apoc527

Join Date 03/2003

Ship Design

Again...

So, I have a question and then a suggestion --

I haven't played far enough into a game to see if you get pre-made designs for the "standard" classes of ship. I know you get a Defender, but that's as far as I've gotten.

If you don't get a standard Cruiser, Battleship, etc., I think there should be pre-made designs for those. Here's the reason--

I still don't really like the way ship design works. The gimmick of being able to see what a ship supposedly has is a cool idea, but in reality, I don't think it works out too well. You have to zoom in really close and examine each ship to be able to tell what it has, and frankly that isn't as important as the stats. For myself, I suck at designing cool looking ships, and I'll end up with an ugly game when what I could have is a great looking game because I'm forced to design my own ships.

As much as I like the idea of being able to customize the ships in terms of speed, weapons/armor for the three forms of attack, and range, the ship design just feels too clunky. New players will get bogged down in the "Extras" section, which frankly also doesn't work that well -- it's really hard to get something to "fit" right on any given ship and the ships have TOO MANY little red dots. It gets really insane.

I just started to get into the rest of the game, and I can tell it's really awesome, but the ship design really, really drags the rest of the game down. It's something that I know a lot of people feel strongly about, and I'm not suggesting that it be scrapped, but I think it needs to be toned down.

When I want to go create a ship with the newest equipment, I shouldn't have to worry about making a stupid-looking ship. The problem is that by and large the "bits" are too large (or too small in the case of sensors, life support, and all the defenses I have seen) and you can't really make good lood looking symmetrical ships due to space constraints.

I have no idea if anyone else feels this way, but I have to continue to say something about it on the off-chance that someone else agrees strongly with me.

In short -- redesign ship design, PLEASE!!

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

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The devs have planned lots of prebuilt ships for the next beta phase (the art crew has to get them all made first).

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The whole thing works well, once you realize you point the mouse pointer directly at a red dot to place the items....before that it made no sense at all and things took forever.

I have so many comments on the game after playing it for a couple hours (including some very obvious erros that I could point out, but not appropriate to this thread) but overall i'm very pleased with the sequal.

Mike

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Citizen tberg--

I know about the need to point directly at the red dot. Really, I'm just referring to the ease with which you can create cool looking ships. There are SO many extra "bits" and SO many red dots, that the number of combinations (as they have pointed out) are nearly limitless. The problem with that is that there are so many combinations it can be hard to figure out what looks good. What they need is to trim it down some and only put red dots and extra bits that look good. In fact, you know what it feels like to me right now? It feels like a dev kit...in other words, it feels like a tool kit used by the developers to make the game instead of a finished part of the final version. Now, of course I realize this is still a beta, but I got the impression that they were going to leave ship design as it is. It's not gonna make the game *bad*, but it will cut down on the polish, IMHO.

My suggestions:

1. Cut back on the number of "red dots."
2. Cut back on the number of "extra bits."
3. Create enough pre-designed ships that a player never has to fully design a ship from scratch.
4. Don't tie the look of the ship to the precise design. What I mean by that is that the design system needs to separate the adding of components with the placement on the actual hull. I do like the idea that what you see is what you get, but in the design process, it would be better to first "design the ship" by filling up the "bucket" with parts, and THEN going to a separate screen where you can fiddle with the look. This would do several things that would be good in my book -- first, it would separate the distracting "Extras" column and put it somewhere else so there is no confusion about what has an in-game effect (this is especially important for new players). Second, if the player didn't care or didn't want to design the look of the ship, the computer could just automatically place the pieces, as it does now when you double click on the part.

Comments?

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Ship design is easy for me. The variety of the extra pices if great and allows for customisation of ships to match whatever race you're playing. There needs to be more of them (though perhaps in categories), not less.

I don't see masses of complaints about the process on the forums here. I can't see why it should be toned down to suit one, two or ten people? Especially given that there are going to be a number of pre-designs...

I hope people who haven't played the game don't take the comment "it really drags the game down" to heart. Ship design does - for one person so far.

Otherwise I reckon it's been well received given the complexity and scope of the system. Personally I spend a lot of time in there at all stages of the game creating custom utility ships and war ships. A good lookin design doesn't even have to take that long once you get a hang of it.

There _are_ areas for improvement but nerfage isn't the answer. Apoc's two screen model is probably worthy of a closer look.

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Cutting back on the number of connection points and extras does nothing to make things simpler. In fact, it isn't hard at all, once you get used to it. Once you get the stuff that looks wrong if it's not right (extras, engines, and weapons), you don't even have to place anything else by hand, you can just add it and the ship designer will find an available connection point for you. Having a button to place two of something in symetric positions might help those of us who are anal retentive, but I don't think that's enough of a selling point to make it worth asking for.

Reducing the red dots would cause more problems than it would solve. I tend not to use much in the way of the extras, so I'm already running out of mount points as it is.

What would be nice is if there were a way to copy a ship design. The player community could create libraries of empty ships, and you could install the ship pack that had the looks that you liked, and then, rather than spending time laying out the ship to try to look cool (something I don't bother with most of the time), you'd pick a design you liked, and load it up with the components you need. As is, people will create ship packs, but they'll mostly be equipped ships, and I don't see that working as well if I want to base two different ships off of the same design.

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BTW, have you seen that you can change the size of any components before placing it?

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There is a slider in the bottom of the ship view window that re-sizes components.
Suggestion: Reduce the # of RED dots, change some dots to green, then you can filter the red and green.

