Modular ships - show of hands

[Toranth]

Honestly, I rarely have more than 1 or 2 designs for any modular ship type, even Champions.  But the ability to customize is always nice.

But there is something modular I've wanted for a long time...  To say the dirty words:  Modular Command Stations!
This is one where I've always wanted a little more mix/match and flexibility.  If you wanted a Mk III Economic station, fill three module of your Modular Station with Economic Modules.  Later on, when you have better income, you can replace those with three Military Modules to have a Mk III military station.  Or mix and match, for combinations of abilities.

[Cinth]

Honestly, I rarely have more than 1 or 2 designs for any modular ship type, even Champions.  But the ability to customize is always nice.

I have about 20 unique setups just for the largest one

[Tridus]

I think the only modular ship I've used where it's actually a choice what I built was the protector starship. But those are fairly easy to switch to a non-modular multiple variant system. And overpowered.

Yeah, the modular variety of those is useful depending on what you want to counter. That could probably be done with some template varieties, though, at least to be somewhat reasonable.

I did once take out a mk III AI Fortress using only mk I Fighters and some Protector Starships, just because I could. It was totally hilarious. Took forever, but totally hilarious.

Protectors are my favorite ship. I hope they make it in.

[PokerChen]

How about maxing ALL the tech.

ALL tech == Combined arms. Whether you put your lasers on your champion or on another accompanying ship, doesn't matter, does it?

Hey! I put lasers on my Spire!

...and the back two slots can only have lasers, right? So I already have enough with the minimal necessary to lay down the bonus 5x and 10x multipliers against whatever survives the beams. Very few of the Lights, ultra-lights, and Close-combat hulls justifies additional slots, IMO.

Champions have access to a heal.  A pretty damn good one at that.  Modular Forts have the same regen mechanic that regular fortress have.

I stand corrected - is the Fort only built-in or is there an option to double down through modules? This is the point: can you fit something else defensive in that slot, or is it all a package deal so there's no choice?

Just because you don't find it useful doesn't mean someone else hasn't.

*chuckles* of course. I'd like to retain the modular aspects, but classic's current affair doesn't sell itself well. To me, it's sitting in the category  "useful, but in a shop-window dressing kind of way".

The Champion's access to a large swath of added abilities is the exception to the norm, so I'd agree with the 20+ saved designs. ...but AI War 2 probably won't have champions everywhere, unless we made all flagships into proper FLAGSHIPS OF THE HUMAN RESISTANCE.

[Cinth]

I'm not going to chop up that any more so I'm going to reply in parts.

I don't min-max my Spire ships.  I pick roles for them and outfit them that way.

Mod Forts - The regen is built in.  The only defensive option for those 4 slots are the shields.  Plenty of offensive weapons to slot there.

Those Champ modules carry over to the mod forts too.  I have several different designs of those saved.  I especially like my Bot Net Neinzul Modular Fortress and my Parasite Mod Forts ^.^    Please, send that CPA.  I could use a few new ships.  Having the Spire ones set up to handle the big stuff in Exos is especially nice.

I fell in love with the Imperial Spire.  They just enable the way I want to play and had pretty cool options to look through.  Champs just piled on to all that.  I usually have plenty of time to just waltz through the interface to set stuff up the way I want it.  I also end up unlocking tons of defensive assets so I have those options on the mod forts and what not.

Now folks here laud the Riot and Protector SS.  I can't ever seem to find a use for either of those ships.  They don't fit my style of play.

[PokerChen]

 To Cinth: Okay. So it sounds like you will have just as much fun in AI War 2, if say, Chris places modular hero units/fleets/structures as a stretch goal and we hit it? This seems to be the direction things are heading at the moment. To clarify on this aspect, I'm not particularly fond of hero units. I'm more inclined towards making modular units the norm, particularly from starship level upwards.

Sure, most people will end up using a small number of templates for each ship, but the design space will be open to more combinatoric customisation. This will then lead to expansions where new modules and new ship-hulls can be introduced, rather than mostly adding more ship types as in Classic.

[Cinth]

I could do without the hero aspect the champs had.  I just like the amount of utility they brought in. 

[kasnavada]

Riot Starships are definitely my favorite starship.  But if they were replaced with a non-modular version I'd probably be happy.

I'm kind of forgetting the other half of the discussion, but basically that seems like the only relevant point to be "solved" were the modular ships to be remove (yay for that, again). One, or a few versions to replace the ones we "lost".

Again, Yay !

[Elestan]

Modular ships are one of my favorite features of the game; I really enjoy being able to specialize my build for different needs; it helps to soothe the 'ship design' itch that I get from otherwise not being able to do it.  So you can count me in the "Make everything modular" camp.  I'd just like a more unified module system; right now some modules come from ship/turret research, but others come from completing Nebulae.  Being able to mix&match more modules across different ships would be good too.

[Misery]

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.

That's not that awesome.  That pretty much kills most of my favorite ships.   

Agh, yes, this is exactly the response I had as well.

It's not just that killing of favorites, but a lot of my own playstyle is enabled by the existence of these things.  Obviously it's not that I couldn't change my playstyle, but... I really hate having to do that in any game.   I'd have to change it up pretty heavily in this particular game.

Also I'll just say I also do the thing where I have like, this huge pile of builds for the things.   It really depends on what's going on at the time.  With my playstyle though the different builds do have a very noticeable impact, which just makes them that much more interesting. 


