An idea I wanted to run by you all because I can't quite decide if it's cool or pointless: automatic ship descriptions. Basically, when you build an airship, it gets given a cool-sounding description or categorization. Eg:
Light cruiser
Gatling ram
Armoured frigate
High-altitude bomber
Dreadnought
Troop transport
These are derived from the size, armour and equipment of the ship. They don't do anything except sound kinda cool. Thoughts? Category name suggestions?
yes! yes! yes! yes! I have actually tried to do this myself but it just looks messy and take away from the actual naming of the ship which I also like.. Something actually built into the game would by awesome. Maybe you can even choose what each class is called in-game.
Yes ! Definitively yes !! Where do you want to add this ? In the ship name like [CRUISER] Victory ?
Edit : You can propably stick to actual military ship class names and leave the player the choise to create his own classes. It will be easier for you this way.
This sounds useful for a simple 'fog of war' mechanic for fleets in the campaign.
Say looking at a city you can only vaguely see the amount of ships and what designation they are before sending a spy to investigate!
Also you could probably use this to tidy up the build menu for ship designs a lot!
Having ship designs categorized in tabs would make my life easier, less sorting through all of my variants of one small ship design mixed in with all the larger ships! :D
wait are you saying that anyone can just edit that gdoc with ideas? I ask because it looked I was allowed to edit the doc. I didn't touch anything though if you don't want that.
Edited the Gdoc a lil' bit. I believe i added some reasonable credit ranges compared to ship sizes to better define them.
-edit-
To keep an actual order to the system do you guys support having more generic titles, excluding Gigantic ship categories?
So, ramming ships might go from "kamakazie (tiny)" to "light ram (small)" then "ram (med)" and "heavy ram (large)" or "super ram (huge)" and finally "special title because this is the biggest ship and its going to make you go 'Oh , Shit..' (gigantic)"
This makes it easier to understand/gives the titles and gigantic ships more meaning in my opinion.
Tiny hulls get unique short names (gun: patrol boat. for example)
small/med/large share the same name but with their prefix respectively (gun: small gunship, med. gunship, large gunship. for example)
huge hulls get a suffix after the title, same name as the first..
(Steel armour: Ironclad Battleship) (also whoever made that row did a really good job)
Gigantic hulls get unique names, these are the grandest of ships so go wild
(gun: special name here. for example)
Someone did a really good example of this on the steel armoured section on the post as of now
I think this might be a good system (except the huge hulls but you guys can add onto this).
Firebird11 I added the Ironclad Battleship but I'm not sure who came up with the Ironclad row itself, either way I agree with you on the rules. it allows for creativity without everything looking like a complete mess.
Well, I just added more categories so that we can have names for ships up to the max price.
Though, fortunately, neither the max price nor the max crew seems to actually work as a limit, with stuff with more working just fine. Is it just a strategic mode thing? Either way, I'm glad that it's possible to make larger stuff, as otherwise some of my ships would be useless. Besides, I find the money cap unreasonable with the crew cap. The max crew is a bit too low for the max cost. I think 300 or 400 is a good cap for crew, if not more.
Also, I think that max crew and cost should be possible to disable, though with a warning that it could cause issues. I've seen some games do that with features that could ruin the performance or cause other problems.
I think we should just count anything larger than 10,000 in the 'unreasonable' category as it exceeds the maximum fleet limit for multiplayer so will never be encountered as an enemy (even the pre-programmed campaign ships dont scratch 10,00+)
The ship names you give and the categories are separate things and im pretty sure you can make specific categories in-game and the gdoc ones are like 'generic stock' categories to make a better system.
So it should go like "ship name: 'HMS MyNameIsBob' ship class: 'light ironclad'"
Another suggestion, I believe some navies use a fourth through first 'rate' system to describe ship size or number of guns or whatever. It may be useful for combination ships with multiple types of weapon like gatling-rams so a ship doesn't pick up like three different titles and two different suffixes off the Gdoc, or end up named inaccurately or not at all.
Also, will ships be sized based on price or weight?
Aerial Emperor
An idea I wanted to run by you all because I can't quite decide if it's cool or pointless: automatic ship descriptions. Basically, when you build an airship, it gets given a cool-sounding description or categorization. Eg:
These are derived from the size, armour and equipment of the ship. They don't do anything except sound kinda cool. Thoughts? Category name suggestions?
Captain
yes! yes! yes! yes! I have actually tried to do this myself but it just looks messy and take away from the actual naming of the ship which I also like.. Something actually built into the game would by awesome. Maybe you can even choose what each class is called in-game.
Aerial Emperor
Could have an overridable default, so if you feel that "Light cruiser" is insufficiently hard-ass, you can categorize it as "Aerial Murderler".
