Ship Design: Tedium or Delight?

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

Moderator: Oberlus

How much time should ship design require?

Poll ended at Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:38 am

Design ships? Can't the game do it for me?
1
3%
I'll just slap together my best tech and cross my fingers.
4
12%
I plan to be fighting with my ships more often than designing them.
7
21%
I want to delicately balance my systems in a 3-D space, customized for each hull. Proper water cooling, accessibility by crew, and beverage holders are important.
21
64%
 
Total votes: 33

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MisterMerf
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Ship Design: Tedium or Delight?

#1 Post by MisterMerf »

There has been some discussion about ship design:
viewtopic.php?t=931

It's not in the design stage yet, but maybe a poll would be helpful.
How important is complicated ship design to you?

This is not the same as having complicated weapons. I'm talking about loading the stuff in a chassis. Should it be easy or hard? What should you have to worry about?

BreadMan
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#2 Post by BreadMan »

Make a category between the 3rd and 4th ones for "Effecient ship design is a key to victory and should be complex, but not complicated." Otherwise I'll be voting for option 4 and that would make me sound neurotic.
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krum
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#3 Post by krum »

BreadMan is right, the way you worded it seems biased at first glance. And it's not nessesarily loading stuff in a chassis, the chassis itself is not less important :) Soo, I guess what I'm saying is, did you have to make a thread only to let us know you dislike ship design? :)

Impaler
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#4 Post by Impaler »

Check my Post second from the Bottom of the Page here

viewtopic.php?t=931

On the latest thoughts on how to do Ship Designing, I feel ship designing can be fun when it involves coming up with a truely NEW design for that will be employed in a tacticaly differnt way. Constantly needing to Re-make a functionaly identical ship gets borring though and this should be avoided. Ofcorse no detail which is not tacticaly significant should be involved in a ships design.

Their are likly going to be people who hate ship design so a "Let the game do it for me" option is a good idea. Their would be 2 options the "Use a Ship Library" and "No ship Design" If use a Library is selected they recive pre made designs off a standardized list when they Hit all the nessariy Tecnologies. The list would be made by Humans not the computer much like the Pre-designed units in SMAC's Alpha.txt This esentialy alows people to save ship designs they like and use them again later. With Library on and Ship Design Off you have an option for thouse who realy hate ship designing.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

krum
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#5 Post by krum »

I really like the idea that weapons shouldn't typically have the space they occupy modified size when refined, instead changing the rate of fire, for example. Not to move the debate here, I'd like to note that with design solutions like that one designing ships can be made an ejoyable activity for people who used to be annoyed by having to redesign the ships every ime a new tech was researched.

Sky Keeper
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#6 Post by Sky Keeper »

Agreed with Impaler: only design of a ship that has a new tactical role is fun. For a simple upgrade/refit task I'd use a auto-button.

No ship design is the main reason why I hate GalCiv. The other one is detailed system movement/micro-manadgement.

I'd like ship design to be a vital strategical element.

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utilae
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#7 Post by utilae »

han_krum wrote:I really like the idea that weapons shouldn't typically have the space they occupy modified size when refined, instead changing the rate of fire, for example. Not to move the debate here, I'd like to note that with design solutions like that one designing ships can be made an ejoyable activity for people who used to be annoyed by having to redesign the ships every ime a new tech was researched.
It is a good solution and we should use it.

I would like to see ship design like Moo2 (somewhere between 3 and 4 on the vote). Moo2 ship design was simple, yet quick as well. THe refitting was the only issue, because it took too long to refit every ship in your system. If you could have just mass refit all ships to the same design, then refits would have been better.

drek
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#8 Post by drek »

Something super-simple:

Every hull has X slots of Y type. There's an armor slot, an engine slot, normal slots (for weapons and other junk like scanners and shields), and in some hulls really big slots for really big weapons.

There's no tonnage or capacity to consider, beyond # of slots.

Ranos
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#9 Post by Ranos »

I would like to vote but there isn't an option that fits me. While 1, 2 and 3 are insufficient for what I want, 4 is too drastic. I want to be able to spend time designing my ships for maximum combat effectiveness, while not going into the extreme tedium that would be making sure the crew can get to the bathrooms.
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MisterMerf
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#10 Post by MisterMerf »

han_krum wrote:BreadMan is right, the way you worded it seems biased at first glance. And it's not nessesarily loading stuff in a chassis, the chassis itself is not less important :) Soo, I guess what I'm saying is, did you have to make a thread only to let us know you dislike ship design? :)
Sorry, I just couldn't think of a middle ground that was well-worded. I figured the results would show up in the thread itself...and they have!

Edit: Is there a way for me to change it after the fact? I took a glance earlier, but a method was not evident...

Ranos
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#11 Post by Ranos »

I think a moderator can change the options of a poll. The option could be: I want to design my ships so they will be the most effective fighting machines in tactical combat.
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noelte
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#12 Post by noelte »

hehe, the voting is quite clear know :-)
Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel.
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utilae
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#13 Post by utilae »

noelte wrote:hehe, the voting is quite clear know :-)
Yes it is.

Zpock
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#14 Post by Zpock »

Ship design is by far my favourite part of 4x and space games in general. I vote for the last option, and I really mean it, sounds like heaven to me :D

The space combat is also very important, related to the designing. My vision of a great game is designing your ships just like that 4th option and then have them fight in really cool realtime 3d (I'm working on it).

BreadMan
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#15 Post by BreadMan »

drek wrote:Something super-simple:

Every hull has X slots of Y type. There's an armor slot, an engine slot, normal slots (for weapons and other junk like scanners and shields), and in some hulls really big slots for really big weapons.

There's no tonnage or capacity to consider, beyond # of slots.
Exactly what I had in mind.
Good afternoon! This is the Earth Alliance embassy diplomatic office. My name is Alex. How may I assist you?
HUMANS! BLAUGHRAN EMPIRE CLAIMS PLANET KREIGHTON! YOU GIVE RAY GUN SCIENCE OR BLAUGHRANS DESTROY HUMANS ON KREIGHTON!!!

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