Ship themes/My concern that i hope will be adressed

[tim1983]

Hello all

So like many of you, i am looking forward to the release of Stellaris, and i really like how the game is shaping up.

But one concern i have is this: Lets say on a huge map with 44 other starting races, we have lots of portraits in each archetype so chances of running into duplicates is hopefully slim. But what about the ship themes? As i understand it, theres models for each archetype, so we have like 4-5 different themes.

In a perfect world, each race that is in the game, should have different ship themes. Would be a bit of a letdown if the Cardassians had the exact same ships as the federation, wouldnt it? What are your thoughts on this? I would very much also like to hear a dev's thought on this issue.

 

[KingRolan]

It would help if ships were colored differently based on an empire's flag, I think.

 

[Chipacabras]

It seems like something that will definitely be expanded with cosmetic packs. With such a huge set up though, I'd imagine there would be some duplicates in that scenario

 

[barny]

What are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, that will likely be one of the problems of the game at launch. I still hope they will at least add coloring to the ships at sometime after release or so.

 

[13Foxtrot]

It has been talked about and will be added.....color for the spaceships.

 

[Aleks S. I]

Hopefully colouring will be optional. I personally detest seeing absurdly colourful ships flying about.
Also I definitely expect to see ship theme DLCs in the same way we see EU4 unit packs.

 

[ecololuc]

Well, it's absurd for your dull human taste. But green and pink are really trendy colors on Blorg.

 

[KingRolan]

Well, it's absurd for your dull human taste. But green and pink are really trendy colors on Blorg.

Exactly! Pink and green may look silly on a military spaceship to us, but who's to say that those colors wouldn't be inseparably linked to the military tradition of an alien empire?

 

[RedTemplar]

Even if they don't color the ships themselves, maybe a little flag indicator or something?

 

[TomosCaerllion]

I'd eventually like to see a lot of aesthetic options in the ship designer, being able to decide a colour scheme and maybe a few different models for ship sections. Being able to put your emblems on your ship would be great, as well as options to have sinister alien skills or something for more raider-esque empires. It doesn't have to have practical game effects, but a few different paint styles or aesthetic choices would add a lot of variety.

 

[Fonz]

More options is always good, paint jobs, colour schemes, having your empire logos on your ships, and federation logos as well. Randomly generated cosmetic attachments along with the race portraits, there's just so much that can be done to have unique looking spaceships for each race.

Heck Id buy a ship cosmetic expansion pack.

 

[Chrysaetos]

I'd eventually like to see a lot of aesthetic options in the ship designer, being able to decide a colour scheme and maybe a few different models for ship sections. Being able to put your emblems on your ship would be great, as well as options to have sinister alien skills or something for more raider-esque empires. It doesn't have to have practical game effects, but a few different paint styles or aesthetic choices would add a lot of variety.

Ship sections have different models depending on the core you choose.

 

[Cynical Dreamer]

I agree, ship types / modules are far more important to me in Stellaris than they were in historical games. Surely Paradox will release many new variants as DLC. And sadly, I will ruin myself buying them..

 

[Greyhound_Gen.]

I believe there is going to be one ship theme/style set per phenotype group, plus one for Fallen Empires, at least on release (so 7 in total). Being able to change ship colour (and possibly pattern) would certainly help, but I do hope that more ship styles will be added in future - it's kind of immersion breaking when you make first contact with an alien species and they have identical ships to yours (it's almost as bad as running into someone wearing the same dress as you at a party ). Honestly it's what I'd most like to see in terms of cosmetic DLC at the moment, ahead of new portraits (though some of both would be better still).

 

[ashbery76]

I just wonder the budget required for a 100 different ship styles.Not even a Totalwar could afford that.

 

[Cynical Dreamer]

I just wonder the budget required for a 100 different ship styles.Not even a Totalwar could afford that.

Probably less than 500 000$. Still, a lot for a company like PDX.

 

[GC13]

Four warship classes, plus science, construction, space station, at least three platforms... Ten models times a hundred styles is a thousand models to do concept art for and create. Would $500k really be enough?

 

[KingRolan]

Four warship classes, plus science, construction, space station, at least three platforms... Ten models times a hundred styles is a thousand models to do concept art for and create. Would $500k really be enough?

You're both seriously overthinking this. We don't need a hundred different sets of ship models, because there aren't a hundred race portraits.

 

[Cynical Dreamer]

Four warship classes, plus science, construction, space station, at least three platforms... Ten models times a hundred styles is a thousand models to do concept art for and create. Would $500k really be enough?

Put it another way : how much would a ten developer team cost if they were working for 18 months exclusively on it ? If each costs on average 25k a year, well, 500k is probably an exaggeration.

 

[Plague109]

You're both seriously overthinking this. We don't need a hundred different sets of ship models, because there aren't a hundred race portraits.

No he is fairly accurate. A battleship for instance has 4 hull modules (I think. If I'm wrong I will change this). So that is 4 modules, 1 ship, then the cruisers have their modules plus ship, frigates, destroyers, and so on. Then repeat this process 6 times to cover all the phenotypes to ensure they all have equal variety. It comes to be quite a lot for a purely cosmetic feature.