I may be missing something, but there currently seems to be no difference between similarly classed hulls apart from the visual?
I seem to be able to mount any weapon on any turret, and while there is a difference in number of specials/armours between sizes, there appears to be no difference, even between beam/ballistic/missile turrets. Similarly, (l/m/h) tank/mech hulls seem to have no variety.
Have the differences simply not been included in the current iteration, or is there no plan for there to be any? If there is no plan for there to be any, why are there so many? Why not just additional visual customization options, which would end up with a substantially less cluttered hull list?
They will be different, its already in the changelog. There will be light/medium/heavy varieties at different costs for each of the mobile hulls. Others will remain purely visual differences.
Good question. I thinks eeing as though they all have variants, and players are encouraged to name the designs, it might be ok to leave them, but then I guess they do sound a little dry. One issue is I like to keep it ambiguous whether they are German, English or whatever, because although the game is theoretically played as the Britiash, I know people will like to imagine their armies as being from other nations.
I agree with what you say, cliffski, about keeping the names generic. It also makes it very quick and easy to scroll through the hull list and know what you’re looking at. I don’t think ‘I want a Utopia hull’, I think ‘I want a middle sized mech, what middle sized mechs are available?’ Perhaps there’s somewhat of a middle ground? You’ve said the hull variants are going to get more varied, so instead of just ‘medium mech 1/2/3’ it could be ‘medium mech (light)/(heavy)/(whatever)’ So instead of the numbers, which are a bit dry and unclear, it tells you a bit about what the differences between the hulls are at a glance.
I just don’t want to think something along the lines of “let’s see, I is the expensive one, II has good speed, III is cheap but bad in every way, VI has an extra slot there”