Captain
Yes ! Definitively yes !! Where do you want to add this ? In the ship name like [CRUISER] Victory ?
Edit : You can propably stick to actual military ship class names and leave the player the choise to create his own classes. It will be easier for you this way.
Captain
Heheh, this sounds like a pretty fun idea.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
This sounds useful for a simple 'fog of war' mechanic for fleets in the campaign.
Say looking at a city you can only vaguely see the amount of ships and what designation they are before sending a spy to investigate!
Also you could probably use this to tidy up the build menu for ship designs a lot!
Having ship designs categorized in tabs would make my life easier, less sorting through all of my variants of one small ship design mixed in with all the larger ships! :D
Commander, Engineering Corps
Yes, please.
Commander
this sounds pretty good.
Commander, Engineering Corps
Air Destroyers and Battle-blimps? Yes please!
Aerial Emperor
OK, I've created a gdoc to brainstorm ideas for ship categories.
Captain
wait are you saying that anyone can just edit that gdoc with ideas? I ask because it looked I was allowed to edit the doc. I didn't touch anything though if you don't want that.
Captain
How about the possibility of adding actual, longer and not automatic descriptions to ships?
Captain
I think that was sorta discussed up top when Zark said that maybe you could override the descriptions manually
Aerial Emperor
Yes, edit the gdoc! I've filled in parts of it, but it's there to harvest your brain-ideas. :D
Captain
that's awesome I have added ideas to empty spaces and suggested ideas for filled in ones as well.
EDIT: I still think a good way to do it would be to have set categorize and let people change the name in-game
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Edited the Gdoc a lil' bit. I believe i added some reasonable credit ranges compared to ship sizes to better define them.
-edit-
To keep an actual order to the system do you guys support having more generic titles, excluding Gigantic ship categories?
So, ramming ships might go from "kamakazie (tiny)" to "light ram (small)" then "ram (med)" and "heavy ram (large)" or "super ram (huge)" and finally "special title because this is the biggest ship and its going to make you go 'Oh , Shit..' (gigantic)"
This makes it easier to understand/gives the titles and gigantic ships more meaning in my opinion.
Captain
I'm agree with Firebird11, probably need to follow some rules.
Captain
yeah I agree too, when I was editing it I tried to follow thoses rules
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
OK, heres what i think we could try to follow:
Tiny hulls get unique short names (gun: patrol boat. for example)
small/med/large share the same name but with their prefix respectively (gun: small gunship, med. gunship, large gunship. for example)
huge hulls get a suffix after the title, same name as the first.. (Steel armour: Ironclad Battleship) (also whoever made that row did a really good job)
Gigantic hulls get unique names, these are the grandest of ships so go wild (gun: special name here. for example)
Someone did a really good example of this on the steel armoured section on the post as of now
I think this might be a good system (except the huge hulls but you guys can add onto this).
Captain
Zarkonnen, May I add 2 more sheets for german and french translation in this gdoc ?
Captain
Firebird11 I added the Ironclad Battleship but I'm not sure who came up with the Ironclad row itself, either way I agree with you on the rules. it allows for creativity without everything looking like a complete mess.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Yay order has been created! :D
Captain
Well, I just added more categories so that we can have names for ships up to the max price.
Though, fortunately, neither the max price nor the max crew seems to actually work as a limit, with stuff with more working just fine. Is it just a strategic mode thing? Either way, I'm glad that it's possible to make larger stuff, as otherwise some of my ships would be useless. Besides, I find the money cap unreasonable with the crew cap. The max crew is a bit too low for the max cost. I think 300 or 400 is a good cap for crew, if not more.
Also, I think that max crew and cost should be possible to disable, though with a warning that it could cause issues. I've seen some games do that with features that could ruin the performance or cause other problems.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
I think we should just count anything larger than 10,000 in the 'unreasonable' category as it exceeds the maximum fleet limit for multiplayer so will never be encountered as an enemy (even the pre-programmed campaign ships dont scratch 10,00+)
These will get unique names too
Commander
l we be able to name our own categories? Also I put HMS before all but one of my ships so could the class come after the ship name?
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
The ship names you give and the categories are separate things and im pretty sure you can make specific categories in-game and the gdoc ones are like 'generic stock' categories to make a better system.
So it should go like "ship name: 'HMS MyNameIsBob' ship class: 'light ironclad'"
Commander
Ok thanks.
Air Admiral
Is it too late for this suggestion? It seems absolutely amazing.
Midshipman
Another suggestion, I believe some navies use a fourth through first 'rate' system to describe ship size or number of guns or whatever. It may be useful for combination ships with multiple types of weapon like gatling-rams so a ship doesn't pick up like three different titles and two different suffixes off the Gdoc, or end up named inaccurately or not at all.
Also, will ships be sized based on price or weight?