Hey everyone! First of all, it's good to see that many of you are interested in discussing what would be the best solution to the ship design slots criteria. It's definitely a tricky one, and we think both views (limited and unlimited) have their merits. We understand that. That's why we would like to emphasize and clarify this topic by stressing the above quote from the dev diary. Basically, we're not sure yet on the final solution for the slots, so everything is still possible. Our strategy since the beginning has been to start from the MoO2 baseline, in all aspects of the game, and then evolve that into a more detailed, refreshed or derived version of it. With the ship design slots it was the same. We began from the 5 design slots, and then, taking into account how the game progresses, we could add +1 slot, possibly for the later stage of the game. We're trying to link this limited designs aspects to the refit/upgrade process. It could be +1 slot or more. We'll be evaluating that during our playtesting sessions which are already happening and will keep happening throughout the following months, till release. Just to clarify our mindset, when we think of ship designs we think in everything that is necessary to put the ship into orbit. From the blueprints themselves, from the factories assembly, testing process and finally the deployment in space. We would like to give the designs slots number a complex meaning. We would like to emphasize the sensation that having a ready-to-build design is not as simple as picking up from the shelf. Having an expensive first prototype, as suggested by the community, can be a step in the right direction. Everything that helps boost the connection with the ships, to give them more character and make them feel more special is good in our book. So, we think having less design slots, with potential penalties for older designs (that are not active but still in service) can be a good way to maximize the significance of creating a design. However, we understand that there's a balance between that and the player's creative freedom, so we'll be assessing both aspects to finally understand what will be the best solution and possible compromise, together. We thank you again for the discussion regarding this and other issues, and remember that each 'post' you post is helping us shape up a better solution in the end !
Just a quick FYI, A penalty for an older design that is not active but still in service would be counter-factual. Just going from ship building experience here, it was never a problem to find material for older ship classes during the cold world, especially in the opening phase of a ship class being deemed obsolete. Many vendors even considered lowering their prices for certain materials until they could be certain that said materials would be used in future designs as they already were tooled to produce them and often had stocks on hand. The decision is yours ultimately, however you would be closer to realism (and incur less work for yourselves), if you discarded the penalty for older operational designs. (Just the ship being an older design is a penalty in and of itself)
Thanks for the clarification, its good to see that nothing is really set in stone yet. I completely agree that the balance between forcing difficult decisions and player creative freedom is important to get right. Unfortunately, for me this particular "difficult decision" (a 5 design hard limit for an entire space empire) is largely undermined because it makes absolutely no sense and therefore stretches credibility and suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. If it were altered so it did make sense (like ChrisKonstantine's idea of Variants or the concept of expensive prototypes do) then that would be an entirely different story and I'd be all for it. I think it would be a mistake to underestimate your player's ability to detect (and loathe) game mechanics that are purely there to force artificial, "gameplay choices" which make little to no sense in the context of the game universe. I understand that MOO 2 did it but MOO 2 didn't really have a choice with the memory limitations of the time so I doubt that reviewers of your game will allow you that as an excuse. I fear that a 5 slot limit will almost certainly be seen as a needlessly restrictive and archaic design flaw by almost everyone. Either way I'm not really going to lose any sleep but I've been a big fan of Space Sector for years and would like to see the game succeed, so when I see an obvious problem coming from a mile away I feel compelled to point it out. Thanks again for responding to this thread and clearing up where you currently stand.
Cool, maybe we can move onto an actual discussion, rather than, say, calling the devs "illogical" eight times in a row (sorry, I counted) and ignoring all the opinions offered that differ from our own. Considering the language that a (thankfully small) minority of posters have been using - that the OP was "stupid", "retarded", and responsible for "a con" - I'm extremely impressed that MalRey has responded as professionally as that. No-one should have to put up with that kind of abuse tbh. So in the interests of ACTUAL DISCUSSION... That's a really good idea - in fact, why not implement it literally, and give the ships actual, semi-random character traits, that reflect the little quirks of the engineering process? A lot of projects end up taking on a life of their own, for better or worse. So your new design could, on completion, end up with traits like "Especially Sturdy" (Hull Bonus) or "Surprisingly Quick" (Speed Bonus) or even "Looks Really Cool" (crew morale bonus). Of course, you might end up with design niggles like "Eats Fuel" or "Turns Like a Pig" (though hopefully not negative enough to deter the player from using it entirely). Over time, the ship in that design slot could work through and remove its negative traits, as well as acquiring some context-sensitive new ones. Build a lot of one type, it could become "Fleet Backbone" (production discount). If you run with that idea there are lots of ways that designs could become unique, and it rewards a player for sticking with tested models and running a more efficiently-designed fleet. The player that indulges in design spam would end up with less-well-engineered models, which is extremely plausible in my book.
