

How would changing the game mechanics not negatively impact those that prefer them? They'll just pretend they are still constrained?

We get it - you want it another way. Don't try to tell us we are wrong for liking it the new way, and to just suck it up as you insist abandoning the current game mechanics.

Judging from the poll, Majority like the current changes or do not have an opinion on it as of yet. Changes will have to remain. The last thing DW2 needs is to behave like Stellaris and make massive changes every 6 months.

However, I am ok with keeping the external hardpoints and making other minor changes based on what people want.

I think thats best right now, there's already a lot on the devs plate, but I certainly hope this is looked at in the future, as its my favorite part of these games, and offers a lot of different opportunities for depth and integration with other mechanics

[zgrssd]

Also just a reminder, that only 16% of all people voting here want a different approach.

I am sorry, but if such a small minority wants something, the path is clear:
Mod the game to be as you want it.
At worst you got things how you want them to be. At best, you now can show us why your approach is superior.

and 22% of people, including myself, said "I'm not sure" because the system has potential, but lacks proper balancing or nuance. Ultimately this poll was made a bit ago, if we asked this now, or a more specific question than "do you like it?", we'd probably see far more support for change. many on the discord are also having qualms with component research and ship design.

"Does it need balance changes?" is not a valid question. It was never a question.
Every system in every game needs balancing.
I submitted several Bug reports about rebalancing needs myself!

If you had asked it like that, you would have skewed the results in favor of a complete rework that was not wanted or needed!
Which is exactly why I asked the relevant question instead, trying to be as neutral as I could!

Yesterday I found another example shows the weakness of the Design System

The Resort Station, though civilian in intend, is my best armed station all around.
Because the size of the station it is big enough to support a complete outfit of weapons, armor and shields,
while the basic slots are barely enough to equip the components required for the Resorts Basic Function.

Meaning, Entertainment, Medicine, Tradecenter and actual Passenger Compartments.

Yesterday I found another example shows the weakness of the Design System

The Resort Station, though civilian in intend, is my best armed station all around.
Because the size of the station it is big enough to support a complete outfit of weapons, armor and shields,
while the basic slots are barely enough to equip the components required for the Resorts Basic Function.

Meaning, Entertainment, Medicine, Tradecenter and actual Passenger Compartments.

Lmao, that is certainly telling. The entirety of ship design, from components to hulls, needs to be balanced or tweaked

A "fulyl Armed" Teekan resport base is:
2 Small Weapons
2 Large Weapons
4 Large Defenses
1 Hangar

The Small Spaceport on teh same tier has:
6 Small Weapons
4 Large Weapons
12 Large Defenses
4 Hangars (admittedly, 2 should be used for construction Yards)

And the T1 Defenses base is all those slots of the Small spaceport, minus the need for Construciton Yards and can be build several times around the Planet

"Fully armed" != Most heavily armed.
In fact, quite the opposite.
If you can use up all the slots and still have room, asume it is poorly armed.

[Almora]

Also just a reminder, that only 16% of all people voting here want a different approach.

I am sorry, but if such a small minority wants something, the path is clear:
Mod the game to be as you want it.
At worst you got things how you want them to be. At best, you now can show us why your approach is superior.

and 22% of people, including myself, said "I'm not sure" because the system has potential, but lacks proper balancing or nuance. Ultimately this poll was made a bit ago, if we asked this now, or a more specific question than "do you like it?", we'd probably see far more support for change. many on the discord are also having qualms with component research and ship design.

"Does it need balance changes?" is not a valid question. It was never a question.
Every system in every game needs balancing.
I submitted several Bug reports about rebalancing needs myself!

If you had asked it like that, you would have skewed the results in favor of a complete rework that was not wanted or needed!
Which is exactly why I asked the relevant question instead, trying to be as neutral as I could!

Honestly yeah thats fair, it would be skewed, I guess the better approach is to ask more specific questions, as I believe most people like most of the mechanics (size, power, the modules) and only a few aspects (hardpoints, module restrictions, ui) have been met with backlash.

