Question: Ship Design vs. Core Ships

It takes a variety of techs to be able to get a premade ship... but the ones you make by hand will always turn out to be better.

What I'll normally do is wait for a tech which is a significant leap above what I last fielded and then slap it on a new design.

The core ships are honestly not all that useful -- especially since the AI designs its own ships, anyway. New core ships appear intermittently, usually only after major technologies have been researched. Even then, there's not all that useful. If you want to conitnually have upgraded ships (or ships that really do suit your needs), you'll have to design them yourself.

I design my own ships and add a version number, like v1 Defender, v2 Defender....
After i research a new ship tech and im close to constructing a ship in a colony i go to the ship builder and see if i can make an improved design and if i can i make for example a v3 Defender.
You can change what ship a colony is producing without penalty, so id change production from v2 to v3 Defender

It's definitely recommended to make your own ships. You can specialise them to their roles and you can make them much more powerful than the core ones available.

Compare the initial scout ship to a cargo hull with all engines and sensors. The scouting radius and speed of one player designed ship makes up for maybe 10+ of the core ones.

Even if you can't be bothered to make them look nice, it's still worth designing your own to take advantage of the techs you research.

If you like the idea of ever winning a game, design your own.

Is it just me, or does the pre-made colony ship have a capacity of 500 despite having 2 colony modules? Is this just something they've added as a visual effect?

First (and only!) time I built a core colony ship was when I thought that it worked out slightly cheaper in one instance, having two modules. But then I found that it actually only had the capabilities of one module. I see it also has many support modules that have no effect...

(I'm using the ship designs of the race above human in the relevant options screen, I think)

Don't believe anything you see on the premade ships. Attack rarely matches to what you see on the ship - mass driver attacks when the ship looks to have missile pods, primative 1 attack defenders which look like they have a pair of phasors... everything on premade ships is eyecandy methinks. The colony ship had me baffled for a while too, but its definately only a single module's worth on the core one.

Custom designs >> core designs.

If your not designing your own ships your missing a HUGE part of the fun of GC2.

My fav set up is a tiny frame with the cheapest gun and shielding you can get to fit on the frame. Minaturerization is also a factor here. Think you need the first step done to squeeze both onto a tiny frame.

Why would you build tiny frame ships you ask? Because with 2 to 4 military bases around them, overlapping, they're godly. It smashes the peon rush the AI's use, those pesky Heavy Fighters. It's my answer to the peon rush. This tactic will smash full fleets of even dreadnaughts, frigates etc. With the proper logistics and minaturerization rateings. And useing the lowest priced weapons and defense you can build them for approxamately 85bc. with a 1 bc monthly maintence fee per ship. This is an unbeatable defense set up.

The hook in this tactic is the huge amount of constructors you need.

I agree with OldDocc about using tiny fighters, but I've recently discovered on the higher levels that the AI is much better at adapting than I gave it credit for. My fleets of 10-12 tiny fighters were overwhelmed in the later stages of the game by fourth generation Drengin Heavy Fighters. Needless to say this was a nasty shock to me, and resulted in the need for a better ship very very fast. Hence the Ship designer, which is another part of the true genus of this game. The problem with tiny fighters as my game dragged on is that the AI was building bigger ships and adding in more defense to their ships than the equivalent firepower that I was able to fit on my tiny fighters. Of course the military bases probably help a lot.

Besides I find nothing more satisfying than the first victory of your custom ship class over the enemy.

You can play with core units, its just that you have to unlock them within your tech tree. Instead of doing that, You can use the customize ship option and create a ship that will counter the offenses and defenses exactly. I know you want to play with just the core ships, but in my opinion, I think its worth the time and effort to learn the ship building specs. The mechanics are not hard at all and you can do much better in the game because of it.

It takes 30 seconds to slap a couple guns, engines and defenses on a hull and get back to the game. You don't have to make them look pretty, just functional.

I'm on my third game, making the jump to a gigantic map. There's still a number of things I'm learning about the game and I was probably within a year of being absorbed into the Arcean sprawl before I retooled my factories to start producing mass quantities of ships.

I mention this because on the larger maps, there isn't a single stock/core ship that is useful at any distance from your area of control. Sometimes your nearest neighbor is too far away for the stock freighters to reach them and you have to design your own that can get the job done.

