Ship designer unfriendliness

from GalCiv2 Forums
The ship designer really isnt that easy to use. Its easy to get started with, but as soon as you need to make something big and complex it falls somewhat apart.

1: The hardpoints... WHY is there a feature that allows you to rotate them? Why not just rotate (in mid-air) the component you are placing? I hardly ever rotate hardpoints, because its unreliable and not fun.
2: The jewelry needs to be sorted into categories. Finding stuff is a mess, and you waste A LOT of time scrolling through the list not really knowing what you just selected is. Would be a lot easier if the stuff were sorted, so the jewelry that looks like engines went into a jewelry>engine categori... jewelry>wings, jewelry>load bearers ETC.
3: (Related to 2) ALL jewelry needs descriptions so you have an idea of what you just selected.

So as a result my ships always look like crap. Yes Im to blame for that, but I DO NOT have the patience to go through that painstaking process everytime, so I mostly just smack the needed components on the ship and ignore jewelry.

So in summary of needed features
1: Allowing jewelry to be rotated on the fly, hotkeys to flip/mirror/rotate in mid-air would shave years of ship design. This would also make hardpoints "pointing" in a specific direction obsolete.
2: Sort jewelry in categories.
3: Make descriptions for all jewelry.

My 2 cents.. Thank for reading.
- Gr3y
12,761 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1: Allowing jewelry to be rotated on the fly, hotkeys to flip/mirror/rotate in mid-air would shave years of ship design. This would also make hardpoints "pointing" in a specific direction obsolete.


Unfortunately this would be very difficult to implement for technical reasons, to my knowledge. Thus the current method of just changing the hardpoint's orientation.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well then the question is why they chose such a design in the first place.
Its soo irritating... you rotate a hardpoint... then try to place your jewelry - only to realize that you need to rotate in another direction. So you rotate the crap out of some poor hardpoint.

I just hate it... bad design choice.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree, there is no reason that ship components could not be mounted with first click, then click drag to rotate around the hardpoint axis.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I just wish you had more control over hardpoint's direction and alignement
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You will like the 1.1 update then.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sweeeeeet.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah it can get confusing to know what parts are for what and which hardpoint you are actually about to place that gigantic part. Put to be honest as I've used it more it's not so bad. The only thing I really want is the ability to pan the camera in the view. There are times where it is next to impossible to line up a hard point especially it if is at the edge of your design. Zooming out doesn't help because then the system starts to confuse several hardpoints with the one I really want.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Governor mormegil wrote:

You will like the 1.1 update then.


I am so happy to hear about this. I love designing ships, but the inconsistency of hardpoints on hulls and components has been quite frustrating. The hardpoint rotation options only change the direction in two of the three dimensions, and of course not in the dimension I am trying to modify. I'm really looking forward to the upgrade!
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, now you got my hopes up too...
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Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
And while you're at it, can you adjust the viewing option so you can pan or something? I've had ships that were long enough that it was a pain to get to the point where you can see where the area you're wanting to adjust is. I.e. the long spindle shaped Large hull in I think the Altiran type. Add a few things to the front and it can be annoying to get the view centered properly at the end.

Hmm.. would it be possible to set the center of your view to a hardpoint location? That might make a bit more sense than panning around, and might be easier to adjust as well. Click the "change view focus" button, click on a hard point near the front of your ship, then move the view around as normal.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
While we're talking about the shipbuilder... my personal nitpick, aside from those mentioned here already, is removing something that has something else attached to it, especially as I've occasionally had this happen on parts that had no hardpoints (support modules) that I just placed but couldn't remove.

Instead of it just saying "no", there should be a popup "That part has other parts attached to it. Do you want to remove those parts as well, or cancel the removal? {Cancel} / {Remove All Attached Parts}"