So the question is, how should procedural ships be generated so that they reflect the civilizations/factions they belong to and are sufficiently varied?
I would like to present a few parameters that might help with that. Feel free to discuss the parameters and add/remove what you feel like. Here I go-

1. Technology-
The technological advancement of a race will influence its ship designs. For example, a newly space faring race might have a lot cruder ships with a general lack of aesthetics while an advanced civilization might go for sleeker, better looking ships.

2. The nature of the race-
A peaceful race will have a different philosophy of ship design from an aggressive race, which would like its ships to look more threatening(with claws etc).

3. The past of the race-
A race that has seen little or no violence directed at it will generally be a lot more experimental with its ship designs while a race that has had to struggle for survival will have prioritized weapons so might go for experimental weapons while iterating on tried and tested ship designs.

How about the physical properties of the race?

I would imagine ships of a race that has 16 eyes would need different design considerations. Most of these would be obfuscated by the hull of the ship, but I'm sure there would be some things that would influence the shape or extrusions of the hull.

But honestly, I don't expect Josh to consider the physical properties of the race, or the past of them. I would love it if we could judge by the shape of a ship with what kind of race we're dealing with.
Hive-like races would have bulky pyramid-shaped ships with lots of docking ports. Aggressive races would have a more sleek candle like shape and an obvious preference for more guns. Passive races, I think, would go for bulkier, box like shapes. Races considering logic would have more boring hulls, while religious races would have all kinds of decorations.

Will there be race-specific ships in LT? I was under the impression that there would not necessarily be race distinctions. Perhaps regional destinctions can be made, which can just be put up to cultural style?

well, whats the principial difference between racialised ships and regionalised ships?

You can always tell that they were built by a certain faction or a group of factions

Cornflakes_91 wrote:well, whats the principial difference between racialised ships and regionalised ships?

You can always tell that they were built by a certain faction or a group of factions

Racialised trumps regionalised. In a long lasting game I want to see faction X being kicked out of their own sector by faction Y, seeing faction Y using X's buildings, colonies and stations they captured.

well, i assumed that regional/racial flavour would be applied to approbiate factions and the flavour then sticks to the factions.

In this case there is no difference

I think this may occur as a natural result of the new planatary colonies,
each would have a specific role (war, trade, ect...)
also each would be producing certian related blueprints.

The race / culture question is a good one as we still have not been told by the Master Builder whether Limit Theory will include alien (i.e., non-humanoid) races.

That said, I also strongly favor keying general ship style to cultural attributes. It's not "realistic," exactly, in that one culture can produce very different-looking ships. But a link between culture and ship style can have both aesthetic and mechanical utility in a game.

We touched on this subject previously in the Procedural Greeble and (to a lesser extent) Procedural variety in NPC fleet tactics threads.

Speaking of procedurally-generated spaceships, here's a link to a video of some work on exactly that being done by Joe Wintergreen.

He's the developer of InFlux and the upcoming Magenta Sunset.

Shiny procedurally generated spaceship interiors. Mmmmm.