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Jaradakar

Join Date 03/2006

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Suggestion: Managing Saved Ships

One of the problems I'm running into is managing saved/player created ships. I'll be playing a game using X race, say humans for example. Throughout that game I'll create many ships at different stages depending on technology available and what's happening (Based on who/what my opponents are doing).

Now that game is finished. I start a new game with a new race and a new ship type (new graphic type).

When I go to create a new ship, I’ll run into the following problems:

1) A previously designed ship shows up, but because I’m now using a different graphic/ship type, all its parts are misplaced and it looks horrible.

2) The ship does not show up in the build list, but when I try to save the new ship design (that happens to have the same name) it comes up with a warning (and I’m now overwriting one of previous created ships for a different race).

So for example, I’ll design a troop transport and name it "Quick Troop Transport V1" in a game playing humans. Later in a different game I’ll make a new troop transport and name it the same name and when I go to save I’ll get a warning and most likely be over writing the graphical look & ship design of my human transport.

I can only assume that the ship’s not showing up because it has some tech requirements that I don’t have, but with it not showing up, how am I to avoid duplicate names?

Even if it does show up, now it looks like a 2 year-old put it together, and while some might not care how their space ships look I do. So this is something I’d really like to see improved upon. After all creating and designing ships is a huge portion of the game (in fact you can’t really be successful without designing your own ships).

Some solutions that come to mind:

A) Split out the saving of the "graphical look" of ship designs and the "functional designs" based on technological components into two separate saves and allow for us to load them independently.

Or provide a way to filter ship designs based on the graphical tile set that was used to create them.
C) Have an option to not load/use previously designed ships in a game.

Another small things that I’d like to see fixed:

It would be nice to be able to "upgrade" a pre-designed ship and have all its "extras" actually stay on the ship. Currently if you try to upgrade a pre-designed game made ship, the only part that shows up is the HULL Vs a player created ship with has the HULL + all other non-system components.

-Jara

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I totally agree, thats why I'm always a bit more careful about what I name my ships

I think the garbled ship design issue only happens if you overwrite a previous design from another style. I'm always careful to name every races ship differently.

As for the functional modules disapearing, in the Option under Interface, the last check box says something like "Keep functional modukes when upgrading ships". Took me a while to find that one too!

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As for the functional modules disapearing, in the Option under Interface, the last check box says something like "Keep functional modukes when upgrading ships". Took me a while to find that one too!

It's not the functional modules that are going away (I like that) it's that the non-fuctional modules of a "Stardoc" pre-made ship go away leaving just the hull.

For example, try upgrading a non-player created constructor. When you get into the screen instead of it having the exact graphical look with no functional modules, all it will have is a HULL.

It's a bug I'm sure, just saying it's a very annoying bug, because when I'm feeling lazy and don't want to design a "graphical" look for a ship but do want to custom design the functional modules this leaves me having to do both.

-Jara

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I think that checkbox is new. That's great! Most of my designs involve putting the guns up on antennas or pylons so when they vanish it's a bummer.

It would be nice to keep the design of the predesigned ships when you upgrade them. Not only that, it made me confused about whether upgrading did anything at all -- because it didn't keep the functional parts, and it didn't keep the jewelry.

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As for the functional modules disapearing, in the Option under Interface, the last check box says something like "Keep functional modukes when upgrading ships". Took me a while to find that one too!

I don't have a problem with the functional modules going away (I like that) it's that the non-fuctional modules of a "Stardoc" pre-made ship go away leaving just the hull.

For example, try upgrading a non-player created constructor. When you get into the screen instead of it having the exact graphical look with no functional modules, all it will have is a HULL.

It's a bug I'm sure, just saying it's a very annoying bug, because when I'm feeling lazy and don't want to design a "graphical" look for a ship but do want to custom design the functional modules this leaves me having to do both.

-Jara

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I think the ship management is one of the biggest problems in the game right now. I agree with Jara's comments above, and I would like to add a couple more suggestions:

When saving a ship design, you should have the option of saving it to a library which is associated with only the current game and which is not loaded with any other save game, or to the global library which persists between saved games.

Whichever library you save to should be specific to the ship tileset you are using for that game. So if I am using the Yor ships in my current game, nothing I save should show up if I start a new game with Terran ships.

I also think that Jara's suggestion to have a new game ignore all previously saved ship designs is a great one.

Basically, I like to create ship designs in the flow of the game rather than trying to research specific techs so I can build a previously created ship design. This is very, very painful to manage with the current system. And when you try to overwrite an old ship design with a new one, you often just get both of them appearing in the build menus with the same name. Very, very annoying.

Last suggestion - I think it would be really awesome if, when you save a ship with no functional components on it - IE, just the hull + extras - it would only show up on the shipyard screen, not on the quick build list or in the civilization manager or anywhere else. Basically, you never want to build a ship with no functional parts on it, you just use it as a template to stick on whatever parts are appropriate for the current game. So it should only show up when you are trying to design a new ship.

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Right I get you!

I think the reason for that is mainly because the "look" of the core ships do not actually reflect its abilities. You can see that if you look in all the files. Some core ships have missile pods, but no missile attack - things like that.

I guess because its not accurrate, you can't change it.

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I think the simplest solution is to create a mechanism where the player specifically imports ship designs into the current game rather than automatically importing ALL existing designs into each game. This will probably satisfy most everyone with what should be a fairly easy code change.

As it stands now, whenever you begin a new game, all designs that existing in the "Ships" folder are automatically included in that game. Any designs added to the "Ships" folder after the start of the game are ignored.

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When saving a ship design, you should have the option of saving it to a library which is associated with only the current game and which is not loaded with any other save game, or to the global library which persists between saved games.

Great idea wade, i also believe, the campaign ship designs are already saved in a different file from normal game ship designs so no reason it could not be done. I suspect u could do this your self, create a Yor folder, Terran folder etc but it would be time consuming moving the files from 1 to another between games. Much better if the developers could put it into the game to do it automatically for us.

I tend to clear out my ship designs after I have finished a game now if I am playing a different race. Which bugs me over the wasted ship design time.

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When saving a ship design, you should have the option of saving it to a library which is associated with only the current game and which is not loaded with any other save game, or to the global library which persists between saved games.

Whichever library you save to should be specific to the ship tileset you are using for that game. So if I am using the Yor ships in my current game, nothing I save should show up if I start a new game with Terran ships.

That was exactly what I was trying to articulate wade, thanks for saying it better than I could

-Jara

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Last suggestion - I think it would be really awesome if, when you save a ship with no functional components on it - IE, just the hull + extras - it would only show up on the shipyard screen, not on the quick build list or in the civilization manager or anywhere else. Basically, you never want to build a ship with no functional parts on it, you just use it as a template to stick on whatever parts are appropriate for the current game. So it should only show up when you are trying to design a new ship.

That's a very good suggestion, although it does make me want to try building a jewelry-only ship and see how the AI reacts to it.

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