Tips for ship design?

[Berrie]

Hi,

I bought my copy of GalcivII last week and now I'm slowly learning the game mechanics by trial and error and by reading the beginner tips on the forums. While I'm making progress in learning the game, I'm still a big 'loser' at designing ships (certainly in comparison to the designs posted in another thread)

The designs I make are functional for the game I'm playing, but they look like ...err... paper planes.
I know I lack the talent or creativity to come up with the kind of designs that are posted in this forum (I was never good at building nice things with Lego either, when I was young ), but I was wondering if the people on this forum could provide some basic tips to make my ship designs a little less 'paper plane'-ish...

Especially, I'm wondering about camouflaging the basic hull. I'm really struggling with designing ships that doesn't use the hull as the basis for the rest of the ship. In my designs, you always see very clearly the basic hull. (am I making any sense here? I hope you guys understand my question )

Thanks in advance

Berrie

 

[blackheart]

My advice is to pile a bunch of stuff on the hull until something comes out

 

[Kozmos]

Yes that works pretty well,pile them up,then randomly remove a few or pick off the one you dont like.

 

[doronron]

Play with hardpoints. You don't start really having fun until you can place hardpoints inside components.

 

[Guerra]

I built this one Huge battleship I entitled the "Rat King". It was extremely powerful. Something like 70 beam damage, and 20 speed. Very nice ship. I gave it big rat ears and a tail. It looks hilarious.

 

[Berrie]

My advice is to pile a bunch of stuff on the hull until something comes out

That is my approach to designing ships! It doesn't work very well...
I was actually hoping to learn a more efficient strategy.
Oh well, ...shrug...

 

[Berrie]

Play with hardpoints. You don't start really having fun until you can place hardpoints inside components.

...err... come again?
By the way, I'm really impressed with your designs, doronron!

EDIT: sorry, should have made just one post (still a noob on the forum )

 

[PaperBeetle]

Play with hardpoints. You don't start really having fun until you can place hardpoints inside components.

I quite agree, even if I can't match your uber-designs. The best results always start with getting some large components stuck half-way through each other.
Also, I found one component (possibly the longest, flatest strip) which has a hardpoint floating underneath it. Maybe a bug (and maybe fixed in the patch), but makes it possible to have a non-contiguous ship. I must try and find that again and play with it.
Also some of the hulls have (or had - again I haven't checked since the patch) their hardpoints misaligned, which produced some weird results, and made it particularly tricky to turn out symetrical ships from them. But then, asymmetry is a good thing, right?

 

[Supreme Shogun]

yeah one or two have a couple hardpoints pointing the wrong way.. if it bugs you enough you can download a fix from the Galactic Library.

The new update sounds promising they're talking about being able to rotate components while on the ship itself..
(www.galciv2.com is the main site)

 

[Berrie]

...
The new update sounds promising they're talking about being able to rotate components while on the ship itself..

Yeah, I would like that

 

[doronron]

Berrie: In the components section for the shipyards there are special attachments that can flip hardpoints 90 degrees right or left, and one that flips it 180 degrees. These become useful when you change the hardpoint's orientation into the part it's attached to. This gives you a degree of flexibility that allows your ships to no longer be dependant on the original hull for its look.

IRT PaperBeetle: Exactly. Having parts sticking out of parts can make for a number of interesting features. All of my designs use the same eight or so components, simply because I like their looks. Some of the basic hulls are assymetrical with their hardpoints. I have found a way around this, though, by laying a new keel using the small compenents. For instance, the Dreadnaught design only has six pieces attached directly to the original hull, although there were about 160 pieces in the final construction, before weapons, engine, armor, etc.

 

[Berrie]

Berrie: In the components section for the shipyards there are special attachments that can flip hardpoints 90 degrees right or left, and one that flips it 180 degrees. These become useful when you change the hardpoint's orientation into the part it's attached to. This gives you a degree of flexibility that allows your ships to no longer be dependant on the original hull for its look.

Ah, I see. Will try it out next time I have the time to play the game.
RL is getting in the way...
Thanks for the tip