Without further ado, let's talk about the Ship Designer.
There are a few reasons why you might want to create custom Ship Designs. These reasons can generally be boiled down to a singular concept: Specialization.
By and large, the ships available to the player by default are designed to be well-rounded and useful in almost every situation. They are a one-size-fits-all solution that can get the job done.
For ships better suited for unique and novel situations, players can turn to the Ship Designer.
By creating new, custom Ship Designs, you can create tools uniquely suited for the challenges at hand. These new designs can allow you to accomplish your objectives with greater efficiency than the standard shipsets would usually allow.
There are two ways to access the Ship Designer: from the Main Menu and from inside a Shipyard.
When accessed from the Main Menu, the Ship Designer will display all available components regardless of prerequisite Techs whereas accessing the Ship Designer mid-game from inside a Shipyard will limit your selection.
This limitation helps ensure that the ships you design don’t contain components outside of what you are currently capable of producing.
This can also help with pacing in subsequent games as your Ship Designs get saved and added to the pool of ships available to the Civilization you created them as.
Designs utilizing components unlocked via early-game techs will be made available during the early-game and designs made with late-game components will appear in the late-game.
The alternative of accessing the Ship Designer via the Main Menu is useful in its own right. A savvy player may concoct their own powerful designs and plan for them to become available ahead of time.
To begin a new design, players have the option of starting from scratch or using an existing Ship Design as a template.
To start from scratch, select the “New Ship Class” button. To work from an existing ship, select your ship of choice and then hit the button with a plus-mark beneath the “New Ship Class” button.
Starting from scratch will reveal more options for Ship Type and using an existing Ship Design will limit these options to the size and type of ship selected (such as combat versus non-combat.)
Players can also choose their ship's Operational Ability and Target Priorities from this screen - assuming they are designing a combat vessel.
These two variables are powerful tools for creating specialized ships.
Once in the designer, players will need to choose a Hull before attaching any components.
Hull Size determines each ship’s Capacity for components - the bigger the ship, the greater the Capacity.
You will be limited to the ship sizes unlocked by certain technologies if accessing the Designer from a Shipyard and/or if you started with an existing ship as a template.
The bigger the Hull, the more late-game the prerequisite technology. Keep in mind that bigger Ship Designs will not be made available during the earlier parts of the game.
Hull Capacities are as follows:
- Tiny = 8
- Small = 18
- Medium = 32
- Large = 60
- Huge = 100
- Cargo = 20 (for non-combat ships)
You then see all available components on the left, sorted into five categories:
- Weapons (Beam Weapons, Missile Weapons, Kinetic Weapons, and Exotic Weaponry)
- Defenses (Shields, Evasion, Armor, and special defense components)
- Drives (Moves)
- Support (Hit Point, Sensor Range, Accuracy, and fleet buffing components)
- Special (Specialty modules including Flagship, Supply, and Probe Modules)
Components can be attached by selecting one from the panel on the left and placing it onto the ship by clicking an anchor point.
Changes in Mass are previewed in the Equipment Manifest while each component is selected and updated once attached.
The look of each attached component can be adjusted via the control panel in the bottom right-hand corner with translation, rotation, and scaling options alongside more advanced tools like mirroring, hiding, or animation.
For the players looking to preserve the cosmetic aspects of their designs, one trick you can use is to hold ‘Shift’ and ‘Ctrl’ while attaching a new component. What this does is it snaps the component to the root of the Ship Design without an anchor point. Then, with the component selected, you can toggle the ‘Hide Part' option in the bottom right control panel - keeping it invisible and out of the way.
It is also important to keep an eye on the Manufacturing Cost as you add components as some will require specific resources like Elerium, Antimatter, Promethion, or Durantium to be produced. Each additional component will also add to the Construction Costs which determine how long it will take a Shipyard to produce your designs.
Adding too many components can limit your ability to produce these ships.
One way you can utilize the Ship Designer is to create “upgraded” versions of existing ships like, for example:
- Probes and Flagships with Increased Sensor Range
- Freighter (Trade ships) or Supply ships with increased Moves
- Repair Ships with increased Soldiering for quicker Invasions
However, of all the possible ways to use the Ship Designer, you will probably spend the most time (and have the most fun!) designing for combat.
Combat in Gal Civ IV has a rock-paper-scissors-type match-up system with three weapon types and three defense types.
Understanding these categories and their matchups will enable you to design ships tailor-made to dismantle your galactic opponents.
Consider:
Take a look at the Yor Fleet below. By examining their combat stats, we can see they have high Evasion and increased Beam Attack damage.
To counter this fleet, I want to design ships with high Shield (and Hit Points) and powerful Beam Weapons.
While starting a new Ship Design, I’ll choose an Operational Ability to “Defender” to further reduce the strength of their Evasion. I’ll also select “Bombers” as the Targeting Priority to quickly remove the two ships with Missile Weapons from their fleet.
From here, I’ll grab a Fleet Shield for increased Shield, Lasers for Beam Damage and accuracy, Chaff to counter their Missiles, and an Ion Cannon to neutralize their Evasion.
With my design complete, I can save my newly complete “Yor Doomed” Ship Design and begin production on a fleet.
With a fleet of six “Yor Doomed” ships, the Yor fleet that threatened my border didn’t stand a chance.
One last note on accumulating Ship Designs:
As your game progresses, your various Ship Designs will slowly become obsolete as your opponents adapt and technology progresses. When this happens, you have the option to mark them as such and have them removed from your Shipyard’s available projects for the remainder of your game.
The Ship Designer allows you to adapt and respond to the challenges that arise throughout a game. This is a cumulative effect that reaches beyond the end of one game and into the next. Each ship you design gets saved to the ever-increasing roster of available ships, allowing you to respond quickly to every obstacle.
You may even face new challenges should you go toe-to-toe with a Civilization you have previously played as and designed ships for. I’ll be on the lookout for the “Yor Doomed” fleet the next time I play as the Yor.
There are endless possibilities and clever component combinations to discover. I’ve only touched on a few here in this Dev Journal.
And so, I’d like to ask:
- What component combinations have you discovered?
- Do you have a favorite Ship Design?
