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[PCCL]

oh, from a gameplay perspective, sure....

which is why paintjobs would probably be the best way of going about this, the coding and art involved though....

[Debido]

Maybe the designs all look the same as the designs were so good in the first place there was no need to make changes to the platform
 Considering how much customisation options a captain has in terms of weapons, hull mods and flux; I don't see there being a lot of divergent designs if every platform capability niche is fulfilled.

[Megas]

While I prefer a fleet of uniform tech level (e.g., all low-tech or all high-tech), either on my side or the AI, there are some roles that can be done only by one epoch, and no self-respecting warrior who wants to win a war will limit his choice of weapons just because they feel wrong or look ugly.  If the most effective fleet is a blend or mash-up, then that is what will be used.  Some call this min-maxing and/or munchkin.  Well, min-maxing wins fights.

Fighters:  If I want to kill things, I use Broadswords and Thunders.  If I want a decoy to soak hits until my Odyssey flagship arrives to utterly destroy whatever, I use Xyphos.

Frigates:  I use a variety depending what I want to do.

Destroyer:  As a flagship, there is no substitute for the Medusa.  It is powerful enough to solo any fleet and fast enough to catch up and kill frigates.  It is true all-purpose ship.  It is also the only destroyer with decent burn speed.  If I pump up Navigation high enough, I may give AI Enforcers to pilot.  Ballistics are generally superior to energy weapons.  For carriers, I would avoid the Condor at all costs; the only way it can fight is Pilum spam.  Gemini can at least fight in a pinch.  For freighters, Buffalo is just bad.  I would use either Tarsus or Mule.  Tarsus because it can flee with burn drive.  Mule because it can fight.

Cruisers:  High-tech cruisers stink - none of them can focus-fire more than two blasters, and thus, do not outperform Medusa significantly enough to justify bigger profile, greater logistics cost, and slower speed.  The Eagle, with max Combat and Technology, can mount and focus-fire three blasters (and shield-buster ballistics) and smash fleets faster.  Thanks to maneuvering jets, it can be fast when it needs to.  As for carriers, Heron is the best.

Capitals:  If I feel like using only one ship to battle, it is Paragon.  If I want support while I zip around in a smaller ship, Onslaught.  Low-tech also has the only superfreighter (Atlas) in the game.

Generally, while I prefer high-tech ships, the CR costs for most of them are so bad that I avoid using them as AI escorts.  Often, I need disposable Lashers for the AI to use so that I can fight more before running out of CR.

[Linnis]

oh, from a gameplay perspective, sure....

which is why paintjobs would probably be the best way of going about this, the coding and art involved though....

I think a paint job would not be something hard to code, A color layer on top of ship or simply have a few color presets. It would make sense when you order a ship from the auto factory you can input desired color scheme.

[MidnightSun]

oh, from a gameplay perspective, sure....

which is why paintjobs would probably be the best way of going about this, the coding and art involved though....

That's been my favorite idea from the start; it's been mentioned several times over the months/years. If the sprites could each accommodate some minor visual modifications based on a faction's color or logo (color might be less tacky...), such as with Mass Effect's armor stripe colors, it could go a long way to making it much easier to identify enemy/friendly ships in the heat of battle, and lend some unity to factions' ships.

Sure, it'll take some time to code and make visual modifications, but I think it's an effort that'll pay off in the long run.

[Gothars]

That's been my favorite idea from the start; it's been mentioned several times over the months/years. If the sprites could each accommodate some minor visual modifications based on a faction's color or logo (color might be less tacky...), such as with Mass Effect's armor stripe colors, it could go a long way to making it much easier to identify enemy/friendly ships in the heat of battle, and lend some unity to factions' ships.

Sure, it'll take some time to code and make visual modifications, but I think it's an effort that'll pay off in the long run.

That was actually tested, let me point you to this. Doesn't look too pretty, in my opinion.

Heard nothing official about icons, though. Some of the backrock ships look great with them.

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[kazi]

That's been my favorite idea from the start; it's been mentioned several times over the months/years. If the sprites could each accommodate some minor visual modifications based on a faction's color or logo (color might be less tacky...), such as with Mass Effect's armor stripe colors, it could go a long way to making it much easier to identify enemy/friendly ships in the heat of battle, and lend some unity to factions' ships.

Sure, it'll take some time to code and make visual modifications, but I think it's an effort that'll pay off in the long run.

That was actually tested, let me point you to this. Doesn't look too pretty, in my opinion.

Heard nothing official about icons, though. Some of the backrock ships look great with them.

Spoiler

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Oh man, those look so much better than the vanilla sprites its not even funny. I absolutely love the Sunder and Wolf paint schemes!

Then again, I'm the guy who paints bright stripes over all of his stuff already, so...

