Core ships better than custom designs?

Well first of all (I'm only using DL and DA so I'm not sure if things are different for TA), core warship designs have no engine components, so they will be slower. To keep up in the colony rush, you should design a fast colony ship and fast constructors.

And for core ships being overcapacity, I've never seen that, but my guess is that they were made when miniturization techs were researched.

yea i have my own colony ships and constructors and things that work fine where my designs are better just like you described, putting on engines etc. Was just noticing my issue on combat ships, maybe your right about the miniturization thing but i guess its weird i'd still be able to build them without the advanced miniturization and they're still over capacity.

Some core ships are equipped with items beyond your current research level.  Don't believe any are weapon or propulsion. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

All warships have weapons, but they do not have propulsion, and only basic sensors and support.

That makes sense. So to rephrase my question then, in the end assuming hypothetically you have all relevant combat ship research done (weapons, miniturization, etc.) Does a custom ship win out due to brute strength compared to a core ship or just the fact that you could tailor your ships to meet opponent weaknesses? Thanks for all the feedback so far btw!

I cannot speak for TA, but I have not seen this in DA.

Have you ever selected a "core" design and then hit the upgrade button while in the "shipyard" screen?  (The one where you design ships)

If you do that, then toggle the display option which shows only functional pieces.

Next, look at each of the revealed components and compare them to what you can put on a design-your-own ship.  Are they the same?  Are there any components there that you cannot select for your own ship?  If not, then there is no problem.  If yes, then can you actually build the ship which has the components you have not researched?  To the best of my knowledge (in DA), the only anomalous ship is the Empire Flagship, which has survey sensors in a medium hull, both of which you cannot replicate in a new ship until you research those technologies.

Well, it depends; the core designs are good because in case of a sudden war or whatever, you can start pumping ships easy, instead of taking some 10-15 minutes to play around the shipyard.

But in a 1-on-1, custom vs core hmm...depends; the core designs are available when you get the relevant tech attatched to them, while custom ships you can made them as you wish and put what you want on it...

Also, the core designs seems to favour laser weaponry;  I had Laser I researched and Stinger IV, and the core desings that were showing up were ALL armed with lasers instead of stingers.

The point defenses were up there, so core design armour was following my defence techs...but weapon wise they did not.

I would say core will win; if only because you can tailor them to the demands of whatever situation you're in.

I removed the "give designs to player< option turned off, frankly, my TAN Mars class corvettes are way better than those Battle Axes (even more FASTA with my TAN Mercury support fregate wiht Fleet Bubble III bwahaha in that fleet)

Twilight of the Amor 2.0something version I got btw.

The core or design have the same attributes.  Tailor FTW.

Here are some pics to describe my initial question more. In my current game this is the Phoenix M6 with components that put it over capacity. I highlighted the Laser Mk 5's so you can see their size, its 4 capacity. In the pic you'll notice there are five Laser's on the ship at a size of 4 each putting total capacity of weapons alone at 20 on a 26 capacity small fighter. Also on the ship are a pair of superior deflectors at a size of 4 each and also one plasma cannon mk1 at size 8. Tese components put it way over. Although I'm curious why the shield defense doesnt factor in on the stats box or the extra plasma cannon.

Here on the next one i removed the laser mk 5's and just left the one plasma cannon and two deflectors and you can see the ship is officially at 0 capacity filled, what gives??

This last pic is just some random custom fighter i put together with five Laser Mk 5's for reference, as you can see there is no space for any other components i.e. shield deflectors etc.

I'm playing Galciv2 ultimate edition(DA+TA) version 2.01. Only functional components are showing and the only mod on the game is Kryo's hull ship mod. At this point in the game I have researched the techs for all of those components (plasma cannon mk1, shield deflectors, laser mk5) and I have basic miniturization only. Can anyone further clarify this? From these pics is where my question arose from, does the core ship win out or a custom designed ship, and currently in my game it seems there would be no reason to build a custom designed ship when the core ship designs are over capacity with no penalty or watever. Thanks for all the feedback and hope to get some answers to this.

Ah i know that problem! When ships are upgraded and saved, using the same name, often the ship will not update its appearance, also old active components can remain as visible components on the ship but they are not actually there! Also as an added weirdness bonus, you will see the visual effects of the old weapons fire in the combat screen even though there not really there!!

What you have to do to solve this problem is save all your ship designs without any active components when you first design them. and use some booring name for them that you won't need for combat ships. Once you have saved that design template you can then upgrade it, add weapons etc and save under a different name.

Because of this idiotic upgrading nonsense, you will end up with a huge pile of similar ships with different weapons loadouts as you advance along the tech tree, then you cannot delete any if you still have active ships of that version in play.... it is seriously irritating! you just have to put up with it until you get to the end of the game and then delete them all so they won't come along and croud up your ship list in the next game!

Your explanantion makes sense i think i've seen it happen on a different game when i designed my own fighters, but the first two pics I have posted are actual in-game core design ships, does the issue you described happen also with core ships?

Think I'm beginning to understand your question.  I have noticted some core ship components are not functional.  Doing a upgrade...deleting some components has no effect...they weren't really there.  This may be what your'e experiencing.

If not, you can test using cheats.  If you still don't have the answer, let me know.  I'll do some tests.

