Tikigod wrote:


So yeah... IMO 10 designs seems about right IMO. Any higher and it may be to encouraging for some people to try having fleets that cater to everything and end up being utterly ineffective against a more informed and specific opponent.

Why can't we at least be free to choose how many we can design? An artificial limit is just frustrating.

I'm all for a higher limit. I'm not asking for infinite, but something along the lines of 20-30 or so would be great. It's not just that I create ship designs all over the place, in fact they usually follow strict guidelines. I prefer however to keep existing designs, as a momento so to speak, and in dark times as a cheaper quicker option.

I think the design limit needs an increase not too much but at least to 12 or 16 or 20. Due to the way they are persisted (saved) an infinite option I could potentially see leading to lots of clutter in the save file. Note as long as you still have a ship of any design (even if you deleted said design) the design is still saved.



By the way if you really want more then 10 right now you can do it, you just have to edit the game file manually to add the class. The limit is really only applied via the gui interface atm.



When you edit the file basically just copy an existing making sure to give it a unique LocalizedName, and then update the "name" property to a unique number ie (0x0000023C00000001) to 0x0000099C00000001, as well as the matching "Name" element inside the . Then add a element for that name under and increment the "Count" property. Reload game and you will now have that design available\modifiable.



I've only tested this and felt the need for up to 12 at the moment. It's also come in handy when I just want to RENAME an existing design without rebuilding it.

I play also with a lot of designs.

Its annoying to see that their only 10 places for designs.

davea wrote:
I have no objection to a scrollbar, which adds minimal clutter. I do object to folders. At first I just wanted to make sure you were doing this on purpose, since it prevents you from using retrofit.

Player-created folders, that would not affect retrofit. Entirely optional; I just meant a way if one did use shedloads of ships to group them into subcategories manually. Even I probably wouldn't need such a system per se, just a GUI thing.





To clarify further, I'm similar to AngleWyrm - I like to have numerous designs like his examples above, some middling dual-purpose ships (for saving time or being more versatile against a weaker enemy) et cetera. Of course I still use (and love) the retrofit functions on each individual ship as upgrades become available or performance and battle results necessitate tweaks to the design...



I would hasten to confirm as above from davea's post, there are already scroll bars on both the ship designs and the ship construction tabs; minimal to no GUI toll would be taken and minimal work also; it's just the 10 limits that really bugs me.

davea wrote:
I am curious, besides the OP are there other players who have a large number of ship types? I have not seen any other post about this, and I have religiously scoured the forums to keep up my known bug thread.

Yes, I also have a large number of ship types.

• Sensor Probe corvette. Cheap mobile observation posts.
• Several classes of colonizer on different hulls, with 1~5 colony modules. Because often the planets to colonize have 3~4 pop cap to begin with, so giant colonizers aren't automatically the best way to go. The right size for the job at hand is best.
• Destroyer class main combat vessel. This gets upgraded frequently to retrofit a given fleet to fight a given enemy.
• Anti-Pirate Police destroyer. This is different from the combat destroyers in that it has several kinetic defense for survivability. Guard duty in pirate-infested systems. I want a distinct class for this ship, so I don't have to "upgrade" the ship class every time I want to build some.
• Command & Control Cruiser. Loaded with fleet mods and heavy defense.
• Marine drop ship cruiser. Mostly planetary assault and defense, with a little offense to assist the fleet.
  
  

I would prefer to have several variant names according to weapon loadout, and to be able to cross-retrofit between them (in the same hull class of course).

I have no objection to a scrollbar, which adds minimal clutter. I do object to folders. At first I just wanted to make sure you were doing this on purpose, since it prevents you from using retrofit.

I'm still at a loss why you feel a limit is needed; the hardware toll is not going to be significant.



As for clunkiness and 'you're doing it wrong', I don't care. As for there being 'more important factors than player freedoms', I could almost deal with this if there was any actual benefit to restricting the player's design banks other than just it being less messy. As it stands, there isn't, and thus it feels downright patronising just to be told it's better to use less ships.