[Megas]

Another comment:  Some ships look like they could belong to another epoch, if recolored.  For example, the Heron feels more high-tech than midline.  It has all energy slots (except for medium universal), it is the fastest cruiser, and it has a soft, rounded appearance.  If its color was shifted to blue and its CR cost raised (and maybe drones changed to lasers), it would look like a high-tech ship.

[Mattk50]

As far as tech levels: think of it in terms of technology having mostly plateaued a long time ago. The "tech levels" more represent different schools of design thought. Sure, some slight improvements to engine technology may have been required to create the "high tech" ship designs, but they were far from being a qualitative change, and likely came with their own set of trade-offs.

high tech ships are more expensive to build and maintain, for one. Which means you can have more low tech ships than you can high tech, even if the high tech are individually more powerful it means little if they're overwhelmed. Something like that, right? :p

[Linnis]

The biggest problem is just the player don't have enough logistics to support enough high-tech ships to fight mid-large low tech AI fleets, and while the high tech ships being more costly to buy and maintain they almost never pay for themselves in anything other then frigate vs frigate battles.

[MidnightSun]

That was actually tested, let me point you to this. Doesn't look too pretty, in my opinion.

Heard nothing official about icons, though. Some of the backrock ships look great with them.

Spoiler

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Right, those were the images I was thinking about, thanks for the link! I think overall they look good, actually. The colors could be more subtle, and I think the Astral is a bit overdone. In general though, I do like the effect. If the Hegemony had one color (ie. faded blood red), the TT had another (ie. faded light-blue), it'd be quite interesting. Would lend uniformity irrespective of the fleet ship composition.

[PCCL]

those stripes would work better if the ships themselves have a relatively uniform color scheme and design to begin with, imo, but as is it's hard to make them look good without changing the color of the entire ship

EDIT: quick mockup of the "for the greater lud", with a midline style low tech fleet, I wonder if it's possible to apply color schemes, icons, etc on top of that

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[Thaago]

Looks very nice. Question about the fleet preferences: it seems they are variant dependent, so how does it know if a specific variant can be made? Also, would it be possible to have "groupings" of ships? For example, if all of a sudden no carriers are available then maybe the patrol should swap its fighters out for frigates (so the groups would be carrier+fighters with the fallback being a number of frigates).

On the orbiting supply fleets - would it look good to have shuttles going between the fleet and its target? Probably not clickable or saved or anything, but just visuals to show activity.

Are you planning on tweaking costs/rewards a bit? It seems hand in hand with the economy - balancing the trader and raider playstyles just a bit. (Bloody Hegemony wants 50% of my take for giving a letter of Marque... grumble...)

[Alex]

Looks very nice. Question about the fleet preferences: it seems they are variant dependent, so how does it know if a specific variant can be made? Also, would it be possible to have "groupings" of ships? For example, if all of a sudden no carriers are available then maybe the patrol should swap its fighters out for frigates (so the groups would be carrier+fighters with the fallback being a number of frigates).

Right now, it just assumes everything is available, both in terms of hulls and weapons. Later on, what I'd like to do is generate variants based on what's available, with the specific variant being the "ideal" that it will aim for. Hopefully that'll pan out.

On the orbiting supply fleets - would it look good to have shuttles going between the fleet and its target? Probably not clickable or saved or anything, but just visuals to show activity.

It might, yeah. Not something I really want to mess with right now, though. That kind of stuff is important, but I'd like to beat everything into playable shape first.

Are you planning on tweaking costs/rewards a bit? It seems hand in hand with the economy - balancing the trader and raider playstyles just a bit. (Bloody Hegemony wants 50% of my take for giving a letter of Marque... grumble...)

Yeah, will have to do that for this release. Probably pretty extensively.

[Alex]

Looks very nice. Question about the fleet preferences: it seems they are variant dependent, so how does it know if a specific variant can be made? Also, would it be possible to have "groupings" of ships? For example, if all of a sudden no carriers are available then maybe the patrol should swap its fighters out for frigates (so the groups would be carrier+fighters with the fallback being a number of frigates).

Right now, it just assumes everything is available, both in terms of hulls and weapons. Later on, what I'd like to do is generate variants based on what's available, with the specific variant being the "ideal" that it will aim for. Hopefully that'll pan out.

Edit: As far as grouping, you can tell whether a ship was added successfully or not; managing groups would be done on the level of the code putting together the fleet, not the code picking a ship.

On the orbiting supply fleets - would it look good to have shuttles going between the fleet and its target? Probably not clickable or saved or anything, but just visuals to show activity.

It might, yeah. Not something I really want to mess with right now, though. That kind of stuff is important, but I'd like to beat everything into playable shape first.

Are you planning on tweaking costs/rewards a bit? It seems hand in hand with the economy - balancing the trader and raider playstyles just a bit. (Bloody Hegemony wants 50% of my take for giving a letter of Marque... grumble...)

Yeah, will have to do that for this release. Probably pretty extensively.