I hear people wanting more ships/customization frequently. However, I understand that it isn't as easy as people may think. Assuming that the developers already the basics for new ships, there is still roughly nine to fifteen hours of necessary work that goes into getting the ship in game.

So, here is my idea. There are essentially fifteen ships, not including variants. Suppose there were an in-game design your own ship tab, by which you could start with a basic model and (within reason) add bits to it? For example,

A Warthog with its wing nubs removed and a Vultures wings added. Giving it two additional small ports, but making it more susceptible to rockets/missiles with a proximity fuse?

or...

A Vulture with Four wings (left, right, straight up and down) It would LOOK realy neat and, again give two more small ports but also adding mass and replacing the Raptor as the resident flare magnet.

But NOT...

Removing a Vultures wings, adding nothing and getting the super un-catch-able death pencil.
Removing the

Sounds interesting, but seems like designing the interface/editing mechanism would be very time consuming in it's own right. I also remember reading somewhere that dealing with weapon ports was a lot trickier than would be expected. Plus mass distribution effecting the turn acceleration... they'd basically have to make the editing interface AND every possible permutation of every ship. At least, that's what I'm seeing. Feel free to put me wrong, devs..

Good, but as a very long term idea... maybe for V.O. 3.0...
Modular ships, you pick a hull, armour, engines, weapons mounts and assemble your ship, with resulting weight/performance.

+1

Maybe this is something the PCC could do if given the right tools?

Actually They could simply calculate the physics model when the editting is done.

It would mean creating a generalised data set to govern how the ships reacted but it is possible.

Modular ships, you pick a hull, armour, engines, weapons mounts and assemble your ship, with resulting weight/performance.

We can but dream.

Actually I think that to an extent the mechanics may be there already. Way back when the Marauder was released, (as I'm sure you can guess by the over all look of it) it was originally intended to have modular storage bays. I don't recall what the reason for scrapping the idea was but a similar mechanic could theoretically be used here.

Maybe getting a devs opinion/info on this one could help. Honestly... I can picture myself and others killing endless hours in the ship design.

Like these... rough couple minutes in photoshop, but... it would be cool to be able to do this in game.

I really liked that Hornet+Trident... or hordent?

[edit]Oooops... Hortaur or Centnet ?
Anyways, looks more logical and proper than both original ships!

Hornet+Centaur, Trident+SCP

I recall reading that back when engines where modular that allowed for some mechanics breaking combinations. Some sort of editor that limits permutations of ships such that add-on combinations will not break the game will be very damn neat.

Ryan... why no Cent with Conny engines?

Because I said so.

I like the hog/vult. As I said before... we can but dream.

+a bunch.

Wow... I wish! cool visual aides Ryan.

+1

I just started playing last night, and I got to thinking that something similar to the Chrome Hounds modular mech design could be used. Each piece has a number of sides that can be connected to another module. In this manner, people could completely customise their ships. The limiting factors could simply be size and weight. You could, in fact, have predesigned hulls in which you could arrange said modules to take up space the most efficiently. On the outside of this hull you could have the weapon mounts, missile/torpedo tubes, and armour plating that you could position manually. You could take this to the idea that you could destroy individual "subsystems" to gain a tactical advantage by hitting the correct place on a ship, I.E. Freespace.

I can see the downside of this, though, being that it would take an immense amount of new code.
What can I say? I'm a die-hard mechwarrior fan :)

There were some early plans to do modular ships (somebody probably has the concept art to post), but as you say it would require immense amounts of new code to bring it to reality. It's a good idea, but it's time has not yet come.

Whistler, I'm fairly certain you're right. IIRC, the Marauder was meant to have removable storage areas (Sorta like a space train I suppose.) I really wish it had worked out that way, but I think there was an issue with mass/velocity and I seem to remember some kind of bug about the Maud too but it was so long ago I couldn't say with any certainty what it was... maybe something about storage?

+1