Question on custom races and comment on ship designs

from GalCiv2 Forums
OK, I haven't been keeping up, but did they take out custom race creation? I see that you can modify existing races but it'd be nice if I could go back to my own custom creation. I guess the new tech trees make that a little difficult, huh? Is it going back in?

Secondly, I love love love the ship designer, especially now that it's animated and I can put spinny concentric circle things on all my ships, but I do have a gripe (other than the coolest base hull being the Iconian cargo ship, meaning I can't use it for fighters ;). Most of the base hulls have little thin pointy parts, often composed of extras permanently attached to them. I find myself wishing that those weren't stuck on there. It's very easy for players to attach their own pointy bits but if a ship hull COMES with those on, it's very difficult to go for a nice, clean design. Nitpicky, I know. It'd also be nice if all the base hulls were available as jewelry parts.

Thanks!
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Custom races are disabled in the beta, because (I assume) the devs only want feedback on the main races and their unique tech trees, since that's the heart of the expansion. Player feedback on what works or doesn't with custom races wouldn't help iron out the balance issues.

Custom races will be in the final TA release (AFAIK), and that should get REALLY interesting with the new tech tree editor.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Would still be nice to have it undisabled though. I don't really like playing the stock races, never have, but I'm patiant, only another month or so until release if it isn't pushed back again (I'm not complaining, longer the wait the better the game!)

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
if I could comment on races and ship designs. I assume your talking about Gal Civ II. I used to play, and like, the game. For some reason, it didn't stick with me though, the races seem awfully unbalanced. I suppose when I played and loved MoM and MoO, that sort of thing never bothered me, but in my aging, I've become quite iritated by small items like that.

On ship designs, it heartily annoys me that the connector points are not centered. If you take a single straight peice, for example, and simply line a bunch of them up, they become hopelessly skewed. It isn't a small thing, but noticable even with just two items connected together. And the connecter points on the ship models tend to be horribly unaligned. I seriously spent more time designing ships then actually playing the game (call me weird, I don't care). It was fun for me. But when the connection points are so terribly misaligned with respect to the body of the item, it is just no fun for me to sit and design elaborate ships. If it isn't fun for me to design elaborate ships, it isn't fun for me to play Gal Civ II. If there were no ship design options at all, it might be fun for me again. But the option to design ships, sitting there available for me, but with the connection points so carelessly placed on the items; it is downright frustrating. The ship designer is there taunting me, teasing me to come design ships, but when I do, they will never come out right due to misaligned points. It is, I'm sure, something a lot like what Tantalus experiences in Hell.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Personally, I always thought the biggest shame was that designing your ship has zero effect whatsoever. Where or how you mount anything has no effect on anything at all, which rather detracts from the system. Mounting more hull pieces doesn't grant you more hull space or points (or cost you more), mounting weapons facing a specific direction doesn't produce any useful results, and making the weapons bigger or smaller has no impact on their effectiveness. It ultimately seems like a hollow exercise.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
that's because the extra hull parts are just to make the ship look cool!

-Dave
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
... or differentiate templates & stock SD_Ships from your wonderful creations until upgrades need to be performed again!
Although i agree that the 'hardpoints' system should be somehow optimized to ease the process. A simple thing (maybe not code-wise) such as a relatively small hovering zoomer-box gaining focus on intuitive coordinates slotted by mouse clicks might do the trick, btw.

- Zyxpsilon.