Ship Designer Difficult

Not very intuitive

from GalCiv2 Forums
Does anyone else find the ship designer quite difficult to use, especially when it comes to 'rotating' hard points in order to get extras lined up properly?

Trying to create the classic Star Trek Federation look with the "L" shaped add on is extremely difficult and hit or miss...

I can get the *_| bit lined up ok, but when I try and add the reciprocal bit to the other side... ie |_*_| it's almost impossible to get the thing pointing in the right direction.

Any hints and tips? The rotate + or - 90 degrees doesn't seem to do what it says it does,
3,415 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I know, the rotate thingys are just too much work, and often doesnt work out as you expect.
I would want a simple mouse-wheel scroll while having a part in my "hand" to rotate it around, instead of spending nearly 5 minutes on a single hardpoint trying to get it to face the right direction
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Theres two parts of the L object, either one above or below the object you used for one side there should be a object that is a properly rotated version of it. The icons can be misleading...
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How about just adding a "Summetry" checkbox when adding things to the ships. If you add one thing on a hardpoint, you'll get the the same thing mirrored on the reverse hardpoint. This would be easier than having to manually select and rotate and place a differently aligned object.

Also, I haven't even used this feature yet, I would like to, but there are just way too many upgrades in the techtree for it to be practical in the game. I would have preferred it if they'd kept it to design only, with no visible ability add-ons, so that you'd be able to choose from a larger pool of custom and prefabricated designs that'd fit the stats of the ships. In my games I tend to use a nomenclature even to keep track on the different types because there are just so many, with governing stats for descriptions. My five cents.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How about just adding a "Summetry" checkbox when adding things to the ships.


Excellent idea. You check it, and it keeps on doing symmetrical adds till you uncheck it.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Brad has mentioned that they will be making future updates to how the ship builder works, so as to make it more intuitive and robust. But I would think that is a major project so you may need to wait a few months for something to come together on that.