The lack of customization is very bothersome however it does not need to end that way. The changes i'm about to suggest wouldn't be able to be added in a month and a half, but they should be more than possible to do after release, even as a reasonable priced DLC or ingame shop. (Most cosmetics should be unlocked via playing with only a few costing anything.)

I will start this by saying balance is far more important right now than customization. If the game has good balance with no cheese strats (tyranid assault craft spam, ork mega-roks, and necron star-pulse BS just to name a few) then customization is the secondary focus.

Remember how in the old game you could get favours for each ship? Since you can level up your faction fleet anyway there is a new system of favours that could work very well. Say you like playing as the Nurgle DeathGuard; as it stands your ships start out all warped and covered in tenactles.

A alternative way to do this would be that your ships start off looking like "normal" or slightly warped Chaos ships. As you play and level up with your fleet more and more ships in your fleet slowly change until they are fully covered in muck and tenactles. Same thing with Khorne where more skulls, brass, and daemonic icons are put on the ship.

I have a few ideas for other factions as well, like Imperial Navy ships having differnet colored engines, bigger auger arrays etc. Maybe you can put a bunch of Aeldari runes on your corsair fleet. You can have a bigga rammin gob on your ork vessel (it would be cosmetic and have no effect on gameplay)

Another major customization increase would be putting preset words and decals on your ships. If you have ever played Warthunder it would be a somewhat similar to that. In game a Retribution class has the two headed Aquila on top, maybe you can replace that with a statue of the Emperor, or a primarch, or whatever.

This is just the start. I mean there is all sorts of options we can go with each race and subfaction. What do you guys think?

Shoutout to valiran9 for making this post in another thread that seems to be what i'm trying to say.

@valiran9 said in Faction aesthetics and customization:

An example of what I was talking about when I was referring to customizing Imperial ships can be found in some of the concept art done for the Anargo Sector Project, shown here:

Now obviously, for some modules like the midship variants, Luxury-pattern components, Surveyor-pattern prow, and Sprint-pattern engine, there would be definite mechanical differences. Nevertheless, I think the rest of the components easily illustrate how a ship could be differentiated from the rest of the group with a little bodywork.

Such in depth ship costumization will never happen. For multiple reasons.

The stupid amount of hours to create and design these different parts. For 12 factions. We will be looking at another year or 2 for a feature that will be redundant because you cant really enjoy this feature to begin with when you are playing skirmish and it will just hog up your GPU.

GW are huge sticklers when it comes to new designs and changes to their models and there is little freedom that GW will give.

In a strategy game focused on larger scale battles this feature is just going to be lost.
Perhaps the Flag ship could get more aesthetical options or skins. But being able to costumize each individual ship? Is just not feasable and will not do much for the game.
Resources that could be spent elsewhere.

@canned_f3tus It is feasible. It's simply do they want to give any time and man hours towards doing it is the question.

GW has also given them quite a bit of artistic freedom already.

i highly doubt you will ever get to choose prow type as it determines torpedo spread

other parts i doubt because of collision
while marines are pretty trash in the last beta, a fun thing to do is hook lighter ships into the little corner of the battlebarge rear section
for most ships (not cairns cut out section ) their shape is actually their collision box
that horizontal pattern engine would make me want to hook into it and pull them around only to be dissapointed because its not real
would take away some of the beauty of the game

Love that concept art btw, thank you for posting!
Ship parts CAN be mixed and matched (to a degree) via the json, so I would bet the devs could add the system. Would just take some artist time.
Different sections are assigned to different 'body locations' and are given co-ordinates relative to the ship base where they are to be located on the model.

As far as color schemes go, interestingly enough any factions color scheme can be applied to any ship (looks pretty dope!), so I could see unique color schemes being something that could be unlocked (or simply using ones from other factions).

Nice idea, will never happen. Simply because Games Workshop does not allow major changes to the look of their models when they are used in video games. Just look at the Total War: Warhammer games. Basically every model in the game has its counterpart in a real world plastic model.

Who knows, maybe they will add decals and additional paint schemes or even a fleet painter similar to Dawn of War 1. But that's about it. As CANNED_F3TUS already wrote, probably something aesthetical for the flagship to distinguish it not only via UI, but also graphical.

@ashardalon said in One good way to fix "muh doods" and to add life into this game.:

i highly doubt you will ever get to choose prow type as it determines torpedo spread

other parts i doubt because of collision
while marines are pretty trash in the last beta, a fun thing to do is hook lighter ships into the little corner of the battlebarge rear section
for most ships (not cairns cut out section ) their shape is actually their collision box
that horizontal pattern engine would make me want to hook into it and pull them around only to be dissapointed because its not real
would take away some of the beauty of the game

1. So then divorce the torpedo profile from the aesthetic look of the prow?
2. Really shouldn't matter, they're all about the same width, and the ship length is predetermined.
3. To each their own - personally I'd consider having some sort of customization back far more beautiful than the current locked system.

The devs system for assigning body and weapon parts is fairly straightforward,
(Test mod)
And as you can see the Torpedo launcher is considered a separate entity to the prow (hence the gaps where the torps go).
From my tinkerings, it's 100% possible, but entirely up to the devs if they would consider spending time on it.

As far as collision box goes, it's pretty off for a lot of ships and isn't all that accurate to the model (thus I doubt it'd be a concern).

My suggestions would be:
-Either a slightly visualy customisable option as suggested here (via an unlock system)
-And/or unlock more Colour Schemes (like you unlock Race Portraits).

I have tested both, so they are possible.

@ibram_gaunt said in One good way to fix "muh doods" and to add life into this game.:

@canned_f3tus It is feasible. It's simply do they want to give any time and man hours towards doing it is the question.

GW has also given them quite a bit of artistic freedom already.

The game is to large scale to make it feasable.
Controlling so many cruisers you will never have the time to enjoy these features. That is why no RTS ever has been released with a unit costumizer based around aesthetics. We hot skins. But that is as far as it will ever go.

@dire_venom

How'd you get the game to boot modded? When I tried, the stupid EasyAntiCheat threw a hissyfit if anything was out of place.

Best not to do anything mod related till the devs make it available, especially with EAC.
I just know a thing or too how the engine works.

Anything MP certiantly won't be made moddable by them, for the single player campaigns could be different however.