Poll: Should the Civil and non-Combat Ships loose all or most of their weapon slots?

[zgrssd]

In my experience, it is a huge Problem that Civil and State Non-Combat ships have Weapon slots - much less ones large enough to fit Medium or Large Weapons

Because the designer will fit Size 38 Missiles into a Construciton Ship, with the end result of it not having enough Room for Reactors, resulting in the having less fuel range then hyperdrive range.

I do not think Weapon Slots on non-Combat Ships serve any purpose:
* They never would have enough firepower to even drop a pirates shield, much less destroy their armor[/list]
* Several ships escaping from a hostile will not all fire - only the one attacked actually uses their weapon[/list]
* I can see some use for Point Defense - but even that is questionable. Being able to outrun the Pirates sounds like it should be a bigger worry.

But I want to be sure I am not the only one that thinks so.

[CarloTheCurious]

I've started manually refitting mine with just PD (or nothing, mostly) - and replacing unnecessary high end shields/armour/reactor/engine so they don't use up rare construction resources. Even advanced cargo isn't really really necessary given that freighters are often nearly empty anyway.

[Lunalis]

i never tried changeing the rules for civillian ships from "do not engage" to different settings similar to combat ships.
as then in theory they should just behave the same as combat ships while in combat.

i mostly design my ships myself so i always tend to place PD weapons or none on these ones.

but for example more "fighty" races like mortaleen i could imagine fighting civillian ships to be pretty usefull if some are around a minign station that gets attacked by pirates or such.

but yea, never tried messing with the rules on civ ships. (i do know though that fighters set to "evade" dont attack and stay far away from targets... so changeing the rules on civ ships might work... it should)

[Es78]

Civilan ships should have no weapons, not even PD. Heck if they get attacked, i want them to die, so i can get some more cash from the private economy. But it´s fine they have the option to equip weapons.

But please auto design them with no weapons on. I waste so much time in the beginning of the game removing all weapons from evrything (Including my construction ships, small space port.... ) and then running the game with full manual design.

The only time i give my civilan ships anything is Ion armor, so they can go into nebulas and do there stuff. The same goes for my scouts and construction ships. Though i do also give them a shield so they can escape in time.

[dostillevi]

I feel like this is one of the areas where DW2 is conceptually deep but executed without rigor.

For weapons on civilian ships to make sense, they should be impactful enough to improve the survivability of the ship. This could mean the civilian ship can actually beat the attacker in combat (bad design for obvious reasons), or there should be some mechanic where coming under fire changes the behavior of the attacker, such as causing them to try and avoid being hit, and therefore being able to direct less firepower at the civilian ship. It would also make a difference if civilian ships traveled in groups, where the combined firepower from several ships might be enough to beat an attacker.

Since civilian ships don't travel in groups, don't have the ability to deter attackers by being armed, and don't have their survivability increased by mounting a weapon (even mounting PD isn't going to make a difference in almost any case between a ship fleeing or being disabled, one outcome or the other is a foregone conclusion regardless of PD), it would make sense for their weapon mounts to be removed. There's no benefit to complexity for complexity's sake.

However it would be REALLY NICE if the use case of weapons on civilian ships was revisited with rigor, so that it made sense for them to have some weapons in certain scenarios.

On the economic side, there's no mechanic where losing freighters impacts happiness or really anything at all other than the civilian economy budget as far as I can see, which can almost always absorb the cost of buying a new freighter (and by doing so, transferring money to the government). In fact economically it makes fantastic sense to build mining stations for common materials in unsafe areas in order to encourage freighters to be destroyed, as a means to transfer money from the civilian economy. The potential downside of having demand go unfilled is pretty much nullified by the variety of factors already affecting freighter behavior and their limited ability to delivery resources regardless (as detailed in other threads).

So:
#1: Make freighters matter - the delivery of goods, and the disruption thereof, should have a tangible impact both on the game's economy and on the happiness of civilians. It should be preferential that freighters live rather than die.
#2: Make guns matter - the survivability of freighters should be impacted depending on the weapons mounted.
#3: Make ship designs where the tradeoff of space and energy necessary to add guns makes sense compared to the other components that could be mounted instead, and there should be clear reasons when mounting weapons makes more sense than, say, extra shields or extra cargo space.
#4. Make civilian ships take their guns into account when determining behavior. Right now civilian ships should always be fleeing at the first sight of an enemy, because there's no chance that they'd survive the encounter, and no logic to change their behavior based on, say, the combined power of all local ships vs the local enemy, where it might be beneficial for civilian ships to gang up on an attacker.