I don't care, just raise/remove the number limit and let people who don't play optimally do it their way. The GUI has scroll bars; there is no hard-limit to the icons that can be displayed. If I want to be messy, I want to be messy - it's not an MMO or some iteration where it would affect others or even the game mechanics, there's no reason to be told I shouldn't.

The_Doctor wrote:
Why can't we at least be free to choose how many we can design? An artificial limit is just frustrating.

To be honest, most 4x games that allow unit design have a limit... the limit generally differs based on the variations possible and number of 'frame' types... but they are there. Some are as low as 10-20 designs, others like Alpha Centauri had if memory serves 99 slots but a very large number in customisation and frame variations each with different pros and cons.



One reason for this could be that saving designs isn't 'free'... the designs do need to be stored somewhere and then read and presented every time you open the system screen and production choices open up, and also when you open up the ship/design screen.... to not have a limit is giving a open door for messy design players with lower specs or just cheap hardware to face screen transition delays.



Endless Space if we're to be honest has very few actual options for customisation however... except for support modules, all other modules move in a progressively better linear direction. So what separates a missile gunboat to a laser spammer is 5-6 units of weapons? Maybe 10 if we're talking about dedicated dreads? And all you even need is to add one or two lasers after removing the missiles and click "Auto complete" and the redesign is done.



With a limit of 10, upgrading is also quick and easy. The player is now allowed to have a messy design selection and so the designs that are there matter and upgrading all ships that matter to new technology is about 5 seconds work... allow someone to have 30 designs half of which they made just for laughs in case a hypothetical situation might one day arise where the design is needed so needs to be upgraded to be 'current' in case the hypothetical situations occurs next turn, and you've allowed the game to quickly become clunky and cumbersome, rather than sleek.



It may sound like a lot of excuses for trampling on 'player freedom'... but as I've said in another thread recently, sometimes not offering certain customisation and choices is actually the better option, if to do so means allowing players to easily make the game clunky or not perform as intended shifting the players experience beyond the developers intentions.





So to attempt to answer the question "Why can't we at least be free to choose how many we can design?" - Because there are more important factors involved than player freedoms and feelings of entitlement to more freedom when told they can't do something they want. Perhaps the 10 limit could be increased, personally I've never seen a need for it to be but perhaps I'm an abnormal case.... but actually having a limit at some practical level is I feel needed either way.







* Messy design player stereotype #1 - "Oh I made 8 designs but now I need ships with other weapon uses. Modifying the existing designs and removing modules is dull, I'll just make 8 new designs by adding some weapons and defenses and click auto complete... yeah that makes more sense actually, as then the original 8 can be used when needed without me having to bother adapting designs!"... repeat process each time a new empire is encountered, and then watch in pity as the person tries to deal late game with upgrading their designs.

I did a flick-through the FAQs and suggestion tracking (and did a search of the forums for good measure) but couldn't find anything on this topic, so here goes:





Can we really only have 10 Ship Designs maximum? Or have I missed a game mechanic that has to be expanded?



Into my first game, I'm about 70 turns in and was trying to set up numerous different ship designs and when I got the message that I had hit the maximum at ten, it was the first and only disappointment I've had so far with Endless (and prompted me to come activate my Forum/G2G stuff even faster :P).



Why is there a design limit at all? There I was, creating a couple of different destroyer variants (a cheaper, kinetic-armed 'picket' destroyer for system patrols and wiping out early 40/40 pirates versus a heavier, kinetic/beam hybrid with newer armour and defences for line-combat) and 'ding', only 10 ship designs allowed... It amazed me!





It seems a waste of having a ship design and customisation system if nothing else, and a pain in the behind at least. On a constructive note though, and based naturally on the hope that the limit will be removed, I would have some positive suggestions:

• Ship categories - since the GUI areas have to be conserved, it would make sense to allow players to basically create folders or categories to put ship designs in - perhaps with an autogenerate option that automates classification into folders based by ship hulls, but more specifically the ability for the player to create labelled category folders (e.g. 'Scout', 'Repair', 'Escort', 'Battle' etc) and organise and drag'n'drop ship designs into them.
  
