Ship Design: boxes/decks |
Am I just crazy or is the ship design interface a little under-utilised? Right now ships are design according to size and how many Armor Slots, Outer Slots, Inner Slots are available. The trick is: there is hardly ever any shortage of outer or inner slots. Especially when you consider that you really have 3 ship layouts to work with (upper middle lower decks). It seems like this could be an interesting component of ship design that right now ends up being almost pointless.
The corollary to this is: How can a mod(s) fix this? Number of decks is probably hardcoded, right? What about the "squares" per deck? Could this differ between decks? (4 armor slots on the upper deck, but 8 on the middle, etc) Can components take up more than one slot? Making it a little more of a tetris game to fit parts in?
What do you think?
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
Does anyone else find it interesting that you can place things like engines and weapons on the inner hull? It seems like this whole area of ship design needs a little more refinement. That might make for a more interesting ship design process.
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
I think of it more as a role play component. Theres really no differance where you put things except outside gets hit first. So like, you could put all of your stuff on the top, but for a more visual pleasement, and roleplay, i orginize it. My missiles go on the middle deck on the outer outside to the front.
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WHY SHOULD I FEAR WHAT WRONG I HAD NOT DONE?
~Ardius (me)
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
One problem you might have if you start limiting the amount of slots available is how to balance all the different ship sets.
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Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
You could always introduce a set of override slots (which would be used for all sets) that would put a premium on space.
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Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
One thing you could do is make slot layouts based on racial traits. Have, say, 5 different types. Each trait gives a complete set of vehicle sizes, and they need to be mutually exclusive traits. Each set of vehicles uses a different set of named slot layouts. Use the slot override file to force all players to use the same slot file (defined by the mod). This file then contains 5 copies of every vehicle, covering all 5 traits.
Only potential issue is that slot layouts don't match the ship graphics, but that's not really very relevant.
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
I like to use the Outer/Inner Slots. You can design your ship either in a way to fight to the last, or to flee when it can't fight anymore.
Sadly, you can't do that in BM.
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
Reducing the number of slots for the ships would certainly add an element of tactics into ship design. Especially if it was 'really' restrictive.
But a drawback of that would be when you upgrade the hull space via reserach. You will have all this extra space and nowhere to put things.
You could however add new hull 'specifications' (make a new hull, with a different slot layout) that becomes available at higher techs.
It's all very open ended really.
Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
It would help to differentiate the races: some of them would be able to use lots of different weapons, but wouldn't have many armor slots, others would need weapon mounts to use most of their space, or put on a lot of armor (for which they would have plenty of slots).
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
Sadly, you can't add new slot types.
However, that is irrelevant; you can implement whatever restrictions you like as part of racial traits and the vehicles themselves. Add a dummy ability (like an AI Tag 01) to the class of components you wish to restrict (eg: all weapons). Add a design requirement along the lines of
iif(has_trait("Gun Nut"), get_component_by_ability_count("AI_Tag_01") < 10, iif(has_trait("Armor Nut"), get_component_by_ability_count("AI_Tag_01") < 5, get_component_by_ability_count("AI_Tag_01") < 7))
(all formula names are made up and should not be taken as directly functional in-game)
This will mean that if the empire has the Gun Nut trait, you can add up to 10 guns. If you have Armor Nut, you can only add up to 5 guns. If you have neither trait, you can add up to 7.
You can either tie the traits to specific races, or make them more generalized so its easier to use custom shipsets with them.
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
Making new slot types would be realy nice to be able to do (:
Was trying to make one in my mod but didnt find a way so i thought i would ask how to do it but now i guess i will have to skipp makeing a new slot type...
I hope they will add that to some future patch d:
Re: Ship Design: boxes/decks
Short answer to your question: yes, a mod can override the number of squares per deck, but decks are hard-coded to three.
Personally I put almost all of my components into the outer slots. Inner slots are reserved for the absolute essentials such as the bridge, life support, and crew quarters. I prefer that all other components exist on the outer hull so that they are killed at about the same rate.
I don't think that the quantity of slots is supposed to be a limited resource (except maybe in the case of armor slots). That's why there are three separate decks - because you're *supposed* to be able to arrange your components any way you like. Besides, even if someone wanted to put all of their components into the Inner Hull, it wouldn't help at all during combat - there would be nothing in the outer hull to absorb damage, so your inner components would take damage as soon as the armor is penetrated.