What do you guys think of the "Ship Details" graphic?

Alex,

I think you either have to be more specific or provide us with a link to get some feedback..

http://www.galciv.com/images/news/315200245642PM1.jpg

Sorry, I think we're so used to talking to each other in the office, details tend to get left out when posting on the msg boards. :notsure:

It'll be more apparent when the new build is available, but in the lower right corner of the screen we've added a "Ship Details" window that will open when in the galaxy window, but close when on any other screen. It'll store the basic information about the ship, along with:
-the logo of the race the ship belongs to
-3 buttons: sentry, guard, and disband
-a progress bar with the current experience points until the next level
The window itself will be fully animated, reflect ship status (low HP will make the window cracked and sparking), and eventually change appearance depending on the ship selected.

I hope this clears things up!

Looks good.

Cheers,
Jack

Yup. Indeed.

looking very good.
I like the disband option.
Will there be an upgrade option to go with advancements in technology, or will this be automatic?

It may be strategically interesting to have to pay for further upgrades (maybe seperate components such as engines, armour and weapons upgraded seperately). Then your enemy will never be sure how powerful your ships are, just the type and the data on any he can scan.

Paul.

Do any other strategy games do that? I know in Warcraft 3 when you finish researching a new tech, your units automatically improve, but that's real time, so it would be really obnoxious to have to go through and individually update your units.

Lots.

Games like Master of Orion 2 did. As did Pax Imperia 2, Ascendancy, Space Empires 4, and many other space exploration games. It's fairly common if any form of tactical combat occurs. Whether strategic combat would benefit is another question.

Paul.

We have thought about ship upgrades in the past, we have some pretty cool ideas about how to do them but right now we just want to make sure the key gamplay elements work first before we add any new features.

I know. You are doing a great job! Don't let my optimism and eagerness distract you from just getting the basic elements working!

Paul.

In Space Empires 4, the upgrades were built into the ship, like if you wanted an extra big gun then you selected a special weapon mount when making the design.

There was the experience system, I'm not sure what it did. . I think the higher XP a ship had, the better accuracy it had, and it was harder to hit (improved ECM).

I like the idea about upgrading 'areas' of ships, like 'Weapons' and 'Engines' and 'Armour' - and to save time, you could upgrade a fleet of ships, rather then each one individually.

eg. I want all the ships in this fleet to be faster, click here, get an engine upgrade for all of them, which still applys if you break the fleet apart.

Idea: Upgrades only available with experience and you have to pay for them too.

- Markavian

Ships look good!

That's an interesting idea Markavian.

One of the things we're working on implementing for the beta are levels.

But we're not sure yet how best to do that.

Here's the idea that is currently being floated around:

Level each level would add:
+10% to attack + 2
+10% to defense + 1
+10% to hitpoints + 1

Whether a ship goes up a level depends on its kills.
Level 2 would mean it killed the cost of itself to go up. Level 3 would mean it killed 2 of its oriignal cost. Level 4 would mean 4, and so on.

The idea being that wimpy ships can go up easier than more powerful ships (though more pwoerful ships really benefit from the % upgrades).

What do you think?

If you're going to add experience to a ship, I'd think it best to give the experience to a crew rather than to a ship.
I don't know how detailed you'd like to do it, but at the simplest level you could technologically upgrade a ship, and the crew would keep their +10% bonuses.

Sorry, I posted when I shouldn't have:

At a more advanced level, a particularly good battle outcome could create a personality -- (like an event that occurs when a ship defeats another ship or combination of ships that it shouldn't have.) The personality could be assigned to different ships, or even to star bases to give the bonus to the other ship. This could also trigger a particular story that would have some biographical data about the person, and that person's feat of bravery that is related to the particular bonus (repair, defense, attack, etc).

Just a thought,