There's all the difference in the world between referring to a proposed game concept as illogical and directly calling a specific individual illogical. Apparently you cant recognize the difference or willfully choose not to recognize it for your own nefarious purposes. That's not my problem and I have confidence that absolutely nobody is getting fooled by such a clearly transparent and underhanded ploy. I never ignored your "explanations" in support of a 5 design slot hard limit, I pointed out on multiple occasions that your reasoning simply seemed like desperate mental contortions to explain an inherently illogical game mechanic at any cost. I know one or two others have found your explanations satisfactory, good for them but they most certainly don't work for me. So not ignored, examined and dismissed. Several times. Either way I'm not really interested in descending to your level where you have apparently made this intensely personal and hostile for no reason that I can easily understand (or frankly care about). The devs have asked for feedback and I have provided feedback, namely that I don't believe one of their ideas is going to work well because the specific "hard decision" doesn't make any sense in the context of the game universe. Several others have agreed with me so I'm far from alone in this opinion. This is the type of feedback that devs find very useful, especially in the early planning stages of a game. That's why they keep continually asking us for feedback, not just positive feedback that agrees with every single thing they propose, but any opinion on the current or future state of the game. Whether they decide to act on that feedback is entirely up to them and thankfully not you.
I spent some more time thinking about this issue yesterday and to be honest it doesn’t sit well with me. Even though the opinion expressed by possibility in comment no 50 was entirely bereft of tact it was essentially correct. Mark also expressed himself quite vehemently on the subject and has too many valid points to ignore as I assure you that Mark is not a minority of one. Let me see if I can explain this fairly and impartially. I took the time to examine how this mechanic of forced limited designs and penalties for older designs would impact a player and I submit two hypothetical scenarios for your consideration. Scenario one The player is doing well, perhaps not a powerhouse but certainly not threatened. In this scenario the player would shrug off the effects as a minor nuisance as he/she could easily absorb the costs of older designs in the field while newer designs are being cranked out. Certainly not a game breaking issue, at best completely ignored and at worse an irritating nuisance. Scenario two The player is not doing well and may even be hanging on for dear life. News comes that a new design is available which offers a glimmer of hope during these dark times. The player quickly designs a new class of ship and is instantly penalized by increased costs for his older designs that are in the field. The player can’t scrap the older designs as that would spell certain collapse but at the same time cannot afford the penalty incurred. Game over. What I see here is that the mechanic as proposed by the Devs does not only fly in the face of reality but could actually hinder a player even more. In fact, the worse you are doing the more detrimental this mechanic becomes. I understand the desire for hard choices but at the same time a game like Moo2 is already full of them. Do I focus my industry on colony ships to gain territory quickly but at the cost of not being able to put up effective defenses if needed early? Should I crank out a dozen small ships quickly or build a single large ship? Do I develop my world as a priority over my fleet or the other way around. These are just some examples of hard choices that are inherent in the game and not forced or contrived, these add fun and not frustration. Then there is a far more pragmatic issue. Limited designs will upset those that want more More designs will not upset those that want less. This as we say in my neck of the woods is a no-brainer, take the path that will please more players and not less. As I stated in post no 62, it is unrealistic to incur additional costs for obsolete designs that are still operational, if anything it should be reduced costs. Unfortunately, with the way Devs are tying this to the limited number of slots available it would be too easy to exploit. Create a design that you wish to field, build x number of ships and then create a bogus design to instantly get a discount for the first design. Sorry, no matter how I look at this, it is in my opinion a high risk low reward mechanic. My recommendation is to remove any penalty or bonus for obsolete designs which will instantly make the limited number of design slots less of a factor. In other words if you wish to change the mechanic from the way it played in Moo2 this is not the way to do it. A final point here is something that Mark said about reviews. It is quite possible that reviewers will extend some professional courtesy to Adam Solo and treat him kindly. However, human nature being what it is, it is far more probable that they will hold him to a higher standard. It would indeed be unfortunate to read that he of all people should have known better. Anyway gents, my apologies for the long scrawl but I really feel strongly about this, If the mechanic is introduced as proposed thus far, I and others of like mind would find it to be a serious negative.
