SFTC Lite

[President_Elect_Shang]

How do you manage to select components that were developed three levels ago and place them on a new design? Or do you mean the components themselves are linear in progression. So retro-construction for you would be deducting (for example) 300% from a component that has advanced 100% over each of the last three levels. Poof instant -3 levels. That still isn't really retro, even if that is very close. Also with the SFTC you can apply mounts to retro-built ships. So if you want an old style missile launcher that has the latest missile (mount) you can do that. You could also build the most advanced missile launcher with an old missile (mount) or any number of combinations. I would term what you are doing with the mounts as something else. Definitely not retro-construction; more like reversed engineering.

Edited: Also keep in mind by retro-construction I am not saying "use an old saved design". I mean something from scratch. The P-D Empire wants a Light Cruiser built with the best I have and built to their specifications and layout. Fine tell me what you want and I will make it fresh just for you, not happy want something adjusted? Hay no problem. Saving designs of old tech is still close but just not there yet.

[Phoenix-D]

No, I mean there are three components. No subtlety at *all*, but it works. The reason I did it like that was the Prototypes. They're there to give the player an idea of what he'll get when he researches a field, and they actually show up before that's researched.

Say, Laser Weapons:
Research Physics 1, and you get Laser Weapons tech area and the Prototype Laser.
Research Laser Weapons and the prototype goes up to the next level, and the standard laser becomes available.

I could probably do a similar effect with mounts, but I haven't tried that. The tricky part is getting them to respect the level formulas.

By saving designs, I mean do this:
Make a hull. Cram one of every component that fits onto it. Copy that hull and lay it out as you like when the time comes. It actually won't work as I was hoping, because you couldn't add additional old components to it.

[Suicide Junkie]

Antique designing?

Can't you pick up one of the low level components and Shift-click to duplicate more of them?

[Slick]

I don't think there is a way to pick a low level component unless it is already in a design, hence the dummy designs.

The right answer here is a change to the design screen to allow picking not-the-latest components.

edit: you are also severely limited on what you can do while you are "holding" a component.

[Phoenix-D]

SJ: you can, and that makes the concept workable. Thanks.

Slick: True, but I can't do anything about that.. Thus, emailed MM about it, then set to finding workarounds.

Kind of like how Pirates and Nomads really needed point generation from components, but SJ found a workaround that did what was needed until those abilities were added.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Ahh, that's a cool concept and neat way to approach the problem. It also avoids the problem the SFTC has. Which is every version of every component is listed. Saving the design then clicking to copy and change the layout is much closer to what I have in the SFTC. The only diffrence I see between the two is that you have to save the "generic" design for every size ship. Even then I don't see how that will work if you want to create them on hulls that will be developed. Isn't the ship layout stripped clean when you reselect a new hull size? Wouldn't that also have the effect of stripping your "generic" design clean preventing a retro-build? I can't think of a reason why you would want to retro-build a more advanced hull but you can still do it in SFTC. Maybe you want to make an opponent think you have a higher tech ally that is building the stripped hulls for you. I like the approach you took P-D. I also like SJ's term for it; "Antique Designing", as opposed to "Retro-Construction". As I mentioned in another thread we are pioneering new ground here. We get to coin the terms that players in future years will throw around as standard vocabulary. What a wonderful privilege! This is like a Golden Age for us modders.

[Phoenix-D]

You can't change the ship size, so you have to do it for every hull size as well. Messy. Copying a hull does NOT clear the components though, so it works.