Ship design should have 1 bloc of slots and the player chooses freely from all the options

[Ewokgod]

I believe that a ship design should just have one grid of slots available for modules, with no differentiation over whether it is a weapon module, a system module or a drive/sensor/computer module. It would allow for greater variety of ship designs and ship specialisation.

Historically, navy ships have been made along two parallel lines of thought. Some ships were designed to patrol the local areas of the nation, and those designs could prioritise firepower or armour over the ability to stay at sea since there would always be a friendly port to shelter and refuel in. Other ships were designed to prioritise their range, to be able to project naval strength to the far-flung corners of the world. Even nowadays, you see references to a "blue water" navy, one that can take over an ocean for an extended period of time, and a "brown water" navy, one that cannot control an ocean but is uncompromisingly efficient at dealing with threats close to its shores.

I want to build system defence monitors, all armour, weapons and shields, no interstellar drives and for that to be a viable and different choice. I want science vessels that can fight at a pinch, at the cost of greater upkeep or having to refuel every so often.

Anyone agree?

 

[MistroPain]

What you are suggesting is sorta already there with regards to opportunity costs involved in ship design, especially if you don't tech up your generators.

In the late game when you've hit the L-only weapons they take up 120 power, so if you want that hard hitting navy you have to let go of some armour. Similarly late game Jump Drives/Psi-Jump Drives consume 30 power, so if you want that 'blue water' navy its costing you two small devastator torpedoes and a point defence gun. A late game device like a sub-space snare costs 200 power, so your heavily outfitted battleships will suffer in fire power if you outfit them with it, again thats the same cost as 4 large devestator torpedoes.

More options and weapon-tech would be nice, but I don't think they need to introduce a single grid where you can throw everything in. Rather items should have more elements to consider associated with them. For example Zero Point Reactors should increase the chance of receiving a critical hit from opposing ships, Hyper Shields should take longer to recharge than the basic deflectors, neutronium armour should reduce evasiveness, etc. etc.

Personally I'd like to see ships becoming 'modular' so each section can get damaged on it's own and eventually disabled. I'd also love them adding some kind of crew-mechanic where each section of the ship can be manned by a race of your choice (your 'Natural Engineers' for example might be able to increase the effectiveness of any reactor on that section of the ship, whereas your 'Strong' race can repair the hull faster, etc. etc).
I'd also like a late/mid game option to research new hull-design variants which are better than the early variants, so a new 'Utility' heavy hull piece which adds a variant to each ships rear which has an extra Utility piece on it (essentially +1 to the number of items available on that ship). Or even research variants with dual Thrusters?