Ship designer improvements

[Mike1984]

I think there are a few things that would be very useful in the ship designer.

1) The ability to upgrade all components on a particular ship type to their most recent version. Having to manually change each component on each ship is really slow, and is especially annoying in multiplayer. The auto-generated ships don't need it, but they're not as good (they don't seem to fit armour, for example) and cannot be customised without losing their auto-generated status).

2) The ability to merge ship design types (as in, to mark one type as obsolete and to upgrade to a different type). It is often the case that I might make ships with slightly different designs and, later, those two designs will become the same because of upgrades changing what is optimal. However, if I have existing ships of that type, I cannot get rid of the type without losing the chance to upgrade those ships, so the ship designer gets clogged-up with lots of useless ship types that I need to keep hanging around (and upgrading) just to upgrade the existing ships.

 

[Acerbus]

I would like to add: The ability to see the ship's actual speed, not just the base speed. It's a bit confusing when you upgrade your engines and get no apparent increase in speed according to the ship designer.

 

[AnimeAtheist]

Please add a display for windup and cooldown timers rather than just 1 big lump sum. This is especially important when considering drivers and point defense components as their ability to efficiently shoot down missiles and strikecraft depends on these numbers.

 

[SLYwalker]

In my opinion these improvement may be good in the game

1. Handling of ship designs is really awful. There is no option for filter to hull or anything
2. Any design should represent by smaill icons
-what dmg do on different distances for example (Short/knetic Mid/energy Long/kinetic)
-what is the defense type of the design (shield / armor / mixed)
3. If we did special project on enemy ships (after destroy enemy fleet), auto complete should counter their ship designs.
4. designs for space ports and transport ships

 

[Acerbus]

I agree with SLYwalker, and I've been thinking and it would be nice to sort the different ships by type (Or filter to hull as he put it). For example, Civilian ships (Like Science ships and constructors,), Stations, and military ships. As it is now the list gets rather long, especially if you have multiple designs for a type of ship. Having the option to hide the civilian ships and stations would make for less scrolling to find the ship type you want to modify/update/make.

 

[XXLPlakat]

A randomize Button for the Ship's name design would be nice, I really have no idea what to name these designs and then just call them by their weapon, etc..

 

[Mike1984]

A randomize Button for the Ship's name design would be nice, I really have no idea what to name these designs and then just call them by their weapon, etc..

Yeah, I've been doing this almost exclusively. Although, even if I had a randomise button, I'd still probably do it, because it allows me to work out what the ship actually is when I come to build it.

 

[Suicidal Civie]

You can upgrade one class of ship to another, if the original class got deleted, I think. But If you have more than one class of for example Battleships (because of the auras) all lost classes upgrade the same. And as far as I know there is no way to tell the Ship Designer which design should have priority.

That would be my suggestion: Let us toggle if all Ships of the size are forced to upgrade to this design, if all classifications of ships of the appropiate size whose class is no longer in the ship designer upgrade to this design, or if only ships of the named ship class upgrade.
This way I could tell 2 of my 6 cruisers, one of both current design classes to get the new aura and than have 3 different classes that can all easily upgrade after I toggle it off.

Instead an auto upgrade button I would rather have a warning sign somewhere whenever a non highest equipment is allotted.

 

[Mike1984]

Instead an auto upgrade button I would rather have a warning sign somewhere whenever a non highest equipment is allotted.

That would be useful, yes, but I also find it really irritating having to manually upgrade every single one of your ships to use newer equipment. At the same time, though, I'm not sure how easily-fixable it is, because newer equipment often takes up more power.