Ship Talk

[Louist]

My favorite ship sprites has always been the curved and pointy ships from SE:IV. I forget the race's name, but they were green skinned, with black eyes and had some accessory, either a microphone or an external HUD over one eye. Give me a s ship-set with the same feeling of space-bound grace and violent intent.

Oh, and throwing the odd curve ball, like sphere-shaped ships is always appreciated. It allows me to invest a little more into my race, and suggests at a much more interesting back story.

Now, I don't know if firing arcs are being considered, but if they are, mix it up a bit with the races. Have a race who have carried on the naval tradition of broadsides, or another who prefers balanced coverage, so that they are never caught defenseless.

Edit: The ships are the core of most 4X games, and is the main chance to show-off or give a sense of the character of an entire race. Sure, you can glean some ideas from race biography, statistics, and portrait, but most of your time will be spent watching ships, both of your own race and others. So it is important that the ship sprites/models reflect fully the most important aspects of any race's culture.

I think Sword of the Stars did a great job of that. It isn't quite a tradition 4x game, as it revolves primarily around research and combat, placing such aspects as diplomacy and economy in the background, but one thing it did very well was conveying exactly what a race was all about by the ship models alone. Harder, I admit, in a more tradition 4x with heavy customization, but still possible, I think.

[Ed Kolis]

Curved and pointy from SE4? With a dark, semi-cyborgish look to 'em? Yeah, that's the Xiati... their SE5 shipset isn't as good IMO as the SE4 one :P

Firing arcs? Well, it's not really decided if we'll have them or not; I'd personally like to, but it really depends on how well we can make the combat AI handle them - not to mention what Ken thinks of it!

Funny you say that SotS put economy in the background - sure, it was simplistic, but on the other hand, compared to SE4, it was kinda realistic, with the ability to earn or pay interest, and when you have lots of money saved up your populations grow happier

[jars_u]

Ship design was always my favorite element of the SE series. I probably spent more time tweaking ship designs and studying the weapons tables in the SE5 ship simulator then I spent playing the actual game itself. For me ship building is a very satisfying aspect of genre especially since I tend to play a combat focused style of play in 4X games. From grazing the threads I've heard some mention a relief that SL is more akin to a SE4.5 than SE5+ for which I am also glad. I'd like to see more meaningful customization but without much of the feel of "excel spreadsheets" I found too often to be the case with SE. Weapons and ship hulls with more distinctive pluses and minuses and overall more quality then sheer quantity without loosing variety. I'd also like to see placement of components in ship hulls take on more meaning - for things like firing arcs, damage, acceleration/maneuverability.