I find the current system annoying, I want to be able to make specialists ships like a corvette outfitted with repair module a large engine and tons of armor. Without the 10 ship limit I think most people would use the retrofit option for ships. It is easier to modify a design and retrofit then it is to make a bunch of unique ship designs.

Gargomaxthalus wrote:
The way the game is set up this all feels a bit pointless to me. Once the setup is optimized we'll likely just all end up with homogeneously balanced ship designs.

Maybe we have different definitions of "balanced". In my opinion, if there is one all-around best ship design, then the game is not balanced. Or at least, it would be boring for me. Granted, most players feel the current alpha is not balanced due to destroyer spam; but that is a different problem.

Reliant wrote:
You could also use a scale to the cost. The first of any new particular ship would be the most expensive to build & maintain since it is the prototype, but as more ships are produced and production ramps up, the construction cost can start to scale down along with the maintenance cost. Realistically the decrease in cost would be specific to individual shipyards. perhaps implemented by a repeat-build cost reduction (repeat the same build and it decreases by 1% each repeat until it caps at 10% for example with the value being reset if production changes), but it can also be done empire wide for simplicity with the cost reduction being based solely on how many of that ship have already been build.



Lots of unique designs gives the added benefit of flexibility and always being state-of-the-art, but come with the downside of being more costly to manufacture & maintain the fleet. Imagine the nightmare that the chief engineer of the USS Unique has in trying to find a replacement intake manifold for their engine if they're the only ship in the fleet with that specific design for that part. This would also give players a viable option in sticking with an existing design that's only slightly out of date. Master of Orion 2 implemented this through miniaturization where equipment became cheaper and smaller through new research.



Think of it like having a fleet of cars. It's a lot easier to maintain 10 cars of identical models than trying to maintain a fleet of 8 cars from 8 manufacturers located in 8 different countries.



Disclaimer: I'm still downloading the alpha and haven't yet played Endless Space yet.

Not bad, not bad at all for a blind mans post. ROFL

The way the game is set up this all feels a bit pointless to me. Once the setup is optimized we'll likely just all end up with homogeneously balanced ship designs. With the lack of balance, specialization can really work but, the game doesn't seem to be designed for specialist ships. I really haven't seen enough to make ships special, I mean, you just load them up with the best defenses and weapons and send them to play. There's nothing like the tanker/refinery, C&C, and ECM/ECCM ships in SotS, or those sort of modules like in say GalCiv. As things stand you really don't even need the 10 slots that are available, especially with the refit system.

So far one other player has mentioned this as a problem. Most players have not noticed this limit so have not complained. To make sure, have you been using retrofitting? For me, one destroyer frame is enough: I "modify" this design and then retrofit all the ships to it. If you "add" a design, you cannot retrofit, which makes sense. For me, this places a natural limit on the number of schematics I would use.



Still, adding a scrollbar should not be hard.

Ketobor wrote:
Realistically the system needs a revamp. There is no reason for any ship not to be a unique variant on a previous design, with every ship being uniquely refit for problems. This makes the separate design system rather pointless.



I would recommend infinite designs, but a small (10% of production cost in dust) cost to making new designs or modifying old ones. Cheap enough that you will do it whenever you need to, expensive enough that not every ship will be arbitrarily unique.

You could also use a scale to the cost. The first of any new particular ship would be the most expensive to build & maintain since it is the prototype, but as more ships are produced and production ramps up, the construction cost can start to scale down along with the maintenance cost. Realistically the decrease in cost would be specific to individual shipyards. perhaps implemented by a repeat-build cost reduction (repeat the same build and it decreases by 1% each repeat until it caps at 10% for example with the value being reset if production changes), but it can also be done empire wide for simplicity with the cost reduction being based solely on how many of that ship have already been build.



Lots of unique designs gives the added benefit of flexibility and always being state-of-the-art, but come with the downside of being more costly to manufacture & maintain the fleet. Imagine the nightmare that the chief engineer of the USS Unique has in trying to find a replacement intake manifold for their engine if they're the only ship in the fleet with that specific design for that part. This would also give players a viable option in sticking with an existing design that's only slightly out of date. Master of Orion 2 implemented this through miniaturization where equipment became cheaper and smaller through new research.



Think of it like having a fleet of cars. It's a lot easier to maintain 10 cars of identical models than trying to maintain a fleet of 8 cars from 8 manufacturers located in 8 different countries.



Disclaimer: I'm still downloading the alpha and haven't yet played Endless Space yet.

Realistically the system needs a revamp. There is no reason for any ship not to be a unique variant on a previous design, with every ship being uniquely refit for problems. This makes the separate design system rather pointless.



I would recommend infinite designs, but a small (10% of production cost in dust) cost to making new designs or modifying old ones. Cheap enough that you will do it whenever you need to, expensive enough that not every ship will be arbitrarily unique.