Sometimes I'll take some time to design my ship, but if I just want to make somethign quick and throw some weapons on it, I'll use one of the templates.

I play on a 52" HDTV using a Gyration mouse as my main controller. I used to try for symmetry but getting components to mate with the hardpoints using this mouse is an exercise in frustration - the capture window is much too small. The ships you get by double-clicking components look strange but this is a science fiction game. Alien naval architects may think they look perfectly normal!

I'm usually in too much of a hurry to get back to the game to bother much with designing ships. I don't even use the templates most of the time. I choose a hull, and stick on whatever I need. Of course, the components should be in the right place- guns in the front, engines on the back, but other than that, meh.

Ah, but nature is symmetrical, and by all observed human and animal psychologists, symmetry is desirable

Interesting to see that so many people don't care that much about designing their own ships. Could it be that Stardock misjudged the popularity of this aspect of the game?

I doubt it. Even if well over 50% care nothing for ship designing the minority percentage is probably large enough to justify the feature. I could be wrong, but I suspect the responses to this thread are not representative of the overall popularity of the feature.

I ALWAYS design my own ships.. i love the ship designer and could spend hours playing with it.

For me it is a MAJOR highlight and plus of the game and was a large deciding factor in me originally buying the game.

You should watch the Blackhole Eruptor missile(the most powerful weapon in the game) in action in a normal, but zoomed-in, battle. The missile itself is a purple speck, but the explosion is awesome with the target crumbling and getting sucked into the black hole.

The Combat Viewer(enabled through 'full battles') ruins everything though, because the ships don't explode for a long time AFTER they have been hit. Fixing this flaw would help things considerably.

I suck at designing, but I sure have one hell of a fun time trying!

I just like combining hulls using Kryo's mod, then saving them as a template for later. I don't usually bother with any of the other jewelry, just the odd part here and there. You can get some interesting hull designs by combining three or four different ones using Kryo's mod.

In DL I designed my ships. Since DA I only use the templates but place the components myself. I mean the templates look really good. When TA has custom races enabled I will probably start designing my own ships.

Love designing my ships. Spend the most time on designing planetary assualt ships. Its a one shot ship. Probably breaks apart in the atmosphere throwing out lots of junk and chaff to nerf ground fire. Probably one of the more complicated ships with all the ground attack shuttles.

Yeah, "weapons in the front, engines in the back thats how we like to attack"... I wonder if there is a song in there.

Duh

I spend plenty of time designing my ships, but that's generally because I have no clue what to name the class, and I just try to design cool-looking ships which'll give me some sort of inspiration for a name. Granted, this makes the "Scorpion" class ship fairly common in my Drath games, but those ships just look so cool!

Ship design is half of the fun. I also tend to add a small story to each of my vessels and slightly add more and more jewelry to them as I progress furthur in to the technology trees. Such as - Valkyrie I M-4 S-8. ( Misslex4 Shieldx8 , habbit of naming my stats on my ships. ) I would keep it fairly simple, then - Valkyrie II M-6 S-10 and add a extra jewelry wing or something else to spurce it up a bit. As to .. is it "worth" adding these visal enchancments. Well, personaly yes. Strategicly, no. But the game is for fun, so you might as well enjoy watching your own designs blow up and watching all the various adtional parts explode off.





One of my ships ^

It all depends for me. Usually I find that when I'm in a big map game and theres not too much going on I spend a lot of time designing ships. But even when I'm trying real hard to win, I still spend at least a little effort to personalize my ship. I'll never just use the already made templates. I think the ship designer is one of the biggest parts in this game, and one that really sets it apart - at least for me - from other strategy titles.

I also spend time carefully naming the ships as well as the classes and typing out a good description. I like to experiment and find combinations of components that serve more specific purposes.

For example, the Interceptor; basicly just a very very fast ship with good sensors to respond to threats in friendly space, like an unseen transport sneaking up on a planet or a colony ship trying to get a free foothold in my territory. When the Interceptor sees them, it can reach them with ease before they get where they're going. Ofcourse the great speed uses space and usually these ship designs aren't combat effective unless in large packs. However they can always get out of trouble!

Another one I made was the Explorer, which was a large hull design that had extreme range and excellent sensors, along with enough of an armament to defend itself. It was used to, obviously, explore the gigantic map. It also had a survey module but by the time I had produced on all the anomalies were gone.