FreeOrion

Ok so if possible...


Do Away with "small, medium, large, rather large'

And bring in a whole new system.........(possible????)

The system is thus ; (personalizing creation of ships is what its all about, as well as fun )

Hull Size;
A spreadsheet type window of selections;

In displacement tonnes;
From 10, 20, 30(fighter sizes), 200,500,1000 (sorta bigger), 10,000,20,000,50,000 (bigger still) ----> upto 1,000,000,000

Hull shape;
Box, Cylinder, Airframe, Spherical,,,,,

Hull armour/thickness.....

Power plant,
you have nuke tech say,, you can define it's size and output, not just "nuclear drives'

Maneuver drives, Yes you have great tech but you can scale it down....
So Plasma-drives, but small and cheap if ya want to....
Or if you want to specialise, make the drives very predominant.. Great for specialised mission ships..

Sensors;
etc etc,

The key is many options. Not just one. And so you can build crafts with character, and very personlaised.

To illustrate;


WW2 fighters;

The Zero had no armour. So it was fast, very maneuverable, had excellent climb rate and very long range.
But was a flying gas tank, 1 hit = ribs for everyone.

The P47 = Heavily armoured, Big engine, large and heavy. = Great protection, high speed. Could not dogfight with a zero, had to dive on them and then escape. (called boom and zoom).


So these options should always be open i think with existing tech.



Armour (mass) affects speed, etc etc.




Hull Size (in displacement tonnes)............Weight.......Cost..............Volume

5...........................................................2.............1...................5
10..........................................................4.............2...................10
20.........................................................8..............4...................20
30............etc..etc...................
40
50
60
.
.
.
.
.
.
5000
6000
7000
.
.
.
100,000
200,000
etc

Armour.....certain factor? multiply the weight and cost of hull.....


Power plant

Nuclear
displacement of power plant;..............Output in MegaWatts..........Volume................Weight
1........................................................0.2................................2........................4
2........................................................0.4................................5.........................8
4........................................................0.8.................................10......................18
8........................................................1.8....................etc...etc..
12.......................................................2.6
20......etc, etc
40
etc, etc

Fusion
5
10
20
40
80
.
.
100,000 !!
Plasma
etc,etc

Maneuver drives;
etc etc

Remember that we're making a game, not a simulation.

Also, you can brainstorm all you want, but anything we actually use will have to fit within the established design decisions, which are noted in the v0.4 Design Pad.

okey dokey.


Perhaps my ideas are better utilized within the tech tree.

So basic considerations in ship design would be;

Speed

Maneuverability

Armour


If one could alter these not 'just' with specialized technologies, but simply as a matter of design that would be very great imo.

So you would opt for larger power plants or space drives for a faster ship.
Not just the latest technology and therefore every ship operating at the same speed...
Making sense??

I'd think engine displacement would be part of the hull size research - to quote the design pad:

Engine power would class as a basic characteristic, don't you think? Although you have a good point in that it would add some spice and tactics to combat. However, this is already doable with the current system - adding an extra module in the design for "extra engines" or "turbochargers" or whatever would mean one less slot in which one could add armour or guns.

(although while we're on the subject, I personally think sorting by weight rather than size - "Light", "Heavy" and "Capital"/"Super-Heavy" instead of "Small", "Large" and "Huge" - rings better for spaceships)

I like the idea about Reactors as a fundamental Ship Component.
I think it's more realistic than drives.

The more power your Gen is producing the more weapons (esp. Beams) you can support (at once),
and the faster your ship!

Maybe doing something like, each ship has an energy score depending on its Reactor.
When firing weapons, moving around or using certain specials (like powering shields) energy is used up.
When the ship has used up all its energy, it cannot do anything (or much) for the rest of the round.
At the beginning of every round, the energy is either completely refilled or regenerates at a certain rate.
Their can also be specials like Capacitators (aka Batteries) to boost a ships energy score in an instant...
(You know what I mean)


While I generally like the idea of non-fixed hull sized, I can see the problems tailored to this.
Like calculation of hull and armor scores, etc.
But maybe it's worth the try?
Some simple formula for calculating hull and armor depending on the amount of capacity points used
and some options like in MoO3 (hull and armor ranging from very light to very heavy)

Well, my 2 cents for now.
BTW, Happy New Year from Germany


EDIT:
And sorry for reviving rotting posts.

I was just wondering, what with the design thread closed on the subject, have we actually settled on a battle-damage-calculations system for 0.4? From what I've seen in the thread it seemed as if Geoff had finalized on one but I don't know which.

_________________
Captain? What does the big shiny red button do?

Yes, a decision was made. It's described in the v0.4 Design Pad.

This is basically a "me too" post. I just want to say that I like the idea of having quite a bit of customisability on the ships, and IMO, that would include having a lot of options with engines. I think you could have engines effect speed, fuel efficiency, cost, acceleration in combat, stealthiness, etc. So, having just a single engine for a given hull avoids a lot of interesting subtlety in balancing a ship.

