Spacecraft Update

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Historical Event
Spacecraft Update
C_Spacecraft.png
Start Date
2016-11-07
End Date
Ongoing

The spacecraft update was a complete overhaul of spacecraft and their designers.

It had been in a planning stage for a very long time before the development started on 2016-11-07.[1] Mentions of a "spacecraft facelift" can be found in archives as far back as 2013 and earlier.[2]

Some of the reasons given for the overhaul was due to the old spacecraft and designer code apparently becoming un-maintainable.

The new designer is a simplified 3D modelling environment. The new designs can have almost any shape and look desired. Anything from exterior to interior to furniture is defined purely by the player.

As of 2023, Haxus has stated the new designers are "barely functional" and intends to resume work on them at some point.[3]

This was later expanded to buildings in the Building Update.

Old Spacecraft Designs

In 2018, the old designer was completely removed from the game. This caused player backlash as some felt the new designer was in an unfinished state and was not ready to replace the old one at that point. See controversy for more information.

Old OpenCASCADE Designer Attempt

There was an earlier attempt at a new designer using OpenCASCADE back in 2014.[4] But this was scrapped as it was too complicated to use.[5]

Controversy

Many players have voiced criticism of the new system. Some feel the time and knowledge requirement to design ships had become prohibitive - such as creating a door requiring creating a jig object, intersecting it between two walls, cutting, texturing the faces, setting up collision, walk paths, and more - compared to the two clicks of the old designer. A new-style spacecraft could easily take hundreds of hours to design. In addition, the functionality of the ship was separated from the physical design, instead having all subsystems be tuned using abstract volume sliders based on total hull volume. Many of the old designer's restrictions and limits were removed, causing players to find it less "gamey" and more CAD-like, further worsened by the complexity of the new designer.

As a result of the designer's complexity and the lack of limitations, it is common to see spacecraft interiors that consist entirely of a single cubic room with all control stations and service panels. Interiors in building designs are also rare, due to the difficulty of adding them. Further, it is also common to see many different player empires use the same set of building and spacecraft designs available on the Steam Workshop - as using existing blueprints is a way to avoid using the designers and many wish to do so.

In addition, the new designer was initially released at a point where it was barely functional. This led players to feel as if it was not fit for purpose, and this was intensified when the old designers were removed in 2018. The new designer had received minimal functionality and usability improvements in that time. Haxus has recently stated that he still considers it "barely functional" and intends to continue work on it at some point in the future.[6]

Many players have since suggested that the old designer should have been improved upon, instead of a new one entirely. Suggestions of reverting to the old system are also frequent. Some players, such as members of Stellar Syndicate, have even claimed that the designer caused a massive drop in game interest, with some even quitting the game entirely as a result.

Changes

Links

Development start
Designer release
Manufacture-able in-game release
Tutorial Videos
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