  
  
  
• These categories could then be automatically used by the ship build menu as sub-menu icons to reduce clutter.
  
  
  
  
• Probably a bigger undertaking; but some appearance customisation of my ships would be nice - both in their paintjobs and their physical features... Right now, all my ships look identical to all others who use the hull.
  
  

I retrofit my ships based on the empire I am currently in the most immediate conflict with, so the 10 limit has never been a problem for me.



Start off with 3 or 4 sub-cruisers, then once I get cruisers I've explored a large number of systems so I ditch the original exploration design and make a recon/support cruiser.



Eventually I have 2 sub-cruiser designs, 3 or 4 cruiser designs, 1 battleship design and 1 maybe 2 dreads.... tends to fit into the 10 max nicely and that's without actually making any effort to keep under 10.



Because of the nature of combat and how weapons and defence is handled it makes very little sense to be making making fleets with ship designs consisting of polar opposite weapons and defences, so instead I've found making some larger generalised support ships that dabble in all forms of defences and repair/buff the fleet and then having dedicated current target enemy specific offensive designs that focus more on what known ship designs the enemy uses.



That way if the enemy changes their designs, whilst I may lose the focused offensive ships if I get unlucky the support ships will generally survive and I can pull them back to resupply their fleet with the smaller offensive ships with the designs upgraded to react to the change in target fleet. (Or if the enemy is still using old ships plus one or two two, I sometimes take a generalised support/defensive design and focus its weapons to deal with the new design use and ever so slightly adjust defense.)





So yeah... IMO 10 designs seems about right IMO. Any higher and it may be to encouraging for some people to try having fleets that cater to everything and end up being utterly ineffective against a more informed and specific opponent.

@The_Doctor - good post, it touches on wider issues I have with the game atm.

increasing the design limit sounds like a simple fix for now.



I would rather see many more ship classes developed - would add a lot more tactical options, depth, scaling of military with expansion of empire, as you said "diverse designs and fleet compositions"

I have 5 ship types that I use, and 6 on a rare occasion. 1 colony ship, 3 destroyers one for each weapon type, one battleship, and occasionally a dreadnaught.

I was surprised not to find any queries on the topic, to be honest. 10 different designs seems unnecessarily restrictive to me; even if people weren't using more the fact that one is forced not to seems to be unnecessary.



Perhaps it's just me, but I like to have the option of fielding 5 different classes of Battleship each equipped for different roles; as for the retrofitting function I think that's a great feature of ES; but since I have multiple classes of Battleship doing different things, they should be re-designed and retrofitted individually.

I am curious, besides the OP are there other players who have a large number of ship types? I have not seen any other post about this, and I have religiously scoured the forums to keep up my known bug thread.

davea wrote:
I had not tried having 10 different designs. Usually I have only one design per hull type, and I retrofit. The drawback to multiple designs is that you cannot retrofit from one to another. If you haven't used retrofitting, you should consider it. If you use retrofitting, and still feel that 10 designs is not enough, it may be worth expanding. I wouldn't want to see the complexity of folders for ship types; but maybe the limit could be raised a little.

I don't want to retrofit all destroyers to one hull; I want the option to have as many different set-ups of a hull simultaneously as I please; and then retrofit each one individually.



The fact that there's a limit at all really disappointed me; and 10 is cripplingly low if you want to have diverse designs and fleet compositions. As for my idea about categories/folders, that's purely a QoL function when the limit is removed, it wouldn't force you to use it or change the way you run your gameplay.

I had not tried having 10 different designs. Usually I have only one design per hull type, and I retrofit. The drawback to multiple designs is that you cannot retrofit from one to another. If you haven't used retrofitting, you should consider it. If you use retrofitting, and still feel that 10 designs is not enough, it may be worth expanding. I wouldn't want to see the complexity of folders for ship types; but maybe the limit could be raised a little.