Custom Ship Creation, Design and Uploading

Suggestions Miscellaneous
1

This has been flying around my head for quite a while, and I just needed to put this down.

Okay, what if Star Conflict allowed you to create your own ships? Using an in-game or third-party or extension add-on (please, don’t make us pay for it), this would be the singularly most awesome thing added to Star Conflict.

So, it could be downloaded from, say, Steam, or the actual site. Take your pick. Anyway, so when you open up the program, you’ll be faced with a blank canvas, and a bunch of options. These options could be as listed:

  • Race - Designates which race in which the ship will be available for purchase.
  • Type - What type of ship is it? Inty, Fighter or Frigate?
  • Class - Pick from the 9 classes. Cov Ops, Recon, ECM, Tackler, Gunship, Command, Engineer, Guard or Long Range.
  • Tier - Self-explanatory
  • Rank - Self-explanatory

Note that Tier and Rank apply restrictions to the created ship on all available modules, weapons and missiles.

 

The building is the fun part. You can choose from a variety of presets, including the current ships you can buy, or start from scratch. Obviously there’s a lot of parts like fins, chassis, spokes, etc, and then there’s paint schemes and decals you can apply with mirroring, maybe even neon highlights that glow for effect. You add your own gun placements, and the number you have is defined by the Class of your ship. Up to 2 for interceptors, 4 for fighters and frigates, and 6 for the LRF. You don’t have to give them that many, but you can if you want. Yo can also sacrifice gun placements for additional missile slots, and vice versa. Hit boxes for shields and hull, dead zones and hull and shield levels are automatically calculated, though the latter does have some user input.

Once your ship is built, you upload it to the Star Conflict servers, and you can use it in battles. On top of that, your ship becomes purchasable for GS, but it shows up in a custom list of ships if you want it to. Obviously, you can only buy custom ships of your current rank, tier and race, but you can purchase them directly: there are no prerequisites.

Your opinions?

2

I would be nice to have that, BUT (sadly) it’s a huge work to make and implement something like that.

3

Make it easy to Implement? Very easy…they just tell us how they import ships into the game… It would take them 1 day tops…with beer and pizza to slow them down…

 

I pray to god (my imaginary friend) that they use Maya or 3ds Max : /

 

"Every artist was first an amateur

          -Ralph Waldo Emerson

4

I’ll love to see this implemented (difficult as it will be), but at the same time I dread to see the extent of player creativity. 

5

I’ll love to see this implemented (difficult as it will be), but at the same time I dread to see the extent of player creativity. 

 

Pufferfish interceptors… lol

6

Adding an option to make custom UI via XML and JS/LUA(or whatever) would also be good option, because people who like the game they play would gladly invest some effort to make it better and share with others, but (correct me if I’m wrong) as it stands devs have made it clear, that there will be no option to add custom made stuff to the game. I’m quite sure that it goes for this idea as well.

7

Adding an option to make custom UI via XML and JS/LUA(or whatever) would also be good option, because people who like the game they play would gladly invest some effort to make it better and share with others, but (correct me if I’m wrong) as it stands devs have made it clear, that there will be no option to add custom made stuff to the game. I’m quite sure that it goes for this idea as well.

 

Hmm, having different UIs for each race would be interesting, to say the least…

8

On top of being hard to implement, in comes the issue of balance. I would limit cosmetic changes at skins since the design language of each ship ties into their origins and history. As well, being able to recognize which faction the ship belongs to at a glance gives a pilot a lot of information, e.g. a Jericho frigate probably stacks shields.

 

An intriguing idea nonetheless.

9

I like the concept, but there is one huge drawback. Abuse.

 

If a player can create their own design and sacrifice active modules or turrets for additional missile slots, or change the type of slots, or in any way alter the preset configuration for Tiers, I guarantee we would see a whole new generation of Nuke spamming Strong mk. II with no turrets, no active modules, and 15 large missile slots.

 

If something like this is implemented, it can only be cosmetic, with some very strict hardpoint swapping abilities. Active, passive modules and other items would have to stay fixed.

 

Other than this potential problem, I like the idea.

10

I would suggest a point-buy system: every ship starts off with ‘baseline’ stats. Everything else has to be ‘bought’: missile bays, passive bonuses, larger shield or hull strength. We could either have faction modifiers included in the baseline stats (Fed ships are faster, Imperial ships have less shields and more hull… etc), or have reduced costs (Imperial ships can increase their hull strength at a lower cost, Jericho ships might have cheaper missile bays).

 

But alas, this is going to be difficult to implement.

11

I like the concept, but there is one huge drawback. Abuse.

 

If a player can create their own design and sacrifice active modules or turrets for additional missile slots, or change the type of slots, or in any way alter the preset configuration for Tiers, I guarantee we would see a whole new generation of Nuke spamming Strong mk. II with no turrets, no active modules, and 15 large missile slots.