I have to wonder, is there any way that these could be made more interesting for more players?   The two things that occur to me as being a problem with these things (from a fun/interesting point of view) are:   1, you start with hardly any different types of modules that you can attach.  It takes awhile to start getting interesting builds going, because you must level-up enough to do this. Your initial build will always be rather uninteresting and involve no meaningful choices (not that the Champion isn't still useful early on, because it is).  And 2, while I like Nebulae well enough, they can sometimes take WAY too long.  Targets in there tend to have monstrous amounts of HP (and early on, I cant make specialized builds to use to deal with those targets at all), and the NPC allies that you fight alongside are often dumber than a sack of hammers.  Particularly early in the game, both of these problems can hit hard.  Things get a lot more interesting with these ships once the game has gotten going (to me anyway), but it does take a little while to hit that point. 

[Aklyon]

I rather like the modular ships a lot, mostly for the same reasons as Cinth and Misery. You can do so many things with them.

[tadrinth]

I'd be fine with some ship types having variants instead of modules. 

[Elestan]

1, you start with hardly any different types of modules that you can attach.  It takes awhile to start getting interesting builds going, because you must level-up enough to do this. Your initial build will always be rather uninteresting and involve no meaningful choices (not that the Champion isn't still useful early on, because it is).

This doesn't bother me that much, because the initial limitations just makes me enjoy it more when they start to fall away.

2, while I like Nebulae well enough, they can sometimes take WAY too long.  Targets in there tend to have monstrous amounts of HP (and early on, I cant make specialized builds to use to deal with those targets at all), and the NPC allies that you fight alongside are often dumber than a sack of hammers.

The thing that bothers me most is that your ship is usually the slowest ship present, so you're constantly getting outmaneuvered.  If this Shadow ship is supposed to be so great, why is it slower than a bunch of pirates and mining frigates?  Combine that with the fact that all movement rates are halved, so every time you try to change fronts it costs you a lot of time.  I'd like to go into these scenarios and jump around to engage where the battle is thickest, but I'm just too slow to do it.

Another point of frustration is that all of the Starbases have bonuses against Structural.  Why are their weapons tuned to take down shields, when nothing else in the nebula has them?  Tactical shield use is a main way the player can make a difference in these scenarios, but giving the bases Structural multipliers neuters that capability.

And I'll agree on the allied dumbness.  Allies should be smart enough to try to stay under shields when possible, and especially when they're on the defensive (which is most of the time), their ships with multipliers against small and medium need to engage the ships making attack runs on their starbases.  Also, when they charge victoriously out the nebula, they need to be able to better gauge their objectives.  The last group I freed immediately charged the AI core worlds and got pointlessly slaughtered.

[kasnavada]

Modular ships are one of my favorite features of the game; I really enjoy being able to specialize my build for different needs; it helps to soothe the 'ship design' itch that I get from otherwise not being able to do it.  So you can count me in the "Make everything modular" camp.  I'd just like a more unified module system; right now some modules come from ship/turret research, but others come from completing Nebulae.  Being able to mix&match more modules across different ships would be good too.

Honestly, I rarely have more than 1 or 2 designs for any modular ship type, even Champions.  But the ability to customize is always nice.

Never have more than one or two either, but I disagree with the second part. Ability to customize meaningfully is nice. Customization via modules in AI war always felt cranky, and most of the time useless too. The link to turrets / champion scenarios was especially annoying too IMO.

But there is something modular I've wanted for a long time...  To say the dirty words:  Modular Command Stations!
This is one where I've always wanted a little more mix/match and flexibility.  If you wanted a Mk III Economic station, fill three module of your Modular Station with Economic Modules.  Later on, when you have better income, you can replace those with three Military Modules to have a Mk III military station.  Or mix and match, for combinations of abilities.

Against it, because apart from the "coolness factor", everything that you could wish from that idea can be done via regular buildings. Want defenses ? Build them. Turrets are there for that. Want more money & less defense ? Destroy the turrets. Anything that would require customization of abilities on home stations can be done with buildings next to them. And, even more so in AI war 2, because the building will be modded in.

That said, probably deserves a thread elsewhere.

[Elestan]

Customization via modules in AI war always felt cranky, and most of the time useless too.

Hmm...I've had a lot of customizations that I felt were meaningful.  When my Champion is alone, I want a balance of shields & weapons.  When I've got some high-firepower escorts (ahem, Spire Frigates) I go max shields and let them handle offense.  If I'm clearing a fleetship threatball of something tasty, maybe I turn to nanosubverters and steal them, or switch weapons to something with the best multiplier.  When neutering a system with no ion cannon, I bring an engineer along and reconfigure in the field to take down each guard post.

But there is something modular I've wanted for a long time...  To say the dirty words:  Modular Command Stations!

Against it, because apart from the "coolness factor", everything that you could wish from that idea can be done via regular buildings. Want defenses ? Build them. Turrets are there for that. Want more money & less defense ? Destroy the turrets. Anything that would require customization of abilities on home stations can be done with buildings next to them. And, even more so in AI war 2, because the building will be modded in.

The thing you can't do with side-buildings like that is a forced choice.  If I can just build extra buildings, I'll probably build all of everything in a lot of places.  But a command station with only, say, three slots, makes me choose between the various starbase capabilities:  Storage, Production, Speed Adjustment, Combat, etc., and that's an interesting choice.