I read in a review that we can customize ships in Empire At War. But to what extent?

In Ground Control, prior to each mission, you give every squad a configuration, for example "Defencive, "Recon", or "Balanced". This affected their attack power, armour, speed, and range, but that was it (although it of course made a pretty big difference). You could also give them special weapons and equipment as said things became available, like I've stated on these forums a dozen times already. For example, infantry could carry anti-tank rocket launchers (3 shots), terradynes (AFVs) could carry and deploy automated AA tri-pod guns (1 each squad), and so on. Would be interesting, really, choosing whether to give your storm trooper squad a deployable E-Web, a deployable sensor, or a deployable projectile launcher of some kind, or choosing if your TIE Bombers should carry missiles or torpedoes.

But my dream, unlikely to be implemented as it happens to be, is the ability to give ships components from the bottom up:
http://www.starbasedelta.com/img/ss/shipdes5.jpg)
(The UI actually looked a bit better in the original Stars!, as parts then were shown directly on the ship itself).

What parts a ship has affects its performance and cost, and, of course, its stats and abilities. For example, only ships with lasers can fire lasers in battle.

For example, the Z-95 could have 1 Fighter Engine slot, 4 beam weapon slots, 2 warhead slots, 1 shield slot, 1 electronics slot (for a jammer or targetting computer or something), and 2 armour slots.

But it probably won't be quite that customizable. And I fear this "customization" is just a matter of "you can put Vader on your ship to make it fight better!", only said in a more interesting way:(. In which case I shall subject Petroglyph to unpleasant growling from my doggie over the phone come the days after I try EaW for the first time.

Your thoughts? I don't hold my breath, to put it that way:p.

I'd like to be able to name capital ships but that's just me. As far as this customization, I really doubt it will be that customizable. If it goes the direction of Homeworld2 like I read somewhere, customization might just be like Homeworld2's subsystems, some slots that effected performance (or hypersapce) and, that's about it, though you couldn't add weapons using these (at least not in the un-modded version). Probably not as much as Homeworld2 (considering a good amount were construction subsystems, of which there would be little use in this game if building doesn't take place in-battle) but that is just my take on it. Though I do still have some fear that customization is what you said about putting vader on a ship.

From the Gamespot preview...

That is, you'll not only wage war on the face of different planets, but you'll also battle in space with the many different fighter ships of the Star Wars universe (along with bigger targets, like capital ships and space stations). These major targets will be outfitted with hard points, which are specific areas along the chassis that have different upgrades slotted into them, like engines, shield generators, and weapons. Because these large vessels are either immobile or slow-moving at best, space battles will resemble naval battles with ships maneuvering to fire broadsides at each other. You may find yourself trying to destroy all weapons on one side of a large ship so that it can't fire on you. Even if you succeed, you'll have to take advantage of your enemy's inability to attack before the ship comes about and opens up a broadside with its undamaged row of weapons. Likewise, you may find yourself targeting the engines of a ship to stop it from escaping or from advancing to the front lines for reinforcements, or you may find yourself targeting the shield generators of a ship with proton torpedoes to open the enemy up to laser fire from your fighters.
I think that about sums it up.

Originally posted by BeBop
I'd like to be able to name capital ships but that's just me.
I loved that feature in Rebellion. How'd you like to lose a ship to a Star Destroyer called the Fluffy Kitten?:p

I'd liek to be able to name ships too. I would also like to be able to rename the other players ship if you take control of it. This might not be an option because the ships just might be destroyed, but if it could be captured, I'd give it a name that incrimenates my opponent. Nothing vulugar just something like "Rebel Crusher". I think it would be cool to attack the Rebels with thier own ship renamed to taunt them and vice versa. Might want to put a filter on the the naming though...

Originally posted by General Nitro
Might want to put a filter on the the naming though...

Hadn't thought about that. Good Idea...

I loved that feature in Rebellion. How'd you like to lose a ship to a Star Destroyer called the Fluffy Kitten?
:)

Might want to put a filter on the the naming though...
Why not? I suppose if you're a griefer or immature, one way to express it could be to name your ships idiotic things...:rolleyes:

These major targets will be outfitted with hard points, which are specific areas along the chassis that have different upgrades slotted into them, like engines, shield generators, and weapons.
Only large ships? That is depressing... I wanted to give my X-Wing a couple of Blackjacks... [/Stars! jargon]

Indeed it looks like the hard points systems will only be used for Capital ships. (Maybe the orbiting space stations. Hard to tell as of now.) Maybe frigates, though unlikely IMO. This (http://media.pc.ign.com/media/713/713904/img_2600590.html) is probably as much hard pointing we'll see in this game. Sigh.

I'm not buying this game if I can't have Multicolored Star Destroyer shooting plasma at Neon green X-wings.

I want to have a bright red Star Destroyer called the Errant Venture, but that's just me.

I hope I can turn them into ram ships.

I want to be able to crash massive ships into the ground battle below as sort of a last resort option.

The ability of nameing ships is in EAW (80% probability) ...what i'm worried about is for the AI autogenrated renameing or nameing of his ships. Alos your ships should be named by the AI and if you want you could rename them.

We always had a problem in rebellion with the ship names...the list was to small so we always had : ISD 12, ISD 13, ISD 14, etc.

I think customizing a ship will be limited to changing its name, having heroes on board and the ability to upgrade weapons. Like you start with a type 1 quad laser turret but you can then upgrade it to a type 2, 3 or 4 and so on. I hope i'm wrong but i think thats proberly what we will get.