 

If something like this is implemented, it can only be cosmetic, with some very strict hardpoint swapping abilities. Active, passive modules and other items would have to stay fixed.

 

Other than this potential problem, I like the idea.

 

Hmm… You could solve that by restricting Cov Ops (which are the only ships capable of carrying nukes insofar) to 3 large missile slots, but unlimited medium and small slots. Therefore, you could have missile spam, but not as much nuke spam.

 

I would suggest a point-buy system: every ship starts off with ‘baseline’ stats. Everything else has to be ‘bought’: missile bays, passive bonuses, larger shield or hull strength. We could either have faction modifiers included in the baseline stats (Fed ships are faster, Imperial ships have less shields and more hull… etc), or have reduced costs (Imperial ships can increase their hull strength at a lower cost, Jericho ships might have cheaper missile bays).

 

But alas, this is going to be difficult to implement.

 

I like this idea.

12

It’s an interesting idea, but it would end up with literally millions of different designs and no possible way to identify what you’re facing. They would simply be too much choice, and balancing such a wide choice would be a nightmare.

 

I do like the idea of some personal touch to your ship, but a such module tweaking/constructing in this manner might be too game-breaking.

 

Imagine if you design your ship to have no weapons and use those points/slots etc simpyl to increase the survivability… when you’re captain in recon, choose an indestructible ship, or design on for pure speed and no weapons/utility, and beacons are easy targets.

13

It’s an interesting idea, but it would end up with literally millions of different designs and no possible way to identify what you’re facing. They would simply be too much choice, and balancing such a wide choice would be a nightmare.

 

I do like the idea of some personal touch to your ship, but a such module tweaking/constructing in this manner might be too game-breaking.

 

Imagine if you design your ship to have no weapons and use those points/slots etc simpyl to increase the survivability… when you’re captain in recon, choose an indestructible ship, or design on for pure speed and no weapons/utility, and beacons are easy targets.

 

There would be restrictions for such things, so that you must have a minimum weapon count, and the speed, hull and shield stats would not go above a set amount, but I see where you’re coming from. If the massive cloud of ships proves to be a problem, how about you can create up to 3 ships for free, but then you have to pay to build more. You can edit existing ships at any time, and can make them closed or open for purchase.

14

With a lot of careful restriction I could see it being interesting, not to me personally because I’m not creative in the slightest, but there’s bound to be people who’d enjoy making their own style of ship.

 

Are you thinking built from modules similar to many 4x games, and Spore?

15

With a lot of careful restriction I could see it being interesting, not to me personally because I’m not creative in the slightest, but there’s bound to be people who’d enjoy making their own style of ship.

 

Are you thinking built from modules similar to many 4x games, and Spore?

 

Hmm… Well, it’s more along the lines of… Yeah the idea came from Spore.

16

Haha well, that style of design could tie in very well with the f2p model

17

I am just a creativist and I offer to help with the inplementation of this idea for free. I could give ideas, design UI, or write a small amount of code for free cause I love this game. I would also implement a trade system, that way player-made ships can be put in, lets say an auction house. It would definatly help if I gave you guys (devs) ideas to help improve the game. I’ll make something simple and easy-to-use for the player’s AH and Ship Creators. Thank you devs if you read this and I will thank you even more if you allow me to become a center of ideas for you.

18

I doubt we could ever get true, unlimited uploading of ships, but you could potentially get customisation options. This could include stuff like adding more / different wings, sensor spines, battle scars, “pirate” marks or almost any kind of unique option.

19

I’d like to just make one ship look like another.

 

Example: Make a Naga look like a Hydra 2. (Because I love the Hydra 2.)

20

I’d like to just make one ship look like another.

 

Example: Make a Naga look like a Hydra 2. (Because I love the Hydra 2.)

^ This would be great. Perhaps add a cosmetic slot in the equipment menu. Equip it, and select from a drop down menu from other ships of the same class you also own. change appearance to that ship. Win.

 

 

On the topic of this thread overall- while designing your own ship from scratch would be awesome, it would not be feasible and would be a balancing nightmare. The only solid alternative i can think of is a ingame ship designer with premade modules you can use to put together a ship. the modules you can use are based on the type of ship you want and the faction. Then you get a limited amount of ‘shapes’ to stick to it to change it up to how you want [wings, blocks, triangles, whatever, etc]. The Special/amount of weapons would depend on the ship type selected. OR, it could change based on tier. You could make one of these, then use the gold standard cosmetic item to put your new ‘ship’ skin/design over an existing ship, thus not needing to worry about balance or turrets or etc. they could simply change to accommodate the ship they are placed on, and the skin can be put on any tier or ship. Plus, it’d be using game asset items, so no need to worry about regulating player uploaded content.

 

Despite how awesome THAT would be, building a ship editor/builder like that for users would still take up a lot of developer time without a whole lot of return. 

 

Still awesome though.