A good, solid analysis, needless to say I agree with almost all of it. About the only point I'm not yet totally sold on is penalties for older designs, although this argument you presented…. has me about 75% convinced that you're right since I can definitely see that exact scenario happening too and it would most certainly not be a good gameplay experience. The remaining 25% of my doubt is that we haven't really seen any solid details about this mechanic and there's a chance that it might make more sense when fully explained. Actually now that I think more about it I'm not even sure it makes sense from a pure realism / immersion perspective. Most navies in the world - including the U.S. - are not composed primarily of new ships in fact its quite the opposite. If it were more expensive to maintain an older navy then you would expect most navies to be pretty new as expensive old ships are quickly retired to save costs. Make that 85% convinced. I especially agree with your logic in the following quote…… This seems so obvious that it barely needs stating, but apparently it does and you stated it well. I really don’t get why a poster like gja102 gets so intensely committed to a 5 design hard limit that they're willing to stoop to direct personal attacks and even bizarre transparent false accusations to discredit the opposition. If you're a player playing a 4x game that allows 20 designs and you're quite comfortable using 5 then only use 5! But don’t lobby to hard-code the game so that every single player in the world is forced to play the exact same way you prefer. Seems simple enough. On the other hand I can fully understand why the devs might be committed, they're not looking only from a player's perspective, they are looking to make the game as interesting as possible by striking the best balance between hard game choices and player freedom. If only that particular hard choice made any sense I wouldn’t have any problem with it. Your idea of variants makes sense. Expensive prototyping costs for new ships make perfect sense. An entire space empire being limited to only 5 designs…… not so much.
Just a reminder that we need to keep the discussion to the topic at hand. I realize many of us feel very passionate about it, and that's appreciated as a healthy discussion/debate can definitely lead to the birth of new ideas and certainly a better, more enjoyable game. It can also lead however to a situation that feels hostile and personal, and this will lead to nothing but arguments and negativity. What I don't want to do is stifle creativity and discussion, but to do that we need to refrain from personal attacks and name calling. As to the design limits: I'm remaining open minded about the design limit. Maybe it just needs to be higher, or maybe it doesn't need to exist at all, but without all the facts I don't think we can say for sure. My initial reaction was that it sounded too restrictive, but when I think about it I rarely have more than 5 active designs in a 4X game. In fact, I typically only have 1 or 2 designs I'm actively building, so it may not matter for me personally. I do think a prototyping or initial design fee is a great way to influence a player's decision to constantly refine or design new ships. Perhaps this would be enough of a limiting factor on its own, if the fees were high enough. I don't think all fees should be created equal though. I'd charge a much higher prototype fee for the first ship design with a new, never used before, ship hull. I'd also charge a higher fee the first time a newly researched or discovered module is used in a ship. New ship designs using previously used hulls and modules should still have a fee, but it should be much less since these parts are already proven and manufacturing processes to create them have already been established. Maintaining older ships is a harder question for me to tackle. I'd agree that there should be ample supply available for quite some time after the design is replaced. However, eventually, the costs could rise once the available supply of materials to maintain them dwindles. It's not uncommon for parts for (much) older equipment to be far more expensive than parts for new equipment. For instance, I've seen older electrical systems use fuses that were so difficult to find that they cost absurd amounts of money. This lead to complete electrical system replacements in these older buildings as the cost to maintain the older system was no longer economically sensible. Perhaps, given enough turns had passed, this would make sense when it comes to star ships as well. Overall though, increased maintenance costs may be an overly complex solution to a non-existent problem. Older designs will become useless by their very nature. No one wants to fly around with laser I's and steel armor when laser III's and tritanium are all the rage. What if we passed this cost onto a refit penalty rather than a maintenance one? Advantage of a refit is you get an upgraded ready to use ship faster than you could build a new one. Disadvantage is it cost you more credits than just building a new one would.
