Ship Design Concept: No Slots, just values Internal/External

[CaptainTofu]

Version 4.6 is up to date.
Searched the forum.

Hello!
I am sure, the development team has thought a lot about the existing ship design concept. A low amount of Slots with a tag (internal, external, core). Subsystems that must be build in a slot with the same tag.

Another concept could be:
Every ship has a value for internal space, external space and core space. Subsystems will reduce the remaining space for their tags.
Advantage:
o) Subsystems can have different sizes. Subsystems like armor would be very small, so you could always cram it in to use remaining external space.
o) You are more flexible in designing ships
o) Subsystems can take different tagged spaces. For example: Fighter bay. 5 external, 15 internal.

I guess, this is not a new idea, but the team decided to use the existing concept instead. Would be interesting to know why

[MatGB]

Simplicity.

It works, it's easy and it can be balanced very effectively.

The game's not really about individual ships (there's stuff like FTL for that), it's about mass galactic conquest. A simple design system that works, is easy to explain, doesn't allow for/encourage minute adjustments to get the best possible result and that the AI coders can deal with effectively is a good thing.

With the forthcoming Fighters work, there are Hanger bays (internal) and Launch Tubes (external), hangers are how many boats you're carrying, tubes are how many you can launch per round (think early Battlestar Galactica when one of the launch bays is a gift shop and they have to cart the extra boats through the ship ).

We want to keep it simple, so players concentrate on the game, not the design screen.

[CaptainTofu]

I have read about the fighter thing. Sounds interesting! I am curious how you are going to decide about shield-piercing!

The simplicity: It is not complicated to design by points, instead of...well points (basically slots are the same. The difference are higher metrics and graphical design)
I think it is the scale, that beats that argument. I play on rather small maps, because I hate long end game phases, which are already won (but you still need to play a 100 turns to clean up out the rest of the map). How often do you design your ships? When new technology is available and at the beginning of the game.
You simplified that by removing weapon tiers as separate systems (good move by the way). There are still some systems to change in the same manner (like radar).
Do you think it is more work to design a ship with internal/external points in the 10s than with a few internal/external slots?

[AndrewW]

With the forthcoming Fighters work, there are Hanger bays (internal) and Launch Tubes (external), hangers are how many boats you're carrying, tubes are how many you can launch per round (think early Battlestar Galactica when one of the launch bays is a gift shop and they have to cart the extra boats through the ship ).

Well, early NEW version...

[defaultuser]

We want to keep it simple, so players concentrate on the game, not the design screen.

I generally have only a few ship patterns that I use. That makes me think of a game variant I might try. Pick a really simple cheap (research/build) pattern and get to that ASAP, then do nothing else in ship research. Like Robotic hull, Death Ray 1, Xentronium plate, and defense grid. Then devote all research to other things and build the crap out of that ship. Late game would have some ship stacks.