Also, the game is designed for flexibility. Your AI opponents will constantly switch weapon types and a stock ship won't have the flexibility to use the most effective weapons/defenses for the job.

For instance: I'm stuck in one corner right now and my best chance to expand is to attack in the opposite corner. With the technology I had at the time, I designed a constructor with a range of 6.5 and speed 5. That was just enough to get it into an open area between to other races so I could build a non-imposing economy starbase. How did I know where to put the constructor? Again, I built a scout ship that could almost cross the entire galaxy. Even then it just barely had the range to scout out a good location for the economy starbase. Sending the constructor took over 20 turns and by time the base was built I had enough technology to build large hull ships with the range to invade. Built long range troop transports too. I sent a convoy of near 18 large ships and 14 troop transports moving speed 9 across the only empty part of the map (again 20+ turn trip) and took 8 planets in 3 turns once I got there. Now that I've a foothold, I'll still keep the engines on to keep the ships from obsoleting during the trip, but redesign them with less support modules and throw on another weapon. With another tech, I'll redo my long range transport with even more speed and send the new ones across the galaxy at speed 13.

There is no way a stock ship would have allowed me to do any of that.

The other comments are spot on: you don't need to spend 8 hours designing a fancy ship unless you really want to. I'll take maybe 15 minutes to find the best combination for a specialty need, name it, save it, build it. If all I'm doing is updating engines and weapons, it's less than 5 minutes. The neat thing is, once you've made these ships, the next time you play the same race, they will become available as you get the technology.....just like you were expecting the stock ships to do.

Designing your own ships is a huge strategic advantage over other 4x games I've played.

Just my 2 cents.

(sigh) Okay, I guess I'll design my own.
Just kidding. I don't mind designing my own, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something about the core ships. Thanks for the quick responses.

I seem to be having a similar problem. While I will get to the point of designing my own ships I would like to know why the default ships are not appearing after I have already researched the required technologies so that I should be able to build them (according to the information provided in the Technology tree)? I've been playing the Terran race only so far and the only default ship I can get up to is a Star Fury...

Miniturization techs aren't included in the "Other Techs Required" section. Try researching a few levels in that if you aren't getting the ships when you expect to.

-Dewar

I appreciate all the insights in these posts and have learned a lot.

I just recently got Gal Civ II and am on my first game but I've been playing it with a Gal Civ I mentality concerning ships.

** Where the hell is the technology tree that lets me build battleships?? **

Good stuff guys.

** Where the hell is the technology tree that lets me build battleships?? **

You need to research medium, large, and huge hulls. Make your own ships from there.

Anyone know how to delete the core ships (so they arent in the way) or know if that'll be an option later to hide them/free up their names for personal use?

You can "obsolete" core ships, which will get them out of your way for the game you are currently in. You're not supposed to delete core ships. But I agree, it would be nice. I like the names the core ships have, so it's mildly galling to have to name my own ships something a little less intuitive.

As for very quick design, you can use the PLACE button to have the computer pick harpoints on the hull for your stuff. It never looks pretty, but it is functional. I admit, I use the place button to put components on so that I don't have to do math to figure out if everything will fit or not.

Yeah, depending on what the situation is, custom ships do well in general. Sometimes I'll have a couple military starbases with lots of ship defense assists. Since I won't need to increase my ships' defenses in the area of effect, I would have one tiny hull or small hull design with lots of weapons on it, as well as one decent engine (like impulse mk3) so I have many cheap ships that could defend against practically anything without much cost. (Of course, having many many military starbases with defense assists is itself unbeatable...if you have the time and resource to build them all without having the AI take you out....on higher levels...oh decisions decisions )

Anyways, think about cost. Custom ships may come cheaper in relation to the benefit. Core ships may be highly underequipped as well. The only core ship I use is the Constructor, since it's cheaper than my Express Builders (many many engines), when I need to build bases near my planets, instead of where I consider building strategic outposts.

I HATE core ships. They're weak, slow, and are never what I need for a given situation. The only exception is the combat transport, which I'm starting to dislike because it's too weak by the time huge hulls are researched.
Custom ships are designed for the situation, look better (even for people with no talent with them, like me), and add some pride to the game. "I just flattened your army, with my own ships. Now that's ownage"

I like to make my colony/invasion ships with medium instead of cargo hulls after a miniaturization or two. It really helps them survive a fight with enemy peon ships that kill colonizers and generally cause aggravation.