This is a far more sensible abstraction of the subject matter with one exception. In the 80s the USN re-commissioned the Iowa class Battleships. The cost of recommissioning one Battleship was equivalent to building a single Perry class Frigate from scratch. We are both aware the difference between a Battleship and Frigate and as such there is no way I would find it plausible that a refit is more expensive than a new build. Look at it this way, there are many things that you do not need to do with a refit that save time and money such as actually laying down the keel etc. Prototypes you are spot on, same for new hull types never before used. So I guess this would be a partially agree from my part
I know you presented both sides of this argument but I just want to say that the side quoted above made about 100 times more sense to me with the exception of refits costing more than an entire new ship, I dont believe that would be the case. If I'm being brutally honest I'd probably admit from a pure reality perspective that maintenance on very old ships would probably start to cost more. Eventually. But all the other disadvantages of old ships are so great that I dont think the mechanic would be doing any favors to good interesting gameplay, it would just be another boot in the ribs. Old ships are their own disadvantage and I dont think a specific mechanic is really needed to enforce that, it enforces itself. This is a very good point to which I'd add that the Oliver Hazard Perry class guided missile frigate was designed and built in the mid 70's which means they have been around for about 40 years and other ships in the US fleet are comparably old, the Ticonderoga class missile cruiser was commissioned in 81. It seems that the most economical thing to do - at least with a real life wet navy - is to hang on to existing ships for as long as possible, continually upgrading, refitting and re-purposing them as required until they're almost falling apart. And the U.S. has by far the best funded navy in the world, the navies of other nations are even older. The real expense would seem to be brand new ships built from the keel up. Just getting back to the design limit issue again another important factor is the modability of the game. For me a 5 design limit would be nowhere near as much of a problem if I knew I could just change it to 8 or 15 or 100 by spending 30 seconds editing an XML file. On the other hand if the variable is hard-coded into the .exe then it suddenly becomes a rather big negative. An impassable roadblock to enjoying the game, not a very big one, but a continual annoyance which can never be addressed. Paradox games are big proponents of modability with almost all important variables and even scripting easily open to tweaking via mods. I have bought Paradox DLC and even entire games based solely on the knowledge that certain mechanics that I dont like or find utterly ridiculous can be easily and quickly modded out to my exact preference ("shattered retreat" in CK II comes to mind as a good example). So basically what I'm saying is that if you plan to make the game easily moddable then this whole 5 slot design limit becomes far less of an issue, for me at least.
I am 100% right about Endless Legend, it has endless design slots, pun intended, and here are the screen shots to prove it. Turn 1 of a new game I created 31 new designs before i got bored testing it. These are images of the unit design screen and the city production list.
Moo1 had limited design slots requiring you to scrap your old ships when you created a new design. This was not something players liked, thus Moo2 had near unlimited (240?) design slots, so you never had to worry about that again. People loved this and it was a much lauded feature and improvement over the original. I for one loved that improvement, and game reviews at the time mentioned it as well, always in a positive way. So why are we going backwards? Why are we removing a much loved feature? Why are you making a game design decision that will be lambasted in game reviews giving you negative press? I have never read a review of a game that said "There are too many design slots available and now i have no strategic decisions to make. so i am giving the game a lower score." LOL, that would be the stupidest thing you ever read in a game review. But this game will get it mentioned in every review in a negative way. Even the old Space Sector website would have mentioned it in its game reviews.
If this is related in keeping with the "less but more important ships" strategy, or in other words an attempt to keep a certain scale and state of forces during the game, why not do it through shipyards instead? Here's the idea. Many slots available Shipyards similar to 2056 where the size of ships that can be built is related to the size of the shipyard. High maintenance costs for shipyards rising exponentially to abstract and reflect the cost of on hand materials and trained personnel. Prototype costs as the Devs describe No penalty or bonus on older designs (It would be a bonus if shipyards can be targeted in battle and another bonus if targeted through espionage as well) The result would keep with the "less but more important ships" strategy without feeling artificial at all. Sorry, I was in a rush, need to edit. Construction rates would now depend on hull size (with tech possibly involved) This would spell the end of titans being constructed in 3-4 turns and be far more realistic, trust me, you can only have so many workers on a dock. For the Devs, the combination should give the desired results well.
Ha, okay, my bad, thanks for testing. It's weird, I swear my version of the game kept the build list tidy by only having the most recent version of each design; maybe I was playing an older version or something. I thought it was a weird thing to be arguing about, but happy to admit I'm wrong when there's like evidence and stuff.
Mark, I literally don’t understand what you are talking about. I don't know what you mean when you accuse me of a "transparent ploy". I think there has been a misunderstanding somewhere?
Alright, this type of back and forth in this thread is not to the benefit of anyone. Keep the discussion to the topic at hand, ship design and the ship design developer diary. Everyone is free to agree or disagree and to plead their case, but I'm not going to tolerate back and forth accusations. This goes for everyone. This type of situation can get out of hand very quickly and lead to a hostile and unusable environment that is not beneficial to the game or this community.
