[Suggestion] Modular Utility Compartment

[Chris D]

I love the new utility module options, such as Flag Bridge, Salvage Bay, Etc. The problem I have with them is that I am now going hog wild making minor variants of all my ship classs, and then upgrading each of those variants. A fleet needs one ship with a flag bridge, one ship needs a platform kit, 5 salvage bays, some have marines, or an extra Laser engine, etc. Which leads to my suggestion...

Ability to research a "Modular Utility Compartment" (MUC) and build it aboard your ships. Each MUC is a slot into which different prebuilt Utility Modules that all have the same size and shape can be installed.

When a ship with one or more MUC is built or refit, one new line for each of MUC appears on the build screen, showing the icons for the modules that you can put in that compartment. So you could for example click the flag bridge and then click a spaceworks to build it in, then click the Fusion Platform kit and click another build order, then click the salvage bay and click 5 more build orders.

The point is that you don't need a bunch of different ship classes for these options, you just need one or two more flexible slots within the base ship class.
After the ship is constructed, every time the ships class is listed, it will also show the icon for its installed options, so in the heat of battle you can tell if your it is our flagship or a salvage ship that is taking fire, etc.

My idea is that each MUC would have some mass and build Materials, and/or each module you install might a small percentage more materials than a standard built in component. So building components permanently into a ship class is cheaper and weights less, but this gives flexibility to more easily just maintain a single "base" class while allowing some flexibility in the options to put in it.

Not all utility modules need be available as a MUC Module. It does not make sense that armored struts would be. And I don't see a reason for things like heat sinks to be made as removable modules ether. But some things that are limited in the number that you want in a fleet such as flag bridge, salvage bay, platform kits, Marines, Plus a few things such as Laser engines that could go into slots that would otherwise be empty, etc. make perfect sense to be modular and chosen at build / refit time.

I hope you like this idea. Thanks.

[johnnylump]

Thanks for the suggestion. (We do read these)