Asking the wholistic question of "do you like it" is better than my question im hindsight, but garners responses on everything from 3d models to blueprint management. Thus we have garnered from the data that most people think that the ship designer has some decent foundations, but really only the comments tell us anything more specific

[Yoda3131]

Hello,

Thank you for create this game. Sorry for bad english, I try to do my best for your eyes.

DW1 is the best game I've played (Free ship design!). DW2 has others progress (interface, radius ...).

I fell sad that we losed freedom in ship design : can I hope that tech tree gives unlimited sizes (example for defense base) at the end of a repeatable tech tree ? (Or getting bigger, after each new repeatable research ?)

(So, people have limited sizes and options for many designs, and others can benefit by unlimited ships sizes, at the end of the tech tree, for any bases ?

Thank you for reading and be happy my friends.

[Emperor0Akim]

"Does it need balance changes?" is not a valid question. It was never a question.
Every system in every game needs balancing.
I submitted several Bug reports about rebalancing needs myself!

If you had asked it like that, you would have skewed the results in favor of a complete rework that was not wanted or needed!
Which is exactly why I asked the relevant question instead, trying to be as neutral as I could!

Honestly yeah thats fair, it would be skewed, I guess the better approach is to ask more specific questions, as I believe most people like most of the mechanics (size, power, the modules) and only a few aspects (hardpoints, module restrictions, ui) have been met with backlash.

Asking the wholistic question of "do you like it" is better than my question im hindsight, but garners responses on everything from 3d models to blueprint management. Thus we have garnered from the data that most people think that the ship designer has some decent foundations, but really only the comments tell us anything more specific

I agree with you both there,

So on to balancing

A "fulyl Armed" Teekan resport base is:
2 Small Weapons
2 Large Weapons
4 Large Defenses
1 Hangar

The Small Spaceport on teh same tier has:
6 Small Weapons
4 Large Weapons
12 Large Defenses
4 Hangars (admittedly, 2 should be used for construction Yards)

And the T1 Defenses base is all those slots of the Small spaceport, minus the need for Construciton Yards and can be build several times around the Planet

"Fully armed" != Most heavily armed.
In fact, quite the opposite.
If you can use up all the slots and still have room, asume it is poorly armed.

First of, I compared a Tier 1 Spaceport ( 750 t ) to a Tier1 Resort ( 975 )

and my Issue was not the Weapons or Armor Slots in General, but that I could fill the
14 Basic Slots, 4 Defense, 2 Hangars, 2 Sensors with Basic Equipment and came up to 776 / 975 tons
while the Basic Equipment fell short of what I expected to equip my Resort with
After Adding the Basics : Command, 2 Crew, 2 Generator, 1 Collecto, 2 Fuel, 1 Cargo 9/14
That Left 5/14 for Medical, Recreation, Commerce and at the end 2 Passenger Compartments ..

I have to admit, I don't know if the resort works different in DW2 and Passengers are actuelle removed again from the resort and a compartment can house 1000k Pasengers ( which is amazing .. 1million people in the same space as 475 crew ..) but seems a bit low for the main feature module for the station.

While a Spaceport has in comparison 25 Basic Components which I guess are to be filled with generators and collectors to actually power all the others ..
of which I could use with 750t .. 2 Yards, 0 Docks Command 3 Crew 2 Generator, 1 Fuel, 1 Cargo, 1 Research, 2 Collectors, Commerce, Medical, Recreation, 2 Shield, 2 Armor, NO WEAPONS
Same thing with small weapons weighs in about 1200 tons, which is slightly over the tier 2 size of 1100 ..

so yeah, what I wanted to say still holds, a Basic Resort can be better equipped than a Basic Space Port,
while being bad at its job ..

