So, the Ship Designer has always been one of the most popular features of GalCiv. But having to design my own ships from scratch every time a new tech is researched is a pain in the ass, and I would like to have my custom designs auto-update like the default design does. Yes, I know I can write my own blueprints in the xml files, but I have nearly 60 design concepts for a single faction alone, so doing that for every faction... yeah, not really feasible for me.
So, I would really appreciate a tool that would expedite the process. Some ideas for options I have in mind;
Faction
Lets you choose which ship style your design will be slotted into, whether one of the defaults or your own custom ship style.
Hull
For choosing the hull size of the design. Also lets you pick from the default hull designs, or your custom hulls.
Ship Role
For determining what the ship is intended to do, which should inform the type and number of components said ship should be equipped with.
Components
The main point of this idea. Multiple slots will be necessary to cater for the different types of components a ship can equip. A couple of sub-options will be necessary as well, such as;
Tech level: Determines the most advanced version of a particular component a ship can equip. This is especially relevant for Weapons and Defenses. You can set it to the most advanced tech, so the ship will equip the latest of that particular type of component as and when it's researched. Alternatively you can set it to the most basic tech, so you can get access to the ship as soon as possible without having to research extraneous techs. Or anything in between. You can also set advanced tech components in advance, so the ship will equip them as and when they are researched.
Number of components: Determines how many of each type of component the ship should equip. Setting the limit at 1 or 2 is useful for stuff like Engines and Life Support. For components which should be stacked like Weapons or Shields, there should also be an "Unlimited" option, which would automatically set that particular component as lowest priority, but subsequently fill all available hull space with multiples of said component. You want to get everything else important in before you start stacking, after all.
That's all I can think of for the moment. Thoughts, anyone? Can we get something like this, please?
Ship Designer being available from the main menu was planned from the near start by Stardock. As you can see the option between Load Game and Options in this Beta 1 Dev stream:
The option along with other main menu options were removed in April 2015. So it was never available to the Beta community as far as I am aware of.
Ooooo...kay. That much I know, although much appreciated anyway. But I'm not talking about the Ship Designer here, I'm talking about a Blueprint Designer that will auto-upgrade custom designs like the default designs already do.
Or does that functionality come with the Beta Ship Designer in some form? If so, can you tell me where on the video I can find it?
Whups, then I mixed up ship designs with blueprints.
AI will use player created designs. But it will not use obsolete or newer components for those designs. So yeah, we can't make blueprints while ingame.
Currently the only way to create new Blueprints is to add new ones through XML files and enable them as mods.
Yeah, which is why I'm asking for a tool to make these in-game. Messing with the XML files is doable and reasonable for like one or two ships... but up to 60 like I have, not so much.
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