I'm not particularly attached to the idea of penalties being applied to older ships or refit costs. I think some perfectly valid counter points (with examples) have been made. I'd rather impose limitations/speed bumps on how quickly and easily new technology is put in place as that tends to have a huge impact in 4X games on which races thrive and which are conquered. It's a rich get richer scenario often times so slowing it down a bit can perhaps give others time to react. I quite like that. Now that's an interesting idea. So essentially having multiple massive shipyards capable of titan construction would be too costly for all but the largest empires to maintain. I could see this leading to more fleet variety. Perhaps to take it a step further you could have certain equipment require further shipyard upgrades which are unrelated to hull size increases. This could be the implementation of certain high tech weaponry or armor, or even something like a special academy that causes armor values of ships produced there to be slightly higher that those that come from other shipyards. The cost of these upgrades could be high enough that having them all everywhere is impractical.
Well I'm glad we finally got that sorted out. Either way it really doesn't matter, I'm sure there are many other 4x games out there with very limited design slots, but that doesn't even come close to making it good game design. The fact that so many 4x games are just terrible is the whole reason that so many people desperately wanted to get back to the basics of the old MOO franchise. And yes MOO 2 also had limited design slots but then that was 20 years ago when memory limitations mandated such compromises. I doubt anybody would accept the same excuse today. And as you pointed out, no reviewer is going to criticize a modern game for allowing many ship designs. SOTS 2 allowed as many designs as you want and it was brutally criticized in almost every review, but one thing it was never called out on is the lack of a design limit. But the opposite situation would most certainly be a very obvious red flag for inviting criticism.
Yes, this gives you flexible control and can be cleverly tied into other parts of the existing game exactly in the manner you suggest, The results would satisfy all the way around, be plausible and realistic. For example, you could in theory offer more deigns but still know that the player will naturally be constrained by prototype costs (retool, retraining, procurement,etc) to effect the same results In my opinion, it would be beneficial and remain flexible enough for the Devs to tweak easier if needed,(mostly if not all,change the math/ratios not the code) but would increase your chances of overall success.
Howdy! This is Mezmorki from eXplorminate. I have a lot of feedback and I'm compiling in notes on many topics, but this topic was on my mind after the conversation picked up in the steam forums for eXplorminate: From a pure design standpoiint, there is a fundamental problem with the 5-slot limit and the kind of decision space you're trying to make (e.g. make players think about when and how to make new ship designs). The problem is this: with the ability to upgrade existing ships to new designs, in effect, players DO have as many ship designs slots they want ... so long as they are willing to tediously remake designs over and over, juggling which designs get produced where and what gets upgraded to what else when. See my steam post linked above for a longer example. The 5-slot limit isn't creating an interesting choice - its creating the illusion of an interesting choice that can be circumvented by players willing to waste time by "gaming the system." It's not good. Fortunately there are solutions! The easiest is to just ditch the slot limits entirely and rely on the depth of the ship designer itself and possible strategies and combined-arms synergies that emerge from player ingenuity and tinkering to carry the day. That's probably the most straight forward approach and will cause the least headache all around. Anything beyond the above is going to add more complexity to the game design, and the team will have to evaluate whether the complexity is worth the trade-off in terms of making interesting choices. As I said at the onset, the 5-slot limit with retrofitting is neither interesting gameplay nor thematic - so it fails all around. You can mitigate that somewhat with making old designs more expensive to maintain, but all you're doing now is obscuring the interesting choice behind more math puzzles to solve. It still isn't really interesting. You could take a page from UltraCorps playbook where each star system's shipyard had to purchase a "license" to produce a certain design. Think of this as building the right kind of dock/infrastructure to produce a certain design. Ship yards never lost their licenses for older designs, but it did force you to make a calculated decision about when and where you obtained a license, because higher tier ship licenses were VERY expensive. Tooling up more than one ship yard to produce the most expensive ships was a terrible drain on resources and made you think carefully. Maybe something like that could be adopted here? I'd also think carefully about the upgrade capacity of ships. The 5-slot limit kind of works if you take away the ability to upgrade ships - because then the decision of what you produce in the first place, irrespective of the design slot it used at the time, is all that matters. But that still doesn't solve the issue of obsolete ships running around - but if your choices will be more far reaching and if you make a terrible or useless design, you should plan better next time. Then the choice is whether you scrap your old ships for some recovered production value or use them to go raiding or whatever (which could be interesting). I know this was long .... but I'd emplore the devs to think more about this. I totally get what they are trying to accomplish from a gameplay decision standpoint. But as implemented, it undermines itself and results in an unappealing situation. There is a lot of brilliant design work in this game (yes really) ... but the 5-slot limit is not really one of them IMHO.
