Modular ships - show of hands

[PokerChen]

Along of theme of Chris soliciting opinions on the design doc,

How do you like the modular ships across all the expansions?
Which of the following do you lean towards on the aspect of ship design?
- I like tweaking, so almost all starships should be modular. Chris, please reserve time to work on and streamline the ship design aspect of the game.
- I don't like engaging with the modular features, and prefer knowing what my ships do at a glance. Chris, please reserve more time to iterate the design of roles, aarmor, etc.
- the current mix is okay

[kasnavada]

I think you can make a poll.

[ewokonfire]

I'm personally fairly ambivalent about modular ships as a concept.  The one thing I do have a strong opinion about is the AI's use of them (if they stay in).  The AI shouldn't just give all of it's modular ships basically the same generalised mish-mash of modules.  Hybrids in particular may as well not be modular right now; when was the last time you looked at the modules on a standard hybrid and it affected your thought process at all?   More distinction between different AI modular ships would add more interest/variety.

[PokerChen]

Pffft, on mobile phone right now. Interface too limited   :p

[Pumpkin]

I personally dislike modularity. I think it's rather disconnected from the rest of the game. Often, I see few differences.

The champion is okay because it's its point of being central, complex etc (because it's supposed to be the only thing a player control). But I dislike champions. (Personal taste; partially because of the modularity.)

The Fallen Spire modular ships provide no true choice by themselves, only the upgrade options do (unlocking high mark of sniper turrets or heavy beam cannons). But the thing is: it's against one of the core design philosophy of AI War: no small invisible upgrade (+X damage, +3% range, etc). I vastly prefer unlocking bigger and bigger Fallen Spire ships by building more shipyards and investing Knowledge in the galactic capitol.

The Riot Control Starship offer only one true choice, IMO: shield or tractor? And even the MkI can mount both. I would be happy with a non-modular shield+tractor+engine damage starship (or maybe just shield and engine damage).

Modular Fortresses? A joke. Make a shielded fortress if you really want to, but the modular weaponry is so bland.

TL;DR: I vote remove modularity.

[Lord Of Nothing]

Modularity with a better implementation could be good for the future, but much as I personally love my giant modular champions and spire ships, the current implementation is probably not worth being in the base game, due to the points already raised.

[kasnavada]

I don't think modularity has a place in the game either.
I'd rather have new ships / turrets / flagships / whatever.

Also the "tied to turret" thingy had me baffled.

[Kahuna]

Agreed. Modularity feels too fiddly at the moment.

[Misery]

I personally like the champions a lot, they're one of my favorite things in the game, and I'd love to see them in the base game if it's not too difficult to implement, but when it comes to OTHER modular things, they're... not bad, but I feel like they need some work.  Like they need to be more interesting somehow.

I think this mechanic in a general sense could be pretty darn good, but it needs some changes.  Give it more of a presence/use beyond just the champions.

[Tridus]

I like the modular ships a lot, but they do add a fair bit of complexity when it comes to dealing with building them, and when you get down to it, for non-champion cases, there's really only a handful of ways you're going to tend to build them out anyway. If it's possible to simply have a couple of variant build options available within the same ship cap, you can achieve similar results without having to have people actually go in and customize the ships. That'd simplify the UI some.

If that's not possible without modules, then I'd want to keep the modules. Riot and Protector Starships both lose something if you can't customize them for what you intend to use them for. (I tend to build my Fallen Spire ships the same way every game, so it wouldn't bother me if those became non-modular, provided they do keep all the cool stuff they can do.)

[Kahuna]

Champions are especially fiddly and micro heavy. Also imo the fact that they respawn endlessly every time they have been destroyed seems kind of cheap to me.

[Pumpkin]

variant build options available within the same ship cap

That's interesting. Different units counting in the same cap. If feasible, I'd love to see Riot Control Starships variants: one shielded, one tractor and one engine-damage. Players would then be allowed to build only one version or build a mixed team.

I love this idea.

[PokerChen]

I'm all for having modular things actually, as it generally matches better with vwhat actually happens in real life visits vis-a-vis spaceship and naval shop construction. This usually takes games closer to 4X and turn based standards, however.

For modules to sell well, the whole process has to be quick and smooth. Ideally, I would like to be able to specify high-level design decisions (Haskell-like), from which the ship design engine automatically spits out finished blueprints for player to take/leave/tweak. Having this allows the game to auto generate shop variants and update them as players unlocks things. One of the thing I don't like in oldest Classic is how non-transferable knowledge unlocks are: you figure out how to make starship X tougher, why can't this be applied to another ship? Why can't I put riot shotguns on anything other than riot control starships?
Having this modular setup in the background gives a centralised way to organise the ad-hoc research bonuses like how unlocking better laser turrets also gave you better laser modules. By researching better turrets you were actually just researching the underlying technology and auto-applying it across different designs.

Whether to actually expose it to players and modders is the worthy question. I can imagine any ship design algorithm not being mod-friendly, as it depends on the actual game mechanics. On the other hand, I can imagine a number of steamlined interfaces that would make ship design a lot more appealing (to me) than most games have made them.

Side note: Coding wise, it generally makes sense to make everything modular, which also makes modding easier - it's about how much to expose to the player and modders, and how much we can do once the game is written.

[Draco18s]

The Riot Control Starship offer only one true choice

Now that this is put in front of me this starkly:
I build my riot control starships in exactly one configuration.  I don't use tractors myself (I do two force fields, then mount all lasers) and never switch it up.

I think its the fact that I like the idea but don't see any hard choices where all the options are equally valid.

[x4000]

Wow, this is overwhelmingly matching my own opinion (no modular ships).  That's awesome.  Keith brought up that a lot of stuff uses these and therefore that we'd be stripping out a lot to remove these.  But honestly I feel like there are so many better things we could spend our time on.  Designing ships is something that I as a player just never feel inclined to do, anyway.