In the original version of Galciv 2 i did not have these problems at all, although the warning message not to use the same ship name in an upgrade was still there!

I could continue upgrading an old ship design as i went along, and it would even allow me to upgrade all the ships in play of that design as well. Now, with DA, if i upgrade and use the same name, there is no option to upgrade the ships in play to the new design (you have to do it using other options) and all these other problems occur as well.

I made a mistake the other night too, spend a couple of hours building a new design then saved it using an old name.... the new design completely vanished, not even a reload could bring it back, all that effort wasted.

jacklv and Mystikmind i think you guys have it right. Gonna play some a lil later and mess with it but per the pics i posted i think your both correct in that the deflector and plasma cannon component on the phoenix m6 arent really there.

For certain Mystikmind is correct.  Saving upgraded designed ships with the same name causes problems in DL/DA.  Let us know what you find.

edit:  Regardless, access to a given core ship requires specific research which you may not otherwise find necessary.  Custom designed ships offer that flexibility.

As for the effectiveness of core ships in play, there are none that i would use! You need to build your own ships so you can specialize against what the AI is using. You need to combine two weapon types in each fleet but all ships using the same defence type. Then you need two kinds of fleet with different defence types.

If i want a colony ship, i throw a colony pod on a small hull, thats it! gets built much quicker than the standard one which makes up for it being half the speed. The first things i research in the game are early engine upgrades until i can build a cargo hull colony ship at speed 3, then i switch to those from the small hulled ones.

If i want a ship to guarrison my planet, i throw the cheapest weapon i can find on a tiny hull. Lets face it, any ship i build to guarrason a planet is dead anyway if attacked by a fleet, so it may as well be the cheapest possible ship.

My first combat fleets are same as above too, i never bother using small hulls at all except for those early colony ships and sometimes early constructors if i don't have enough miniturisation to use tiny hulls. Lets face it, there is no early combat ship i can build that can compete with the AI, so then we come back to the cheap as possible rule. Only when i have some miniturisation will i throw a cheap as possible defence module on my tiny hulled fighters, then i can send them off to my military starbases. Military starbase ship defence bonuses all become active against all weapon types just because you have one little tiny defence module on your fighter..... with a number of military starbases together in one spot, this makes a tiny hulled cheap as possible fleet into the most powerful force in the game, even right towards the end of the game! Yes thats rite, 1st level cheapest possible tiny hulled ships being the most powerful force right tthrough the game!

Good defensive Doctrine there Mystikmind, but for offense, you'll need those small (and up) hulls so you can have a good mix of engine, weapons and armour.

Granted, I built my military ships with a small or medium hull, only because for quick strike capabilities, good punch and ability to take punches as well.  Combined with some logistics research, (and fleet bubble III tech, if you play Human)  you can have fleets with speeds up to 7-8 pc/week (at least with ion drives), solid defense, good punch, and wiht soem rehenforced hulls, they'll be tougher and waaayy more useful than some "static" tiny ship vessels.

Granted, one advantage I see, tiny ships count for 3 logistics, compared to 5 for medium hulls...so you can stack a crap load of them, at least 1 more tiny for every 2 medium hulls

Core ships will only become available after you have researched all the necessary techs to built them.  However, you may be exceeded in your research in one or more areas beyond what was needed to build that core ship.  A well designed custom ship should be better than a core ship because it will use all the latest techs at that point plus can be tailored to its mission (e.g., a cheap colony/constructor ship, a fast colony/constructor ship with extra range, a fast survey ship with extra sensors, a combat ship tailored to the enemy's weapons and defenses, etc.)  I'll build a fast constructor with extra range to claim a distant resource before the AI players; after I have claimed it I then build it up using cheap constructors (just a constructor module on a tiny hull if a have the necessary miniturization techs otherwise a smal hull).

The Destroyer is a perfect example of core ships that suck.  6 beam attack on a large hull is practically insulting.

Yea, obviously you need primary fleets that can operate away from the protection of your military starbases.

In that instance, i won't even bother trying to form a primary fleet until i have at least medium hulls and some worth while techs to go with it. I play with Drengin set to Godlike, so i know it is totally pointless trying to build an early primary fleet with just small hulled ships.... and sometimes it remains pointless even with medium hulls! In many of my games, i go streight from building tinies to large hulled ships, thats how long it takes me to gather some techs that stand any chance in combat. Remember there is no point to building things that are just going to die, unless you can build them as cheap as possible!, IE, tiny hulled ships!!

The advantage of tiny ships lies with military starbases, since the multiplyer effect draws much more power from the starbase! and fleets of tiny hulled ships cost much less to support if they have cheapest weapon and defence possible, and lame assed planets that take hundreds of years to build decent ships, can be set to build those cheap tinies in just a few turns!!

There was a bug where the size increase of components for hullsizes above tiny didn't apply to core designs. So, core ships that were amll or bigger got to cheat. It's fixed now, but if you're not patched up to date...

I forgot one other big advantage of tiny hulled ships....

Later in the game when maximum weapons technology is in play, hitpoints and defences become totally irrelevant.

so i stop building large vessels that are only going to die anyway and only build tiny hulled ships again! Maximum tech tinies pack quite a punch and will kill AI large vessels just as quick as they can kill my tinies. So while the AI is loosing large expensive vessels, i am loosing less expensive tinies!