[dostillevi]

One other somewhat related thought: if the game followed a hub and spoke model for resource management, it would make sense to use several freighter designs armed at different levels. In the hub/spoke model, some freighters would gather resources from mining stations and deliver those resources to the nearest hub, and then deliver needed resources back to the mining stations from the hubs. Then, other freighters would move resources from hubs to where production is.

The spoke freighters would potentially be at the fringes of the empire and more likely to encounter enemies. They should have smaller cargo bays, make frequent runs, and be able to survive an encounter with a single enemy.

The hub freighters should be moving large quantities of goods less frequently and between relatively populated (safe) areas. They would be juicier targets for enemies, but a freighter can never be heavily gunned enough to beat a concerted attack, so these ships should be escorted by military vessels instead.

[rxnnxs]

Can't you make a mod and try it out?
This would work, wouldn't it? And would be easy, just some xml files to rewrite.

The poll misses some other possibilities.. you know
Like: just limit the space, not for what it is used to.
But let us not discuss THAT here.
But there might be others that would like to have more weapons, or more engines put in there. But it is by design chosen NOT to be as we all wish (everybody has other wishes).

I hope there finetuning (of the developers) is giving us all a bit more of everthing..

[Omena]

Well, the PD weapons can sometimes help (shoot down torpedoes/missiles/bombers before warping out) and there is at least one use for the heftier weapons (harass AI construction ships in debris fields without having to bring military ships). They should definitely not be prioritised over reactors, but there is no harm in having these design possibilities.

I would also like to add that this is only a problem early game. With better components and larger hulls, you will have enough reactor power for everything anyways.

[zgrssd]

Can't you make a mod and try it out?
This would work, wouldn't it? And would be easy, just some xml files to rewrite.

Oh, I have been thinking about modding this in. The main issue is that I need some automated way to modify the file.
After all, the xml file can (and hopefully does!) change with every Udpate. Meaning I have to re-create the modded file every update.

[OloroMemez]

Oh, I have been thinking about modding this in. The main issue is that I need some automated way to modify the file.
After all, the xml file can (and hopefully does!) change with every Udpate. Meaning I have to re-create the modded file every update.

Head on over to the mod discord by following the link from the DW2 mod loader github page. For simple XML editing we have YAML patching that's enabled by the mod loader.

[SamuraiProgrmmr]

Typically, I put no weapons on these ships. I do, however, set them to retreat when the enemy is nearby. I have not noticed any serious detrimental effects for having done these things.

Realistically (within the game) weapons on these ships will not be effective. Any warship should outgun them and if not, a small fleet certainly will. My opinion is to make them perform the role they are created for and let the warships fight.

[MichaelJ007]

In a galaxy where there is piracy, conflict, and space creatures, even civilian ships need to survive.

However, civilian ships would be built for profit first, survivability second, and survivability would depend on escape.

Profitability demands minimal space for weapons.
Survivability suggests point defenses, and limited shields and armor, with probably a trade off between them, and hyperdrives tuned for rapid jumps.

[Shogouki]

Couldn't the current slots be maintained without problem if the AI templates were tweaked a bit so that they prioritized the ships preforming their actual roles over firepower?

[WiZz]

Some PDs for self-defense should stay.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

It's been puzzling me why my scouts and constructors and civilian ships or even a freaking colony ship have weapons. They never use them even in self defense that I have noticed and it just drives up the cost of the ship.

[zgrssd]

Couldn't the current slots be maintained without problem if the AI templates were tweaked a bit so that they prioritized the ships preforming their actual roles over firepower?

That is not a simple solution. In fact, that is a hard solution that would require a lot of work. And could easily break in a future update.
Just removing or capping the slots would fix the issue right now. It is better not to give any automatic the option to mess up.

[dostillevi]

Can't you make a mod and try it out?
This would work, wouldn't it? And would be easy, just some xml files to rewrite.

Oh, I have been thinking about modding this in. The main issue is that I need some automated way to modify the file.
After all, the xml file can (and hopefully does!) change with every Udpate. Meaning I have to re-create the modded file every update.

just realized you two are different people with different random 6 letter names in lowercase... carry on.

[Retreat1970]

So i'm confused. Now you're not happy with the DW2 ship design system?

[OloroMemez]

I'll see if I can mod this in. If you wish to keep PD, what I'll do is simply change the size of all the weapon bays on civilian ships to be maximum 19, that way they should be able to fit themselves with any choice of PD.

[rxnnxs]

I'll see if I can mod this in. If you wish to keep PD, what I'll do is simply change the size of all the weapon bays on civilian ships to be maximum 19, that way they should be able to fit themselves with any choice of PD.

That would be awesome!
Especially if you could explain later on how to use that awesome sounding mod tool from the game rimworld you discussed at the mod thread.