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Yes, I know about the slider and I don't think it works too well. It's very hard and overly tricky to get the UI to do what you want when it comes to ship design. All I ask is that the screen be looked at seriously and changed if it's found to be overly cumbersome. I could actually be happy with the number of red dots if the UI surrounding ship design was tweaked in some way. My idea above with the separate screen for designing "the look" would be nice.

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just want to pop in and say that in no way should any of the red dots be removed, IMHO. i find the ship editor easy and a pleasure to work with. you can always create a few good-looking base designs, just a hull with the extras and no engines/weapons/etc, save three or four of them and upgrade them as necessary.

i can't wait to get back into the game to try out the slider that changes the size of the extras. my ships will be carrying some very very big sticks, LOL.

the only prob i have is that some of the extra pieces do not flip mirror-like. if you attach a piece with a winglet that points up on the left, on the right side it will point down.

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Agree that the ship design seems clunky - maybe it will grow on me. Also agree that a basic ship design for a class of ships that can then be modified with the right accesories should be an option as well

gnh

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I have a problem with the way ship design is handled: it is the fact that the rotating/zooming center can't move. This is very annoying when you are trying to target a specific red dot that is hidden by other components you have added.

The fact that you can't duplicate a design is also tedious if you waon't to copy a complicated design you have made.

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I think the ship designer is great, and shaping up to be a really cool extra for the game. My only complaint is I can never seem to fit enough parts onto a ship to make it good. The parts are always just too big to add more than 2 guns and 1 defense or 1 gun and 2 defense, and if I try to add engines, forget it.

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This is basically what I'm saying -- the ship design system is a great idea, but the execution just needs to be tweaked and, well, frankly, perfected for it to do what you want -- that is, not be clunky and actually add something to the game as opposed to create a "chore" in ship design. Remember the casual gamer! He may pick up GalCiv2 and play around for a while, but once he finds out what a pain it can be to design cool looking ships, he'll give it up. I'm betting that those who like it the way it is are either artistically talented or 3d artists themselves. Trust me, it's not that fun for those of us without those talents. It's painful.

I personally like the idea of making another screen. One for design, with more easily accessible information about the parts, and one for "assemblage" of the parts, which can be bypassed and automated if the player doesn't feel like spending 10 minutes making his ship look cool. To me, it just slows down the pace of the game. Maybe go back and look at SMAC -- I don't remember that game's unit design being too terribly perplexing.

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You know, at first, ship design is great! Well, once you figure out how to get it to put the part on the exact red dot you want it to go on. And how to size the part to somewhere in the range you want it.

But after your tenth, fifteenth, fifthiest design, it sucks.

I've noticed that I've gone from building complex ships to ships that have all the features I want, and only a couple bits of "extra" so that I can tell at a glance that its different from other ships.

The truth is... ship design sucks for long term usage. It makes for a great intitial "BAM!" impression (good for reviews and showing to space game freaks).

It needs to be fixed. Seriously, it needs to be fixed. Imagine spending a few thousand hours playing GC2. Imagine how tedious its going to get, building all those different ships.

Other things that suck about the ship designer:
* Not being able to change the center of the display. That is very much needed in the current implementation, and will probably be needed in whatever future comes along.
* Too many red dots. Yes, you heard me! There are many, many, many times when you need be able to select attach points, and turn them off! That way, you can finally get that extra piece just where you want it.
* Not enough red dots. Welcome to user requirement paradoxes!

Seriously, if you don't spend way to much time creating a variety of forms using multiple extras (including extras attached to other extras), there just isn't enough glue points (red dots). It would speed my designing of ships if I had more places to glue in stuff on the basic hull.

SMAC's system wouldn't work at all for GC2. SMAC had 1 weapon slot, 1 armor slot, 1 power plant, and 2 "extra" slots. They used a basic chassis design, and only had to add the correct bitmap for that weapon/armor/power plant/extra/extra.

Now... how can ship design be improved? Blank hulls! AKA Ship kits! A "blank" hull design (base + extras), just awaiting you to stick your features on the ship.

Can we do better? Well, actually, we can.

How is that? Make the ship design more "Lego" style. That's right. You heard me. More Lego style! What do I mean? I mean you select a few basic shapes, and add what you want onto that. This means that you could start a "small" ship design with a simple rectangular box, add in a T at the back, and attach your two engines to the ends of the T. Stick on your sensors to the top point, and a colonizer module to the belly, and you have a boxxy Colonizer. A paint shop would let you spray on your chosen textures, and you are done. Think about it. With a lot less "extras" we can have the same (or near enough) variety to build what we darn well want, with less fighting with the glue spots as to where you "mean" to put a a piece, and be able to build more ships with less pieces/clicks! For the die-hard modeller, they will still end up with the same ability, but for the guy that's built a few hundred ships already, it's quicker and easier to build that ship and be done, and have the results be much more distinct with less clicks. Something very much needed in the designer.

I know that Star Dock put in a lot of work into the ship designer tool. It's a neat piece of software. But it just takes too much work to make my ships look distinct from each other so I can easily tell them apart on a reasonably (to me) sized display. And the truth is, that most of my happy warm fuzzies happen on the main map, not in spending 20 minutes in the ship designer making yet another small fighting ship that best exploits my opponents weapons/armor combination. The longer I have to spend trying to make the ships distinctive looking from each other, the less time I'm playing GC2 and having actual fun. That's as things stand now (in beta 4c).

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I want add that it is a bit annoying not to know what ships you have already mad in previous games and what you need to unlock them, as you can end up overwriting them if you design a new ship with the same name.

BTW, I have found that the 5th extra is very nice: it allows you to connect elements with various angle. The tricky part is to get the correct red dot.

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