| Why not forego cheat mode and just modfify your raceconfig file for the techs and abilities you want? |
Hull hit points are affected by your hull technology. Once you advance to a certain level hull-wise, those ships you save all require that technology. So if I maxed raceconfig to give me huge hulls, none of the ship designs I save would be available until I successfully research Huge Hulls in my games.
This feature actually works to my advantage for my purposes. Ships I design as 3rd generation (using Large Hulls and Warp engines) don't appear in my game until I have researched those two technologies.
So to design and save my four generations of ships, I start with basically no techs (not entirely true, but close enough) and design them with only hulls, jewelry and engines, and then save them. Then I advance my hull and engine tech to the next gen level and Upgrade each design then save them as a new design. Rinse and Repeat.
In addition to being instantly identifyable as one of my Terran Alliance Star Fleet ships, all of my designs show a technology and generational progression as such that once you understand the rules, you can look at any ship and identify the generation (or tech level) as well as it's size and use.
I'm working on a web page that will show the history of the Terran Alliance Star Fleet. I'm currently gathering screen shots for it now.
