DEVS - Any plans for an external ship maker?

I'd love it. I'd also like an option for a "ship viewer" (in-game, too) that shows you a fullscreen view of your ship on a field of stars for you to look at and take good screenshots of.

Maybe, also a battle simulator...this game would benefit from the addition of combat tactics

the screen shots you can take on the shipyard screen. You just have nebulas in the background.

I want to fly Frogboy's little frog around.

If you have a suitable graphic program (GMAX or Milkshape) you can call up the ship models and add in a star backround. However what I use to take shots of my masterpieces (or not) is a freeware program called MW Snap, it is small and just activated with a key press, also very good for battle shots.

http://www.mirekw.com

http://www.mirwoj.opus.chelm.pl

are the links

My purposes is not to take screenshots but to actually make ships without being in the main executable. I suspect it would be rather easy to do since all you need to do is rip that portion of the game and put into its own executable. The only thing that needs to be added is full technology availability and a simplified technology tree (so you can know the requirements of said technologies).

yeah that would be really handy

This is probably a dumb question I know, but what do you mean by an external ship maker.

External as in seperate from the main game executable. It is its own program.

I agree. It would be nice to be able to sit down without playing the game when I am in an "artistic" frame of mind and design some cool ships that I can then use in the game later when I'm playing.

When I am playing the game, my focus is on beating up on my enemies and not on making nice, pretty ships. It slows down gameplay tremendously to stop and design a new ship.

I would like to make one, but I don't know if we'll have time.  Possibly after Dark Avatar.

Glad to know someone up there at Stardock noticed this thread. While I understand the necessary balancing of resources (manpower, money, time, etc) I would like to have the shipmaker sooner than "sometime after Dark Avatar". I guess I will just have to live without it until the higher powers have time to do it.