ORIGINAL: Sithuk
Woodman: I find the prospect of power play ship designs for each race attractive. My preference is for a challenging game first and foremost, roleplay second.
I respect your wish for a roleplay mode where you can nerf the ship design of races who are supposed to be less intelligent in the back story. A solution would be an easy way to select between shipsets in game setup. Similar to the mod selector we have at present?
My preference for the default base shipset is that it be a power play approach where the ship sets are optimised for the race specific techs.
The ships design will not be uniform due to the race specific techs, unless of course another race acquires the race specific tech through trading.
Perhaps a randomiser for which ship sets get used by each race? There are likely to be multiple optimised ship sets rather than a perfect design for each collection of techs?
In summary:
1) I prefer the ships to be the best possible for all races. No nerfs for roleplay reasons please.
2) Game setup feature for which ship set to use (either for each race or a single collection of sets for that game. Include a random feature for available ship sets)
Woodman: I find the prospect of power play ship designs for each race attractive. My preference is for a challenging game first and foremost, roleplay second.
Powerplay is fine with me, this doesn't mean everything has to be the same which is what this approach suggests. The suggestion I made incorprates roleplaying, (or we could say "variety", or "interesting racial differences" instead) and it also incorporates powerplaying as *most* of the races will still be balanced with this approach in terms of ships.
Furthermore if you want powerplay, have you tried playing as Shandar or Ugnari or Gizurean? These less intelligent races are completely overpowered compared to the Humans already, giving them ships as good as the more intelligent races would unbalance things as they don't have any negatives except their ship designs!!! For example depite their dumbness if you play Ugnari you will notice they research very fast due to creative re-engineering, a feature I like because its roleplaying, but... it means their only weakness now is their shipdesign because the penalty to research is reversed.
Have you played Shandar? No kidding here, I was able to set my taxes to 100% (or 99% because I was roleplaying and wanted my citizens to have *some* cash). This insane economy slays the Humans patetic economy.
I want a game where the race I choose completely changes the way I must approach the game. Ship designs are a huge part in this, some races are better militarily than others, making them the same is boring and doesn't make the game balanced anyway.
Hardpoint system for the win, then if you want a challenge, take a lesser race. (Edit: That last line is wrong, I mean if you want a ship design challenge, take a lesser race... they have other strengths as pointed out)
"My body may be confined to this chair, but my mind is free to explore the universe" - Stephen Hawking
