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So the ship design screen needs some work.

 

1. Let me go above the available space on a ship while I am designing. It is super annoying to have to go back and forth and remove things to make stuff fit within the space constraint. Do the refusal when I try to save the design instead. (basically like in MOO2)
2. Stats needs some bugfixes (e.g. fusion beam super low dps), and more detailed stats in general. Weapon modifiers should show effects on the stats. The essential stats that need to be prominently shown are damage, dps, range and special modifiers (like shield piercing)
3. The list of designs keep shifting around. also this means that often when I go our from say my frigate design to my destroyer design the frigate name will still be there, and subsequently refuse to let me save the new destroyer design because "the name is already in use". clearly a bug
4. The auto-update of designs is retarded. it keeps completely rearranging my designs. even when there is for instance just new drives. My suggestion would be that auto update would simply switch out the existing equipment/weapons with their new direct upgrade counterparts. eg 4x nuclear missiles -> 4x Merculite missiles. Auto should not put new weapon systems or optional gear things onto my custom designs. If the change results in too much space being used the game should notify me of that with a little exclamation mark over the ship design icon in the main UI, and an exclamation mark over the ship design that needs attention in the ship design menu.
5. What is the point of requiring you to update the design of the non combat ships? who would not want better drives on their space factories, troop transports etc. If you do intend to keep it this way at least make it possible to design the non combat ships as well outside the prompt that comes from discovering new tech. Since the auto update is so bugged i would always not use it. That made my non-combat ships lag behind in drive tech into the late game. Once i realized this the only way to actually upgrade the civilian ship designs i found was to research another new tech that would trigger the auto design promt. this is also an issue when you barter for tech with other races as this doesn't seem to trigger the auto design.

 

Next i have a few things to say about ship upgrades

1. There seems to be a bug with upgrading Cruisers. frigates and destroyers lets me upgrade them but when i try to upgrade cruisers the upgrade button just shows me a random list of destroyers and frigates that don't actually exist.
2. I like the way the upgrade system works now, though it could be exploitable. Say you have a crapton of credits. you could then make a design for basically an empty ship, produce lots of them, then change the design and upgrade them with credits. This would let someone with lots of credits build a megafleet in record time. Not completely sure if it would really be faster or cheaper than buying the ships in the first place, but it should be looked into with a mind towards anti-exploitability.

 

 

 

Glad this post is here.  If not I'd have to have typed all that stuff above.

 

DPS is definately broken.  There seems no point in developing fusion weapons with dps of 0.5 when the most basic Laser is 0.75.  Its "Why upgrade to fusion?"

Also its hard to see whether 2 heavy mounts are better dps than 4 ordinery mounts.. or effect of rapid fire or enveloping.. needs to be firmed up.

 

yes the upgrade messes with designs a bit too much.. i am manually upgrading my designs.. except for scouts n civvie ships

 

basically i'd say fox is right about these MINOR problems.  I assume you are aware but feedbacks here to help.

I also think there should be not only raw damage, the should be attackable stats like Shield, crew and engines.

 

 

 

If you look at Fusion beams (and all beam weapons) in the tech tree, there is more information there than there is in the ship designer, most notably one stat: procs. fusion beams have 6 procs, which I assume to mean that every hit hits 6 times. this seems to not be accounted for in the DPS stat in the ship designer. Real dps should then be 3 instead of 0.5.

 

In actual use beam weapons (including fusion beam) deal massive damage. their downside seems to be low range

One thing i also would like to see is different types of designs on every ship size you discover.

@Ultimatebox

 

I am not sure if that is really implemented at the moment. I think they should switch to the "real sum of DPS" on the design screen when they implement this feature. Or with the "heavy mount" weapon: there is no change at the moment and I am not sure if it has any influnece