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I think a fleet management screen that lists all ships (group selection possible through check box, ie. partial or whole groups) would be handy, like a tree structure.


A planet list popup that lists your colonies sorted by production output where you pick where to refit would be nice too, with a preview for travel and refit time.

Arioch wrote:I agree that miniaturization is a potentially interesting feature, because it may make a lower technology item that you're fond of more viable to stick with longer, offering more variation in play. But it would require you to refit your ships more often. We've talked about including a "mass refit" function which would make this less of a micromanagement hassle, and I think this would be necessary if we were to introduce a miniaturization element -- not for realism, but to reduce unnecessary micromanagement.

I dont think that a more refined refit mechanic would suit to the current SiS. In MOO2 the refit mechanic is tied directly to the miniaturization rules. Your simple design system in SiS works very differently. BTW I really like your design system. For bringing on a more refined refit/miniaturization system like MOO2 you would have to change your overall system. I am not sure if you want to do this at this late beta stage.

BTW: Civilization has a simple refit system which lets you click on a unit to upgrade to the next better unit and pay simple money for it. I could imagine that you introduce a similar system where you can click on single ships, when they are docked at a spacestation, and a window pops up, give you a selection of a similar more modern design of the same size. Eg you click on a cruiser and then the window shows you all your cruiser designs and a money cost to update to this specific design. You click on one of them, pay the money and tätääää... the ship is immediately upgraded. This would be a simple painless method of upgrading old designs.

Right now weapons use slots, if a miniaturization milestone is met, the slot usage could be reduced in steps like 25%

maybe miniaturization would allow you to put in double, triple and quadruple turrets in the slots? or opening more modifiers like it did in MoO2 for missiles and even slots (armored, fast tracking, dual purpose, etc).

I liked how you could only specialize munitions with time and effort, it was a very well thought out feature and making it dependent on descendant technologies would mean people would invest more into a particular part of the tech tree rather than spread it all around, because it would make more sense to get an additional bonus of a particular weapon unlocked.

Hanekem wrote:maybe miniaturization would allow you to put in double, triple and quadruple turrets in the slots? or opening more modifiers like it did in MoO2 for missiles and even slots (armored, fast tracking, dual purpose, etc).

I liked how you could only specialize munitions with time and effort, it was a very well thought out feature and making it dependent on descendant technologies would mean people would invest more into a particular part of the tech tree rather than spread it all around, because it would make more sense to get an additional bonus of a particular weapon unlocked.

Of course it was well thought out. Nearly everything in this game was well thought out. Its MOO2!

Joke aside. doubling tripling and quadrupling turrets in slot would be ok, but OTOH in MOO you had small increments and a balance tip for your decision to upgrade the weapons of a ship (or use even the older cheap design) or not to upgrade or even go to the next tech level. In one of my last games, I had the decision to include more nuclear missile or go straight for the merculite missile. In the end I decided to research something else and just built more minituarized nuclear missiles into my boats and it was enough to beat the enemy.

What I want to say with it, is that a "doubling" or tripling is not really this fine incremental additon like in MOO2. You will always choose it, its not optional like in MOO. I think with the current module approach to ship building the miniaturization rules ala MOO are not usable at all. (maybe I am wrong and the devs are planning something, but I have no idea how to resolve this dilemma)

The actual number of weapons represented by each weapon hardpoint is abstracted (for example, on the Ashdar Escort Cruiser, each of the primary weapon slots represents two visible turrets, but actually holds three weapons), and can scale independently of the number of weapon mounts that you see. So, if we were to implement some sort of miniaturization scheme, this would work within the current system (the number of actual weapon mounts would scale with miniaturization, and the number of visible weapon mounts would remain the same).