I'm certain one of the great attractions of GC2 is the player's ability to build their own ships and then play with them in-game. Unfortunately some of the more elaborate designs tax the engine so much that it becomes difficult to play in anything other than tactical view, which eventually defeats the purpose of those cools designs. (BTW I'm running a GeForce 8600 on a Dual Core 3.0 with 2GB RAM -- not exactly a setup with weak wrists).
I'm definitely looking forward to TA's improved hull memory usage (I'm getting TA on the official release date), but it would have been cool if the engine was limber enough to deal with all those complex designs without lag, or if there was a "re-rendering" option in ship creation that optimised the design (i.e. removing bits hidden inside or behind others, clearing obscured textures, or even fusing the entire design together into a single chunk).
Or, alternatively, designers will just have to use some design economy, forego bristling 200-part ships, and make creative designs with less than twenty components
J.
