Three problems having to do with the ship and fleet designers that could be "easily" fixed

These are REALLY limiting my enjoyment of the new features of Crusade!

PROBLEM #1: ship style canalization. It is very limiting to have to deal with the "ship style" in the ship designer. I don't know about other players, but I never paid attention to this before, and now my designs are spread over different "ship styles" that have nothing to do with what I was doing. I would use one ship style one day, another the next. I just made ships. So now, I go to design a ship, and it gives me a list of a SUBSET of the hulls I have designed, based on (I assume) the ship style I was using when I designed them. What if I was using a non-standard ship style? Do those ships just never show up?

WHY THIS IS BAD: Some of us don't play by the rules. Some of us have user-designed ship styles. Some of us just want to have the flexibility to mix and match. I suspect only newbies and casual players pay attention to ship style when designing ships.

SOLUTION: Can we please just have an "ALL" function that permits us to use ALL ship designs at once?

 

PROBLEM #2: starbases, shipyards, and the perpetual hull size issue. Some of us designed ships under the "wrong" hull size. Specifically, we didn't have the option to design starbases before, so most of us put them under "cargo" hulls. Now we can't make these into starbases because they aren't considered starbases in the fleet designer.

WHY THIS IS BAD: Lots of us have old starbase designs, or "oops" designs in the wrong category, that we can't use now.

SOLUTION: Could we please have an option that says "ignore hull size?" If we checked this option, it would allow us to use ANY design for ANY ship ANYWHERE. Thus, my "Large Firggle Frangle" could be used at a "Tiny Guardian" or a "Shipyard" with no harm done.

 

PROBLEM #3" blueprints and the fleet designer. Not all ship blueprints are in the Fleet Designer. The drone designs are not in there. I hear other blueprints, like the mixed-weapon blueprints, aren't either. I haven't checked myself, I gave up at the drones...

WHY THIS IS BAD: Obviously, we would like to make a complete fleet. What is the point of going into huge detail designing a coordinated fleet of perfectly spherical ships, then the drones look like little Terran fighters?

SOLUTION: Would you please put all of the blueprints in the fleet designer?

 

Please address these issues. Until that is done, much of the previous work that has gone into ship designing, etc. has been wasted. The ship- and fleet designers will be, in my humble opinion, of limited value and will not be major selling points of the expansion. I would really like to change my reviews of this game to reflect the addition of these wonderful, long-needed capabilities, but the point of GalCiv is to provide UNLIMITED possibilities, not to canalize players into preset "ship styles," and certainly not to limit options. Right now, these are sapping some of the fun from my favorite game.

Thank you!

68,649 views 13 replies
Reply #2 Top

I do wish the game allow us to make or add sub-set design over the main one. Like how core ship work. It make UI less cluster and no need to keep hitting that "Obsolete" button.

Reply #3 Top

I'd like to add the prototypes to this list of missing ships. I know they are no longer resource specific ships like in pre 2.1, but they are still in the default races shipsets. (Probably with an edited blueprint, not looked that far into it, YET)

Reply #4 Top

+1..  I basically stop playing Crusade until they fix these issues

Reply #6 Top

+1  Crusade is soo close but hopefully gets these asap so the designers and modders can really shine.

Reply #7 Top

Bump. Can we get a dev to acknowledge these requests? Is this doable?

Reply #8 Top

It is unfortunate that the DLC model of game sales has essentially eliminated the need to fix things.  Developers no longer patch games to 'fix' things, because they know the consumer will only pay if they add new content.  So the philosophy seems to be; ignore the bugs and just add new content because that brings in revenue.  Free patches do not bring in more revenue.

I agree that ship design should be a bit more free form and would like to see that patched in, but until it's incorporated into a DLC I doubt we'll see this happen.  

EDIT: I am not against paid DLC content, I just think there is no incentive for developers to spend time fixing problems with their game when spending the same amount of time adding content will increase revenue.  

 

Reply #9 Top

Quoting Badbonez, reply 8

It is unfortunate that the DLC model of game sales has essentially eliminated the need to fix things.  Developers no longer patch games to 'fix' things, because they know the consumer will only pay if they add new content.  So the philosophy seems to be; ignore the bugs and just add new content because that brings in revenue.  Free patches do not bring in more revenue.

I agree that ship design should be a bit more free form and would like to see that patched in, but until it's incorporated into a DLC I doubt we'll see this happen.  

EDIT: I am not against paid DLC content, I just think there is no incentive for developers to spend time fixing problems with their game when spending the same amount of time adding content will increase revenue.  

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't trolling [EDIT: this probably comes across harsher than intended]. But I wholeheartedly disagree with this assessment as it relates to Stardock.

Having participated in the beta process for Crusade and watched things unfold over the past two weeks with the roll out of this DLC expansion, the dev team has been hard at work fixing issues, and I have no reason to believe they will stop doing so. What issues they fix, in what order, and how quickly--well, I'll leave those decisions up to them.

The OP makes some good points for ways to improve the designer, and I'd be all for them, but while I can understand General Pants' frustration, this particular issue doesn't bother me greatly... I think there are much higher priorities for the patches, at least for the time being.

That said, I do agree with you that it is less likely the ship designer will get much attention anytime soon--but I disagree that Stardock isn't fixing things with their game.

Reply #10 Top

Quoting ScrivenerOfLight, reply 9

I think there are much higher priorities for the patches, at least for the time being.

Very much agreed! The game needs to work properly first. The ship- and fleet designers are essentially frills: many casual players probably don't care much about them. Whether we like it or not, those casual players are the ones generating the revenue.

I too must disagree about Stardock: they have a long history of fixing problems with the base game, and the expansions, long after they have supposedly moved on. I suggest giving them a chance. They sometimes fall behind, but they have always pulled through for me in the end!

 

 

Reply #11 Top

PROBLEM #3" blueprints and the fleet designer. Not all ship blueprints are in the Fleet Designer. The drone designs are not in there. I hear other blueprints, like the mixed-weapon blueprints, aren't either. I haven't checked myself, I gave up at the drones...

 

Six months later, patch 2.61 and still not fixed such a simple bug? Is this really true or do i need new glasses?

Reply #12 Top

Quoting ScrivenerOfLight, reply 9

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't trolling [EDIT: this probably comes across harsher than intended]. But I wholeheartedly disagree with this assessment as it relates to Stardock.

I disagree that Stardock isn't fixing things with their game.

Stardock goes above and beyond for their clients 

 

luceo non uro