[Emperor0Akim]

I scanned through the Research Tree for Space Construction,

Okay, positives first.
I like the dedicated boni that distinguish shipclasses from each other, speed, shield, which motivates me more to uses them in their intended role as every component assignment difference ever could.

This next point is completely unrelated to how the ship designer works.

I still find it strange that the development of a ship class is more or less static.
After researching a class and it's upgrade it stays the same and will only improve through components.

There is always a size and class change when technologie develops.

Lets Revisit the Size 500 Escort Argument.

An example Frigate in 1780 had a weight of 1166t, a length of 65m and a width of 12m and was armed with 26 12pound longguns and 6 6pound longguns

The Flagship of Lord Nelson in 1800 the HMS Victory weighed in a whopping 3600t, a length of 70 and a width of 16m and was armed with 42 24pound , 30 32pound, 28 24pound cannons and 2 68pound carronades.

a few years later in 1915 the battleship Queen Elizabeth is ten times as heavy with 33000t and twice as big with 195m length and 30m wide. Armed with
4 twin 15inch ship guns, 16 single 6inch ship guns , 2 AA guns, and 4 Torpedo tubes.

and in 1980 the broadsword class frigates weighed in with 4400t 131m length and 16m width, carries a variety of 20 modern weapon systems and up to 2 Helicopters.

tl;dr.

I would like it if ships would advance in size and number of available component ports when I reach new levels of construction just to lord my superiority over my enemies

[arvcran2]

To answer POLL:

Yes, because of the introduction of 3d models, visual representation of player's designs, the introduction of external (visual/exposed) vs internal (hidden/protected) components, and the introduction of ship hulls concepts.

With DW1, the designer allowed the player to design any kind of hull; and in most cases, the game honered functionality based on the componens designed. DW2 appears to be taking a different approach by providing hulls with a preset range of funtionality and effectiveness.

The designer UIX has to function withing the new DW2 concepts mentioned above; and hence reduces the flexability that was available with the DW1 designer.

One possible modification to the current DW2 design system could be to increase available internal bays and rely more on the size of them as a limiting factor along with the others. Though, arguably, one could state that the hull only has so many power sockets available for internal connection.

Vectoring engines probably should get more hard point availability in my humble opinion and should be spread along non thrust engine hull sidings. I propose that possible vectoring engines should match the number of current maximum engines (for thrust). That would require some tweaking of existing 3d models though and is an expensive ask.

[rxnnxs]

WIw, nice explanation. It makes sense and after all, I would come along with your ideas.
I am happy about anyting that goes in the right direction.

[arvcran2]

The other things I should have mentioned is the introduction of weapon arcs and the significance of weapon placement visa-vis weapon types. It adds an element of realism which was born by the addition of 3d to DW, while also adding more interest into design choices. The new point defense weapon types and the concept of weapons augmenting the DW legacy countermeasures also adds a new and interesting choices to the design system.

[Cepheiden]

Late to the party, but the poll is just barely passing as a mere clue towards a general direction for how well those changes have been received.
From a developers point of view it's understandable.
However from a business point of view, the move from freeform design to hardpoints was a poor choice, even if this poll at least hints to a relatively representative majority being ok with those changes. Here's why:

If you already have a well liked product you would never ask only the single question if your customers would like something or not. The real questions are, would they still accept / buy your product if you change x, and, would they still buy it if you don't change x.
In this case: would people still buy the game if you change it to this hardpoint system?
But also: would they also buy it, if you didn't change it?

Without bothering to create another two polls for that, everybody here is likely aware, that there is a significant percentage of players that simply loathe this change and would not buy the game if they knew ahead, or at the very least won't buy any future products / will be very careful with any future products made by these devs. At the same time, it's very unlikely that a significant percentage of people who were more positive than negative about the change would have been as disappointed about the change not being implemented, as the other side was disappointed about the change.
It's a pretty bad deal if you just made a slight minority ok or slightly happy with changes, which won't buy the game any harder than they already did, in exchange for definitely alienating a significant portion of customers in the future and potential customers that hear about the ship design folly.

