Custom Ship Design (Advice Sought)

Custom ship design is frustrating.

Someone enlighten me please. Whenever I attempt custom ship design - no matter how careful I am - my add-ons always end up sideways, backwards, upside down, etc. I cannot seem to understand how you confirm orientation when approaching a hardpoint. Should you zoom? View top down? Also, when you want to duplicate the same weapon or item at multilple hardpoints, how do you get them all the same size - is there a copy/paste mechanism? Please Help!!

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+451

As to getting your parts on teh right hardpoint, it can indeed by annoying. All I can do is try finding a zoom level and angle that lets me get it there, slowly moving the part around until it hits the right place and clicking it on. Another strategy if you have one or two hardpoints getting in your way is to place temporary jewelry on them so you can get at a hardpoint behind/between them, then remove the temp parts once the one you want is in place.

FYI, some hardpoints are simply pointing the wrong direction, or unevenly placed compared to their mirror hardpoints on teh other side of the hull. Some users have catalogued many of these problem hardpoints so hopefully the art crew can fix them in an upcoming patch.

As to sizing, so long as you place all the items you want the same size in succession, you should be fine. The size slider keeps its setting until you change it again. If you decide to resize something after you place it or want to make a matching piece, you're probably best off removing and re-placing it so they are all guranteed to be the same size.

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also if you use the attachment that flips the hardpoint to the other direction, it literally flips the hardpoint... so, if you place something on it, it will be facing the other direction, but it will also be upside down. If you want to simply rotate a hardpoint 180 degrees, it's better to just use the -90 degree hardpoint modifier.

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Do any of you think that the ship builder zoom/pan controls are not sensitive enough??? is there anyway to adjsut this perhaps in an xml file?

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OK good... I thought I was doing something wrong (and getting kind of frustrated when all I wanted to do was rotate something 180 degrees in the other direction, only to have it completely flip the object upside-down as well!)

Anyway, does the "Rotate -90 Degrees" option actually work to accomplish this? I tried using the +90 degree option -- I figured I'd need to use it twice to get the point to rotate the full 180 degrees. But when I tried this, it rotated the hard point once in that direction, and then back to the original position when I click on it the second time. Does the -90 work differently?

Thanks for any help (and regardless if it works or not, I still love the ship builder!)

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You can use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom, just like on the maps. I find it very precise that way.

Tony

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+451

[ Do any of you think that the ship builder zoom/pan controls are not sensitive enough??? is there anyway to adjsut this perhaps in an xml file?

No, but if you have a wheeled/three-button mouse you can zoom using teh wheel, and rotate in all directions by clicking and dragging with the wheel/middle button.

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sadly when the hardpoints are officially fixed it will mess up alot of peoples designs.

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