Making ships cooler!

from GalCiv2 Forums
Some ideas to make the ships a lot cooler. In no particular order.

1) Hit point (hp) and repair modules.
Example ship A has 16 space, 6 hp, and 100% repair.
Adding a 4 hp, 4 space, 20 credit module and a 30% repair, 2 space, 15 credit module.
Ship A now has 10 remaining spaces, 10 hp, 130% repair, and costs 35 extra credits.

2) Sunken spaces for guns and engines. Would be neat if the spaces opened before the guns fire!

3) Holes in the ships. Would be nice to have a ship bay / docking port.

4) Moddable hulls. If we can change the components why not the hulls? Maybe make a screen just for that and put all the structures there. Then the old ship design screen can just be for components (weapons, defense, etc..).

5) How do the ships turn?

6) Defense modules should not add hardpoints to the ship. Why should adding armor to the *whole* ship add a little blob to the hull? It would be better to just leave the ship as it is without the extra hardpoint.

7) I like the idea of having defense components. So you want a deflector array, find a parabola from the list and paste it on your ship. Giant spheres would be cool for shields. Retexturing the ship or adding tiny circling fighters would be interesting. Maybe even a glowing something around the ship. But no mandatory hardpoints!

8) Defense should take up 0 space but cost the same. Most defense consists of things like electroplating the ships hull. By definition defense is an expensive thing that does not really change the capacity of ships. Besides right now almost everyone is ignoring defense in favor of extreme offense. Eliminating the space requirement would really change the dynamics of the game making it much more interesting. Remember defense is not cheap. Adding it could double or even triple the cost of ships. Finally, this is what all the other cool games in history have done.
ideas
4,499 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1: Not on your life.

2: Unimportant. Cosmetic only.

3: Also unimportant.

4: It would be nice to be able to visually design a hull from scratch just using structural components.

5: ?

6: This is a game. Not reality. And shields/missile defense do make sense, so armor works the same way.

7: Cosmetic, and therefore unimportant.

8: Nonsense. Errant nonsense. But you can mod it in if you really feel like it.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
4: It would be nice to be able to visually design a hull from scratch just using structural components.


Check out Kryo's Hull System Mod to do exactly that.

Link
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1) Hit point (hp) and repair modules.
Example ship A has 16 space, 6 hp, and 100% repair.
Adding a 4 hp, 4 space, 20 credit module and a 30% repair, 2 space, 15 credit module.
Ship A now has 10 remaining spaces, 10 hp, 130% repair, and costs 35 extra credits.


While this seems like a nice idea, it throws the whole HP balance out of whack. Tiny ships would recieve way too much benefit from HP boosters. If you just want more HP, mod the hulls. + repair is even worse. If you have too much repair, it is litterally impossible for someone to kill a big ship by wearing it down slowly, since they would just repair right back. I'm not saying it's not possible to add it in, but while they seem nice, the balancing required to make them work would be tremendous, not to mention how much work it would be to get the AI to use these modules correctly. The net effect is that it would just make the game easier for humans, which isn't a good thing.


2-7: are all cosmetic changes, most of which you can do if you mod the models correctly.


8) Defense should take up 0 space but cost the same. Most defense consists of things like electroplating the ships hull. By definition defense is an expensive thing that does not really change the capacity of ships. Besides right now almost everyone is ignoring defense in favor of extreme offense. Eliminating the space requirement would really change the dynamics of the game making it much more interesting. Remember defense is not cheap. Adding it could double or even triple the cost of ships. Finally, this is what all the other cool games in history have done.


This would be just absolutely sickening. You could build ships with 8 bazilliion defenses in each category if this was the case, sure it would cost a ton, but it would be completely invulnerable. Realism vs. Gameplay, Gameplay wins every time. Finally, what 'cool' games would that be? In every games that I can think of with ship design, defenses have always taken up slots or spaces. From the moo series, to stars!, to the space empire series, they all cost some space...
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually I like the idea of HP and Repair modules. They'd need to be balanced for cost, size, and effective values. Proper sizemod values could take care of the imbalance of the benefits. The hp bonus might need to be a percentage. They could even be restricted to only have 1 module of each type on a ship if there is a problem with them being too powerful if overused. It would add more variety to the options you have. Should I squeeze in that HP bonus, toss on another weapon, or put on an extra engine for speed?
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The HP/repair option could work if done with %ages rather than absolute numbers, but unless you're already at huge ship size, why not just go up a size and get more space too?

Defences taking up no space? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Talk about game breaking! Who needs fleets when you can have just half a dozen invincible 1000 defence ships?
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree with pretty much all of the original poster's ideas, as long as the devs are able to make them work within the game balance. I see Repair and No-Cost Defence being problematic however.

PS. Alfonse, no need to be rude and haughty. It's just a game, bro...chill out a little. Citizen Number Muncher isn't trying to ruin your favorite game, he's making suggestions, giving feedback. It's a time-honored tradition here in the game industry, cut him a little slack, sheesh!
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Having individual modules for hp / repair would probably take too much tinkering with the AI to be even considered. I like the idea, but its just not that feasible. It might be easier to expand the tech tree to include more hit point and repair techs, although they would need to better define how repair works. Is the percentage in your civ stats a % of the ship's total hp, or is it applied to a base number, perhaps modified by ship size? I think it would be nice to factor in some complexity with repairs - the S.S. Minnow takes a week to fix, but a Battleship might be out of action for many months - tailor it to fit with gameplay of course, who wants to wait 3 years (156 turns!) to have your battleship repaired after its first fight? They could include a cap on what can be repaired: Tiny 50% of total hp a week, 40% for smalls, and on. That way, even at max repair tech, it would take 10 turns to fully repair a huge (provided the huge limped back to a planet with less than 10% of its total hp) . I just pulled these numbers out of a hat, so don't go biting my head off... but its an idea.

I agree, no space defense is a bit silly. Armor takes up mass, defensive systems take power, internal space, support crews, etc. Look at the US Navy's CIWS anti-missile system (Those white R2-D2 things with a 20mm gatling gun): the ship had to have a mount for it, meaning the design was tweaked to make room and provide a clear field of fire to operate, it needs power, control systems, ammunition, spare parts storage, and a crew to service it. It's not a huge part of a Navy ship, but it does take up space.

I could see some weapon and defense techs have a special ability to take up less space (much like the Good/Neutral/Evil special items) where the cost and maintenance are higher than the equivalent regular item, but you free up a few points of internal space.