Alright, let's go for GDD n°11 - Ship Design

As usual, you'll find a summary of the Early Access status regarding Ship Design at the end of the post!

Before we start, something to keep in mind that caused some confusion on the VIP end:

Clarification on Terminology

There was some confusion regarding the terminology. To that end I recommend reading the Battle GDD and referencing the terms from there.

Specifically there was a question about the terminology 'Play selection', which is the 'NFL style Play' referenced in the Battle GDD.

Rationale

Ship design is one of the major parts involved in the planning that goes into winning battles – along with plays and choosing the battle arena through the nodes of the galaxy. Ships of course also tie into exploration, curiosities and scouting, which modules will also fit with.

Ship design has the purpose of allowing customization of the ship, including which weapons, defenses and other modules and where they are placed. Even though this customization is a large part of defining who will win or lose any given battle, the ship design is not supposed to be a time-consuming part of the game. The goal is to have a streamlined very open process that allows for players to quickly do ship design without having to balance a lot of numbers, but push the weight on the choices of module types within preset slots.

The goal for Ship Design is to define the primary parameters for battles (See Battle GDD for related information):

• Which weapons will I use? This will define under which distances the ship performs the best.
• Which defenses will I use? The effect of defenses act as soft counters to weapon types.
  
  

Then the Play selection which primarily acts as a basis of distance which means it interacts with weapon types (and Play counters to create interplay).

The chosen arena primarily affects the effectiveness of certain weapon and defense types (Arena is tied to ‘galaxy node’, which then creates interplay in galaxy movement).

Overall this is supposed to provide layered depths of strategy for battles.

For example, you could imagine a ship that focuses on say beam weapons, which are great at long range, combined with a lot of defensive shields. Then in the Galaxy movement, the goal would be to fight in nodes that did not significantly disadvantage your ship designs shields and/or beam weapons and hopefully even disadvantage the opponents ship designs. During the play selection, it now becomes a trade-off of deciding to pick the optimal fit with your ship designs' optimal range, that is, a Play that gives bonuses to long-range battles, which would be easier to counter for the opponent or picking a play that would potentially counter the opponent's optimal fit.

Each of these steps carry weight at different time intervals. The ship design is a long-term decision that will require dust for retrofitting to change. The arena is something that is picked or forced within the context of the battle and how valuable each node is to each player. Finally the Play is the last second decision that carries some swinging power in the battle due to the Play Counter system.

Ship

The ships will as in our previous game use the system of ‘unit designs’ that you use to build unit instances, along with retrofitting to keep them up to date. The ship designs will have a name and cost in industry and strategic resources.

Ships themselves have the following parameters:

• Origin Faction (anyone can use any ship through marketplace or quests)
• Size (relates to the command point cost as well as Flotilla restrictions in Plays)
• Role (restricts which modules are available to the ship)
• Bonus 1 & 2 (unique ship bonuses as in ES1)
• Description (lore description)
  
  

A lot of concerns on the forums have already been aimed at small ships becoming obsolete later in the game. There are two mitigating factors for this: First, some of the small ships will offer unique roles that are not available on larger ships to give unique modules and effects to these ships. Second, some of the Plays will have ship size restrictions that allow for smaller ships to receive better buff effects from Plays.

Ship Layout

Each ship is split into 9 sections, 8 outer and 1 core. Each section will have its own health and is individually targeted. The destruction of a ship occurs when the ship's core section is destroyed.

Each section will have a number of ‘Slots’ attached to it. When the sections take damage, the modules attached to those slots take damage as well. This means that sections and modules can be damaged and destroyed individually.

Defense and support modules generally have ship-wide effects, while weapon modules individually have all the parameters related to targeting, firing and damage. The slots can be limited to certain types of module categories or can be completely open. The restriction of slots will vary from ship to ship, having more or less flexible ships.

There will be 'multiplier slots' on larger ships, that function as quick-fill slots. With 1 click, these will duplicate the module in terms of both visuals and gameplay, their purpose being to streamline ship designing by reducing the number of clicks required. Ships will vary from ~3 slots to ~20 depending on size and unlocked technologies.

There is a distinct difference between top and side modules. For example the arc of fire of weapons on the top will be higher than the arc of fire on the side. Also modules on the side will only be chosen on one side and will then automatically be duplicated to the other side. This is to avoid weird edge case designs and to streamline the interface.

GUI mock-up for the ship design screen

Modules

Modules are split into 3 large categories: defense, weapon and support. Defense and weapon modules are fairly straightforward in their effect on the ship.

• Weapon: Laser (laser is a balanced medium-range weapon that can also fire a long range in a diminished fashion, moderately absorbed by shields)
• Weapon: Beam (beam is a short-range weapon with significant damage, entirely absorbed by shields)
• Weapon: Missiles (missiles are high damage weapon for long ranges and almost completely unaffected by shields)
• Weapon: Kinetic (kinetic are high damage short-range weapons, able to fire at medium-range in a diminished fashion mostly unaffected by shields. This weapon can fire at incoming missiles as well)
• Defense: Hull Plating (hull plating adds a bunch of health to the entire ship and primarily deals with kinetic and missile weapons)
• Defense: Shield (shields add a little bit of health to the ship and a bubble around the ship that will absorb damage before hitting the hull. This is highly effective against beam and laser weapons)
  
  

The list above shows the idea behind basic weapon and defense module types, whereby strategic resources and alternative versions from quests and research will give some additional flavor.

Support modules will have widely varying effects and will be considered as utility slots. These can affect the battle such as increasing the effect of defenses, adding additional rewards to battles or containing fighter/bomber bays.

They can also affect Galaxy parameters such as movement speed between galaxy nodes, curiosity exploration speed and such. This includes the modules that are used to invade systems.

HOW'S THE EARLY ACCESS VERSION ON THIS ASPECT?

Ship

• The Early Access version of the game doesn't feature a lot of opportunities to have ships from a different race
• The Early Access version featuring only 6 plays (3 for attackers, 3 for defenders), ship size restrictions on plays isn't a thing yet
• Ship hull bonuses aren't implemented in the Early Access version of the game

Modules

• The Early Access version of the game doesn't feature Fighters and Bombers

It is an interesting point.

ES1 had the tactic of being able to choose your hull type and assign it's role through weapon choice.  I might wish to build a frigate and equip it with long range torpedoes only.  This allowed me quite successfully use the tactic of hit and run.  First phase of the battle was my strongest play, then to exit the system during the second phase using tactical retreat card.  It worked very well and that type of gameplay has now been removed.  

More battle plans could restore this issue.  Plan for tactical retreat, plan for long and mid range battle tactics.  Plan for using special weapons, precursor weapons.  Plan for using sniper ships.  

The set up is sound.  Chose hull and specialise.  We just need the options to sort out style of play.