The ability to build ships in-game was rejected because it would be difficult to implement into the real time nature of the game.

Alternatively, we could try and pressure the devs to come up with a nifty and balance-maintaining ships design program out of game, but that runs the risk of people designing an all-in-one cheap ship that can be spammed, especially if weapons of different types and roles can be mounted.

I would think it has to do something with the time that it might take to build a ship plan, and then actually deploy it.

Personally if all of the chassis are basically the same look like in SE5, IMHO the code and the size of the information going across the wire would be relatively trivial. All of the techs are based on data files loaded in at game/mod start, and then each 'ship' simply becomes a map of this item id, at this level, at this location on this size ship. Of course, I don't know how they have things implemented and that is a rather simplistic view of what information would be required to be sent.

Personally, what I'd like to see -- for the sequel, not this game! -- would be to have the basic ship graphics "nailed" down, then be able to slap weapons, shields, armor, etc etc onto various hard points to "create" our own ships. Maybe include the GC2 editor style thing as an out-of-game option. Obviously we can't do this now, but for Sins 2 (or an expansion... yeah right...) that'd be nice.

nightmares can be turned into good dreams with the right incentive ...

This is something I like to discuss with one of the programmers tbh. Just to get a grasp if it's a programming problem or a design problem.

I will admit, sometimes balance seems over-rated. I always loved min/maxing my designs in Master of Orion II to get maximum effect -- and the same thing applied in Space Empires and its mods

Sorry about the delay in replying
Tbh, I have no idea about the network code or anything like that - I just assumed that it was because, as a real time strategy, it would be hard to fit a ship design thingy in there and maintain the pace of the game...


That's from: http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/01/joystiq-interview-ironclad-talks-4x-strategy-with-sins-of-a-sol/

as mentioned, tinkering over a new design takes time, which is an essential resource in any rts game. and dont forget you just dont design a single ship, you will design various ships and continue to upgrade them as new technology comes available.

relic's second game after homeworld was called incredible creatures and employed something like it. you could splice genes of different animals and create your own choice of units, complete with an advisor pointing out strenghs and weaknesses in your self made army. all that was done offline and you accessed those self made units during the game.

that said, I'm still highly sceptical it can work. if it would, I'd definately go for an offline disign shop, since it want to be rushed when putting the pieces together.

on the other hand, it could be an area where races can be differentiated. war statistics will tell you about the learning curve etc, present in producing a lot of units of the same design. especially the tec as the industrialist faction could gain a discount depending on the amount of ships produced of a certain type. that would make a nice little trade off, when to switch to a better design, given the higher costs (which of course would go down over time).