Suggestion: Ship Save Library and Fleet Prep Tab

[Skeksis]

Ship Library.

I want to suggest a ‘Ship Library’ that can be access by all mission platforms, academy, custom battles and the campaign (see layout). Integrating saved ship designs across all mission platforms would give the game a modern and a ease of life feature and allow players an easy access to their tried and tested ships, of which the academy could become the testbed for the campaign.

Fleet Preparation.

Also what’s needed is a way to prep the fleet by swapping in and out saved ships from the library and/or designing each ship in the fleet and moving each of those designs into the fleet. Using a ‘Fleet Preparation’ tab to organize the fleet seems like the solution. I have found that some sort of fleet tab or 'fleet organizer' is missing or lacking from academy and now custom battles.There should be some sort of fleet builder tab for the campaign too and there would be a need to have some sort of saved designs library for the fleet builder to access, so I suggest 'integrating all mission platforms'.

User interface layout...

Research/Tech Governor.

Components availability in designer tool is govern by the mission tech levels set by academy mission, custom battles and the campaign research level. Also selecting ships from a ship library would be govern by funds available. Generally the governor is to set all availability and selection parameters dictated from the mission platforms for the designer tool and the ships library.  

Fleet Prep to Campaign.

This arrow denotes that the tab could also be used as the campaign fleet builder.

Fleet Prep.

If the action is from campaign to battle, like if the fleet is in open sea and can't be edited, then the design tool and ship library access would be disable, this way the Fleet Prep tab could be uses as the main junction for going into battle. And in port or while editing fleets then those editing options would be enable.

Ship Library.

This tab can have a bunch of list filters too.

Saving Designs. 

Each ship should be define by its ‘tech year’ level, each component will have a ‘tech year’ level. Once a component is applied to a ship and the component year tech is greater than the ships then the ship tech year advances to that of the component tech year. All ships saves then should be denoted with its tech year.

Save name e.g. (1906) Dreadnought (BB).

This is how the game can control saved ship selections for each of the missions and each mission platform. And the only way I could think of to grey-out unusable options/saves/etc. And a way for the campaign with its research tech, ‘year tech’, to govern its and player selection process.

Note, tech level doesn't have to be based on the year, year level is only a example, the parameter could just be a plain tech level setting.

Basically ship saves define by level of tech.

e.g.

Spiel.

Now I did assume that with custom battles we would be able to design every single ship in the fleet but alas no. Also with participating on the NA test server I know that what you see is what you’re going to get so if we don’t suggest things the status-quo will remain, not assuming suggestions would change anything anyway but we should still brainstorm even if to no avail. And be very clear on suggestions too, such as conveying the actual scope of saving ship designs that is wanted.

I don't understand why there's a limit to one ship design only for custom battles, actually academy is setup the same way so maybe there’s a programming reason for singular designs but if not, then an option for an integrated library across all mission platforms could work as suggested.

I guess I set my expectation too high, I assume there was going to be an open and save dialog for ship designs, not the limited one per mission we got, so Dev’s I encourage you guy’s to think on a grander scale. 

Summary.

Basically integrating a single save interface will make the game pretty dynamic and user friendly.

 

Updated Schematic (13/01/2020).

Added in a ‘Hull Builder’, I think this is relevant, and added a result screen. With everything laid out in the systematic, it now really highlights the importance of the ship fleet prep junction.

Hull Builder.

Hull Builder would give the game the ability to supply hull shapes for all those ship classes that might not be originally supplied. Well that’s it, the reason, but it's biggie, if players want to reproduce any historical battles from the game time frame then there’s just too many ship types for Dev’s to supply, hull builder sorts all this out and it would give the game its historical battle feature without Dev's actually suppling any such battles themselves.   

Some other ship classes that a 'hull builder' could take care off for historical battle reproduction...

Cruisers Variants.
Auxiliary vessels.
Coastal Battleships.
Coastal Defence Battleships.
Gunboats, Patrol and Coastal Boats.
Minesweepers/Mine Cruisers.
Seaplane/Floatplane Carriers/Tenders.
Corvettes.
Freighters/Transports/Armed Trawlers.
Merchant Raiders.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Skeksis

[ColonelHenry]

Yes please. I wanted t\the custom battle mode so I can design my own ships and also the enemy ships. AND then get to save those designs. Pls devs, can you look into this matter?

[Skeksis]

It's has occurred to me that this 'different choice' is the same as if easy-hard campaign modes were introduced or preferences tab of sliders (template of options), ditto for custom battles, so the Ships Library should be made to parse these options accordingly as well.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Skeksis