This system is very simple and easy to manage, both for game internals and players. However it lacks a great deal of flexibility and it isn’t very realistic. We’ve also had a lot of requests around new types of ships to be added in the game, to increase interest.

Since we are very attached to designing a realistic game universe, we thought a bit more of the concept of ships. A ship is mainly a hull inside which and on which are installed various categories of equipment. The different types of ships we were proposing so far were mainly predefined sets of hull and equipment.

To increase the possibilities in the game, we merely considered it would be way more fun to have players define their own ships, using predefined parts, than just provide them with predefined designs as in Beta 5.

Therefore Beta 6 will feature a real ship design system, where players can assemble their own ship categories, using parts such as hulls, generators, engines (normal and hyperspace), control systems (for biological ships), weapons, defenses, communication devices, jamming devices, navigation systems, detection systems, hangar bays (to carry smaller ships through hyperspace) or ground assault modules. The number of parts which can be integrated in a design is only limited by the total size of these parts compared to the hull size, and can be increased even more through a set of miniaturisation technologies.

Along these regular pieces of equipment, some special modules provide very advanced abilities, but at a high cost both in room aboard the ship, resources and time to produce. These include special weapons and defenses with a tremendous effect on enemy fleets and planets, cloaking systems, etc.

Each category of ship parts of course features different levels or upgrades, which allow for the design of hundreds of different ship categories. Some predefined designs are of course available for those who don’t have time to play around with ship design, but these predefined ships might not be enough when facing carefully crafted ships in battle.

 What do you think of the ship design possibility?

Do you think it is too complex for an online game?

Do you think it could bring new possibilities to the game?

What kind of features would you see associated with ship design:

• exchange of designs among players as long as the one receiving the design has the required technologies?
• association of a picture among a list of available predefined pictures or from uploaded pictures (moderated pictures in the last case)?
• upgrade / downgrade from one design to another for all ships belonging to a design on a per empire / orbited planet / fleet / ship basis?
• other features suggestions?