Why doesn't your ship design screen info match your technology?

This is rather pointless to complain about since the game's been out for a long time and I'm sure others have said it before, but designing ships is hard because you can't tell what it will actually be like until it's built.

The obvious problem is with range and speed. You have a base level of technology that adds to range and speed but the ship design screen doesn't reflect that. So often I think I should add engines because going from 1 to 2 is twice as fast, except in my current game a ship moves 9 spaces without adding engines so I rarely need engines at all. Same with range, I have more than I think I do.

Also it's hard to design for defense. I try to give my big ships enough defense to survive one round against an enemy fleet, so I add up the hit points and defense to be slightly higher then the fleet's attack, but when I design a ship with 20 hp it's actually 35 when built. Of course there's random factors and starbase bonuses etc. that I can't account for when designing, but it's better than having no plan at all and just throwing stuff in.

I'm assuming this isn't something that's modable or it would have been done already. The only solution is to keep notes on paper and use a calculator to know what the ship with actually be like when it's done.

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Yup, it's a bit of a pain.

I just remember what base-speed I currently possess, as that makes the difference between yes-engine and no-engine, although my warships tend to end up without engines regardless of this, (I need more weapooooonssss) and my transports get as many engines as possible (as long as they can contain enough troops, which depends on my soldiering), exept on low-production planets which get their own special brand of "Cheap 1K, 2K, 3K Transports .

I don't design my ships to survive "one round of battle". Either they are meant to survive several combat situations (which is much harder to calculate given the random factor in battles, so I don't calculate but give them decent defenses and HP that "ought to cover it"), or they are meant to just have an enormous amount of firepower.

I generally don't bother with range and sensor modules as range is significantly boosted with tech (and usually enough to begin with) and I always go for Eyes of the Universe. Need more range in a particular point? "Acquire" a planet or build a starbase, not give ships more range (only exception being colony/resource rush, although even then it doesn't occur often).

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There are a number of factors that affect the final product, some of which you've mentioned.

Race bonuses and any bonuses you may have applied during the game set-up; tech advances ("Reinforced Hull and Hardened Hull both have HP bonuses to apply); galactic resources (which add to Att/Def numbers); military starbase bonuses; and Trade Goods (Xinathium Hull Plating, for instance).

There are speed bonuses: "Gravity Accelerators", for instance; and there are planetary bonuses you may have gotten for an individual planet (given at the moral "choice" screen when you colonized it), or via tile improvements (like the various Hyperion builds).

I would suggest you set your designs to kick in at various benchmark techs....and be very careful of size requirements (you don't want to be waiting for a design to become available...RIGHT NOW!!!)....when you have several techs yet to research.

It took me quite awhile to arrange my designs to become available at a constant flow as I finished tech research, so it may take a little trial and error to do the same.

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