Cruisers could use the cheapest, fastest engines, with low fuel efficiency, sacrificing equipemnt slots that could be used for weapons to maximise speed. Thus, you have a ship that can patrol your empire, quickly moving to any internal threats. But, is poor as an offensive ship because it needs to refuel frequently to do it.

Scouts would use the most fuel efficient engines, so that they can go as far as possible, even if it makes them extremely visible in combat, and it takes a few extra turns to get there.

Stealth ships would have to forego the speedy but highly visible fusion torch drives in favor of things like mag sails or something which don't hurt stealth, even when moving at maximum speed. Such drives would be slow and expensive, but make for a pesky enemy.

On a related topic, has there been any discussion about differentiating between internal and external equipment slots? I'm new 'round here, so I'm still looking through some of the past discussions. Seems like it would be interesting to say that something like a targeting computer that improves the probability of a hit when shooting could be in an internal or external slot, but a weapon or engine would have to be in an external slot. Shield generators could be internal under the assumption that the field permeates the ship, fuel tanks could be internal, a self repair system could be internal. If you have two similar ships with X number of slots, the one with all of the slots able to mount external equipment would be more expensive than the one that has internal-only slots.

Ship part types can be specified as mountable on only internal, only external, or both types of slot. Number of each type of slot should be an important property of hull types.

Hey. This is my first post here. I love MOO2 and when i discovered this project i almos sh** my pants
And please be patient for my english I hope i'm understable.

I think it should be possible to build ships without any hyperspace drive. Is it possible? ( maybe i didn't noticed)
Ships without hyperspace drive would be cheapest and able to carry more, but be able to operate only in the star system in wich they were build.

What do you think about this ?

ive seen quite a few posts about ship design now and have my own ideas about this,

first of all id like to say the slot system holds a lot of merit no worrying about what to do with that 10 units of hull space anymore.

However that said, i think in its current form it has several drawbacks -
1 - too simple, making for less diversity in armaments and overall ship designs, not entirely a bad thing but too simple is plain and boring.

2 - reduces number of some technologies, such as miniaturization, and mount sizes, spinal med, small, point, etc. (not a huge concern until more technologies are developed) but i would say a deciding factor in the long run

3 - size relationship , dose a small laser take as much space as a whole colony, does a fleet of fighters take as much space as a plasma cannon, a battery of missiles take as much space as sensor array etc. (biggest flaw IMO).

two other issues i see right off,
1 - armor on the inside of ships thereby reducing the number of weapons/slots available, this makes some since balance wise but if armor is going to modify speed or something its an added penalty.

2 - lack of engines, ive seen this discussed and my argument for them is from a cost standpoint, take a colony ship for example, expensive to build outright reducing the quality of the engine can cut the cost on these types of ships, as well as transports if used, id like to see an inter-stellar drive and sub-stellar drive, this adds some diversity and tech as well as allowing one to opt for slower inter-stellar travel while getting a fast sub-stellar drive primarily for combat reasons and also cost savings. upgrades still could be automated to some extent allowing an option button on the fleet when in a system with appropriate shipyards

ok - now my pitch ... lol took the liberty of taking a screen shot and changing a few things



as u can see ive reordered the slots and sub-divided them, allowing for various sizes, the large strip of slots where the weapons are could accommodate, a spinal mount and a few smaller things, a bunch of small things or whatever combination, the large bay is for fighters colony pods, troops or a combination of smaller things. the green square is exclusively for hull armor, the large red is inter-stellar engine, small red sub-stellar engine, engine slots could be used for other things like the post above asks. etc

just a preliminary idea, but i think a major improvement that has the potential to address many of the requirements of a good ship design screen, obviously some slots could be reordered or arranged differently as fits the needs. the only real concern i have is if u have an item 1 block wide and 2 high would help to auto rotate that to fit a spot 2 blocks wide and 1 high

I'll need to see some convincing examples or arguments about what the current slot system can't do for this to have any weight.


Not enough technologies in general, or not having any in-game concept of any of those examples, are not a problem. We can have plenty of other things for players to think about.


I don't see a problem...


I'm not sure what your point is.


We will have a variety of hulls available on which to base ship designs. These hulls will have various in-system and on-starlane speeds and costs, which will be appropriately balanced. Players will have options similar to what you suggest within this system.


We have no plans to add slot sizes. The simple one-slot one-part system keeps things simple. Unless there's a strong case for making it more complicated, we'll keep it simple.


We have external and internal slots and parts, so there is a bit of that sort of variation and tradeoff. Different hulls will have different numbers of each.

Let's first see, how everything works out in combat, before claiming it's too simple and boring. Also there's not much variation in hulls and ship parts at this stage. It's content, which should be considered preliminary and by no means final.


Miniaturization and other refinements, can be implement in different ways(by giving a bonus to strength, instead of actually changing size for example)


Realism arguments. They have no importance.


I don't see where you're going with this. Parts can and should have advantages and disadvantages. So they have to be used carefully. You are kind of contradicting yourself with your initial "too simple/boring"-argument IMO.
We can easily just have different hulls, some fast in combat, but slow on the map, some fast on the map, slow in combat, etc.