NikoDG wrote:I don't see the big need to classify everything, except for fighters and carriers of course.
I'm not proposing to.
The problem with full PG is that it's not easy to create a system that naturally generates diverse and complementing designs.
By supplying guidance in the form of some sort of "core module", the rules are changed. The game won't try to create a corvette sized battleship if the module demands x construction points before it can be called one.
A Flak corvette would have to fall within a certain range of CP and since Flak guns or anti-fighter missiles are cheaper for it, it would be easy for the engine to figure out that it would be a good idea to mount a bunch because this would be the most effective way to increase it's firepower! As a result, the game won't try to generate a torpedoes-only ship for the purpose of protecting a formation against fighters.
This doesn't take away racial diversity since the ships of different races can still have their own styles and weapon preferences. It's just that the design could be easily influenced by what
makes sense for a particular purpose. Even if 1/3 of the ship's allocated weapon space is allocated for "big guns", the CP bonus for Flak means that there will be a decent amount of those.
Different races/factions can still use a different range of modules. Those can be PG, too, because that's a system of manageable complexity. Doing one monolithic system for all ship generation would be a balancing nightmare.
But the most important aspect is that specialised ships will have intentionally designed weaknesses. It's
boring if every ship type is equally capable, only up-scaled to a certain tonnage!
You may be right about ships not requiring a class if the player min-maxes them. I'm thinking more about the AI ships that will make up the majority of the game.
Getting
them balanced and diverse at the same time is a big deal. By nudging the ship generator into certain directions, the result won't be complete nonsense. =)
That the player
can use such modules only creates more choices because you don't just generate every ship the same old way but have multiple approaches for creating a "best ship".
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross
.