Master Ship Classes & Components

[TMaekler (OP)]

Was thinking a bit about the design of ships and the (annoying) designing of ships in every new game one starts. What do I mean?

Most ship designs and their components are based on a design philosophy. A Destroyer for me is a quick ship that can do a run at an enemy fleet - be it a Missile or a Beam Destroyer. And it usually is equipped with a similar structure of components. Powerful engine, active sensor array, certain weapon stocks and magazines, armor thickness, engineering spaces, etc.

Even the engine designs for example follow a certain rule: be as small and powerful as possible. Other engines might be designed as fuel efficient as possible.

All these general guidelines are the same from game to game.

So my idea is to add something where we can save those general design principles, independent of the actual game. So when it comes to designing a new destroyer in a new game, you „simply“ reload that pattern from the previous game, make it fit to your actual game, and be done with it. Rather than having to add x amount of engineering spaces, fuel modules, engines, magazines etc. everytime again and again.

[Father Tim]

Or you could have Aurora design your starting ships for you, and then give them a quick once-over to correct anything glaringly out of your style.

[Gabethebaldandbold]

deciding general principles for classes, and being able to select and design them would be pretty interesting, specially if we get to see the NPRs use them. might put us on our toes though, that better be optional.

[TMaekler (OP)]

Or you could have Aurora design your starting ships for you, and then give them a quick once-over to correct anything glaringly out of your style.

Though with my idea you would have control over your design philosophy. And based on what Gabethebaldandbold wrote: it could be an interesting base for the differant AIs of the game to have such a base and/or be able to create these design philosophies.

[xenoscepter]

I'd like an import/export function myself. I could make a whole mess of ships within one or a few "design games" and import ships I want from them or export ships I like to them.

[Black]

It could be possible, thanks to the prototype components, you simply transfer vessel completely made from prototype components to new game.

[kenlon]

Or you could have Aurora design your starting ships for you, and then give them a quick once-over to correct anything glaringly out of your style.

Are you a professional curmudgeon, or just a gifted amateur?

More seriously, I have played multiple games so far with the same race design (and headcanon backstory), and thus I find myself recreating my utility ships over and over again in the same way (50K/200K/1M freighters/troop transports/, fast/slow tankers, fuel harvest/terraform/maintenance stations, jump stations, and so on and so on.)

Since my designs tend to share a lot of overlap (all the freighters are the same with different cargo carrying modules, frex), just being able to load in the frame of the ship and then fill in my player created components would be really handy, even if Steve doesn't want to add importing/exporting design templates that include components that are non-standard. (I could see a way to do it, have the exported data include all the tech data for the player-built parts, creating those parts as prototypes when you import, if they don't exist, but it would be much more fiddly, so I wouldn't mid doing without that.)

[Father Tim]

And Aurora will happily do 'cargo hold + engines + shuttles' for you, or 'fuel tank + engines + refuelling system'.  And a colony ship.  And a tug.  And an ordnance carrier.  And a troop transport.  Et cetera.

In other words, skip all those boring and fiddly little steps that TMaekler was complaining about.  Want them to go faster?  Add an engine.  Want them all to be more fuel efficient?  Swap all the engines for new.

It doesn't matter if your starting destroyer goes 2222 km/s or 2400 km/s, and has a maintenance life of 2.71 years or 2.14 years.  If your FFG has nine launchers or seven launchers.

Initial designs are just that, initial, and whether or not they are 'good' depends on the stats of those you intend to fight.

So if your design philosophy calls for a fleet speed of 2000 km/s plus, then add engines to any designs that are slower.  Add armour layers if they don't meet your minimum.  Add maintenance storage and/or engineering to up life.  Add or remove deployment time, fuel storage, and magazine space.  Et cetera.

- - - - -

The solution -- in 1.9.5 C# Aurora -- to "I don't want to spend all this time re-creating my ship designs from scratch every game" is to let Aurora do the heavy lifting and then tweak the result to be 'good enough' to start.  Not the least because then you have the roleplaying opportunity of fixing your 'bad' initial designs.

[kenlon]

And what about those of us who play conventional starts and have no prebuilt fleet? Or for when we want to use designs that we've used before later on in the game?

I don't know where you got the idea that this was something people want just for the beginning of the game.

[Father Tim]

Oh, probably from the phrase "designing of ships in every new game one starts."

[kenlon]

Yes, and in each new game, you have to design your ships the whole game through, because, you know, there's no ability to have continuity from one to the next. I'm not sure what isn't blindingly obvious about this.

[kenlon]

Oh, and another use for this feature just came up for me today. I want to test some theoretical designs (specifically, the interaction between commercial hangars and ships parked in them marked as tankers/supply ships/colliers), and if we had this I would be able to import the designs into a fresh game with all techs granted with SM and go from there, without any risk of messing up my current game by absentmindedly hitting save.
(And yes, I know I can just back up a copy of the DB before I start.)

[Omnivore]

And Aurora will happily do 'cargo hold + engines + shuttles' for you, or 'fuel tank + engines + refuelling system'.  And a colony ship.  And a tug.  And an ordnance carrier.  And a troop transport.  Et cetera.

In other words, skip all those boring and fiddly little steps that TMaekler was complaining about.  Want them to go faster?  Add an engine.  Want them all to be more fuel efficient?  Swap all the engines for new.

It doesn't matter if your starting destroyer goes 2222 km/s or 2400 km/s, and has a maintenance life of 2.71 years or 2.14 years.  If your FFG has nine launchers or seven launchers.

Initial designs are just that, initial, and whether or not they are 'good' depends on the stats of those you intend to fight.

So if your design philosophy calls for a fleet speed of 2000 km/s plus, then add engines to any designs that are slower.  Add armour layers if they don't meet your minimum.  Add maintenance storage and/or engineering to up life.  Add or remove deployment time, fuel storage, and magazine space.  Et cetera.

- - - - -

The solution -- in 1.9.5 C# Aurora -- to "I don't want to spend all this time re-creating my ship designs from scratch every game" is to let Aurora do the heavy lifting and then tweak the result to be 'good enough' to start.  Not the least because then you have the roleplaying opportunity of fixing your 'bad' initial designs.

That would be great... if it worked... and it does not work.  The auto research skips over prerequisites willy-nilly, the component designs give you 85 variants of magazines and duplicate identical weapon systems, and the ships.. hahahahahaha… it is obvious you have not tried it lately.

[Father Tim]

That would be great... if it worked... and it does not work.  The auto research skips over prerequisites willy-nilly, the component designs give you 85 variants of magazines and duplicate identical weapon systems, and the ships.. hahahahahaha… it is obvious you have not tried it lately.

You're right; I haven't tried it.  I play Aurora to, y'know, play Aurora.  I'm not interested in skipping the part where I research techs and design components and build ships and direct my exploration efforts.  Aurora is not a tactical battle simulator, it's a 4X game.

[davidr]

That would be great... if it worked... and it does not work.  The auto research skips over prerequisites willy-nilly, the component designs give you 85 variants of magazines and duplicate identical weapon systems, and the ships.. hahahahahaha… it is obvious you have not tried it lately.

You're right; I haven't tried it.  I play Aurora to, y'know, play Aurora.  I'm not interested in skipping the part where I research techs and design components and build ships and direct my exploration efforts.  Aurora is not a tactical battle simulator, it's a 4X game.

I concur with Father Tim in the fact that I do not and will not use SM mode to magically give me massive fleets with the best Technology to roam the systems. I will build all my Shipyards from the ground up and research all the components from the base items without feeling the need to cheat. It may take me decades in game years to develop my Race but I enjoy the challenge.

DavidR