Now some of you may have looked at the tech and component list and gotten the mistaken impression that ship design would be a pretty limited or somewhat simplistic affair. What a first glance at the component improving tech tree will not show, however, is the sheer number of possible combinations that are available in ship creation, and just how much the design of ships is up to the player. Almost nothing is bounded by arbitrary limitations – like abstract “hulls” or weapons “slots.” Designing a ship in Distant Worlds actually FEELS like designing a real space ship – your only real limitations come from what is realistically needed on a ship, what your empire’s technology and infrastructure can support, and your own imagination!
Rather than having pre-determined “hulls” for different types of ships, Distant Worlds uses a general “ship role” and “size” system. You can design a ship of any role with any size, however, you can only build ships that are under the size allowed by your current construction yard technology. As this technology increases, so will the ship size your yards can support.
I am going to take you through the process of creating a ship. To do this I started up a new game and gave my race a medium level of technological advancement, so that I would have a bit more choice in tech for this AAR. The first thing I want to do is to check what size my construction yards can support, so that I can design a ship under that size. With a quick press of a hyperlink from the tech screen, I can see the details of my construction yard tech.

My construction yards can build ships up to size 330 and bases up to 990. This is a pretty middle of the road size, and will allow the creation of a decently formidable warship.
I then bring up the Ship Design tool. Note that ship design can be automated (the default is automated) and the computer will design your ships for you. When I opened the tool, a dialog box (not pictured) popped up to ask me if I wanted to keep this option automated or turn automation off. I chose to keep ship design automated, and the game will let me design the one ship and still continue to automatically design new ships as I get new technology, this is indispensible, particularly when you are just learning the game!

Here is a look at some of the different ship pictures allowed for the design. There are quite a few and they are really pretty cool, and with me only having the beta there might even be some I haven’t seen in the full release. If you get tired of the ones provided, or just want to spruce up or personalize your game, adding ship graphics is extremely easy – especially if you download and follow the customization guide! Anyway, I’ll pick one of these sleek blue ones. It would look different than the default designs that I started with, but I think it fits the sleek and aquatic Ackdarians a little better!
