Ok, during the game before my last I designed a new constructor, colony ship, freighter, one tiny hull, two medium hull ships and two large hull ships. All designs were ‘empty hulls’ so tech requirements should only be the hull size, right? After designing the empty hulls I used these throughout my game to create several ships per base design as new techs became available.
All these new designs took a considerable amount of time to create.
So imagine the horror when I fired up a new game and found only my new colony ship and freighter design (the empty hulls) in the shipbuilding section. Both constructor and tiny hull designs were not there. As the game progressed and new hull sizes became available NONE of my medium and large designs showed up! This was also true for all the completely outfitted ship designs I made starting from these empty hulls. None of them (even the colony ship and freighter) showed up in the new game.
The files are still in the ship folder. Even in game, when researching a new hull type the tech info mentions the design name, but once researched the design(s) didn’t show up in the shipbuilding section.
Not that this was entirely unexpected. About 90% of all ship designs I have ever made are lost between two games, although the .class and other files are still around.
My conclusion: One must make the balance for any given game. Every game has omissions, bugs, undocumented features and weaknesses, as well as enjoyable features. For me seeing ship design is utterly useless and an absolute waste of time tips the balance in the negative direction since it was one of the (very) few features that made the game stand out (imho).
So I decided to stop playing the game.
Moreover, I cannot help but feeling that I am not the only one with this "make and loose your own ship design" feature.
GoatRider