The ship design was one of the major selling points of distant worlds. Now there is hardly anything different about DW2 compared to other 4x games.

That aside, the realized hard point system in DW2 is also very poor in terms of structure, balancing and freedom of choice, compared to other games. At least copy a good hardpoint system like in eve online, that allows to actually have choices that make a difference. So not only did Matrix Games destroy their unique selling point, they now also compete with other games that did the feature in question better.

Lastly, the freeform system could have easily been adjusted to be more restricted to create more differentiated results. It wouldn't even have been an issue with the 3d models, if they abstracted the visual representation from the actual amount of components within certan limits.

So in summary, and from a business perspective: Stupid move. Should have just made DW1 with better visuals and interface and it would have been a way bigger success.

[AKicebear]

Late to the party, but the poll is just barely passing as a mere clue towards a general direction for how well those changes have been received.

...

So in summary, and from a business perspective: Stupid move. Should have just made DW1 with better visuals and interface and it would have been a way bigger success.

63% of respondents strictly prefer the new system
80% of respondents with a +/- opinion prefer the new system.
To describe this as "barely passing", well, good luck finding any group of people where more than 80% agree on a game mechanic.

Business - no idea, but based on Steam stats DW2 sold significantly better than DWU. Perhaps not an apples to apples comparison. But more evidence than you've provided.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I much prefer the current way to design ships in DW2.

DWU ship design was highly flawed and mainly gave the illusion of choice and was quite imbalanced to the point of broken.

DW2 probably still need some more balancing but in general leave many more options for viable different strategies in design philosophies.

[Nightskies]

Actually glad this was necro'd to make a point to say that the design change was bad.

That choice was ironically bad to back up their point, as AK very succinctly and sufficiently proven.

[Anexgohan]

The new system is so much worse, it wants players to tunnel vision into specific roles which may be good for the average player, but for a long-timer like me it's just plain boring after the first 2 times designing the same ship and role over and over again, why you hamper players like me, why stop us from designing unorthodox non-standard ships, what if I want a glass cannon escort nope, what if a want a freaking carrier with more than 6-7 bays I want to sacrifice manoeuvrability that should be my call, not the game design telling me nope can't be done.
you could have taken inspiration from DW:U and tweaked it to make more sense but you changed the entirety of what was a really fun and inspiring ship-building experience and changed it to this mess that gets old so fast that it hurts me to even open the ship designer anymore.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The new system is so much worse, it wants players to tunnel vision into specific roles which may be good for the average player, but for a long-timer like me it's just plain boring after the first 2 times designing the same ship and role over and over again, why you hamper players like me, why stop us from designing unorthodox non-standard ships, what if I want a glass cannon escort nope, what if a want a freaking carrier with more than 6-7 bays I want to sacrifice manoeuvrability that should be my call, not the game design telling me nope can't be done.
you could have taken inspiration from DW:U and tweaked it to make more sense but you changed the entirety of what was a really fun and inspiring ship-building experience and changed it to this mess that gets old so fast that it hurts me to even open the ship designer anymore.

Not sure I agree... you can very much build rather odd ships with the current system, including glass cannon ships. Sure you can not build a ship with nearly any engines or defences and put 50% of the hull with weapons, you likely can't do that. But that would be a horrible design anyway so why even allow it?!?

The current ship design make the choices you do make to matter more and there are likely to be less trash designs.

The open ended system also is way unrealistic as in the real world there are more constraints than what a truly free system could represent. That is why these role based hulls make more sense where you can customise them decently enough so they are different.

The important thing is not the individual design as much as how they work with each other as a whole.

The current system have many more viable options for different ship roles and uses even if the old system was more free. The old system just provided so many bad options and was way too easy to abuse the AI with efficient designs. You can do that now as well, but definitely much less so, this is a great benefit to the replay ability of the game in my opinion.