Q: Ship Design / Ship Dimensions / More Hull Types

Interesting feedback. I understand what you are saying about the ship types, but I don't know that it would make things less restrictive that way. Would a way to measure the size of the ships help with the issue you are having?

It would certainly make things easier!  . Judging by the number of custom fleet designs on Steam Workshop based on Star Trek, Star Wars etc, I can't be the only one who has pulled their hair at over this occassionaly. I appreciate it's a fairly small immersion thing that is only really visibile in the Battle Viewer. 

Hull size set by set by role is a really cool idea. It always seemed in GC3 Hull size was only related to Hit Points and scale in the creator/ battle viewer. When you unlock larger hulls through techs it would be more exciting to unlock specific battle roles instead of just ‘cool my ships are bigger’

There’s chatter in another thread about how battle roles should influence combat. This could work really well in conjunction.  This would be a big change from 3. 

Also big agreement that hull sizes in the workshop could get frustrating. You love a ship design but it doesn’t fit into the hull size you want in your game. 

That would be awesome, it would really add some strategy to it.

Though this may be straying far beyond the direction the Devs want to go, I would say that roles could/should also influence things beyond simply combat.

When you look at what modern navies do today - they patrol borders, they join multinational training exercises, carry out diplomacy and show the flag at foreign ports, they support huminitarian efforts, conduct antipiracy and trade-route patrols, they escort or keep an eye on foregin warships near their territory.

It would be awesome if some of that could be introduced to GalCiv IV. Imagine being contacted by an Ally saying they are concerned that another neigbour may be intending to invade, so you turn up on their border with a small battlefleet to  conduct 'training exercises' to reinforce them and hopefully discourage any aggression.

Or perhaps there been a lot of piracy so you send in a few destroyers to patrol vital trade lanes.

I agree that currently as you go up the tech tree your fleet typically ends up being made up predominatly by the largest hull type because all others become slightly superfluous.

I've thought about this quite a bit too. It's overly complicated and headache inducing.

My solution is:

The ship "designer" does away completely with "size" categories being involved in anyway in the design of the ship's look. You simply design a ship shape putting your pieces together (not components that make it functional).

During play you assign from your library of designed ships to whatever type of ship is required: probe, colony, bb, dd, carrier, etc., Whatever you have researched.

The ship gets scaled automatically, and you modify this overall if you want. But it adds a certain number of hardpoints, etc. to which you then need to assign your actual functional components- the number and type of hardpoints is decided by your current technologies, the ship type/size, etc.

Now, obviously you could have designed a detailed Battlestar Galactica type ship and assign it as a probe and it'll look silly, but that's on you and easily avoidable. It's just appearances- it still only got (making this up) three hardpoints: engines, sensors, power source. Or whatever.

This would simplify the entire scale thing and weirdness associated with the invisible parts and invisible ship size cube starter thingy. The ship designer as is is really crap and feels like it is held together by string and gum.

You can trick the game's scale system by using tiny, nearly invisible parts, put out equally distant from the front and back of your model. Typically find the smallest, blackest piece you can find, place one on the front and back. Then move them out equally. Then scale them to the tiniest possible (in my experience the parts will barely be a speck on a screen).

Then build the ship and see if you are happy with the scale. Move the piece inward to enlarge the model. Move them outward to shrink the model. For extreme size manipulation, you may need to add additional placeholder pieces to the original placeholding pieces.

In this way even the largest battleship can be made into a fighter if you truly desire that, but I usually used it to make tiny hulls scale nicely to my battleships.

Full Disclosure: I don't own GC4, but I highly doubt anything has changed enough from 3 where the above advice would fail you.

Thanks for the tips!  It seems like a lot of hoops to jump through to make your fleet scale look totally BA. I also do not own 4 yet (still putting away for the right laptop). 

For me the ‘problem’ remains the disconnect between the expansive ship editor vs the application of your creations in game terms.

In other words: why have such a glorious ship editor only to reduce ships to simple rock, paper, scissors in combat in the game?

GalCiv would benefit so much from a little more depth from the way components and ship elements have impact in gameplay.

Definately.

I'm not sure how it was in GalCiv I but certainly after GalCiv II & III and now IV the whole ship/fleet system really needs an innovative rethink as currently it seems to be case of "well that how it's always been done so we will keep doing it."

The Civilization Series and Stellaris to a certain extent also fall into this trap. Where the 'Standard' in these sort of 4x games was set decades ago and has remained fairly stagnant. This can apply to all mechanics from diplomacy to economy too.