Gaging the Need

[Noble713]

Atrocities said:
A stardestroyer can carry fighters and troops and is the primary assualt vessel for the empire. In order to assure that a Star Destroyer has these capabilities they must be hard coded in.

I understand your approach and it is similar to my own feelings about ship design in Star Wars. However, the degree of flexibility required in ship design is dependent on the scope of ship classes you wish to include. For example, the Tector class (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tecto...Star_Destroyer), while seemingly built on the same hull as the Imperator/Imperial, appears to have no fighter or troop capacity. Likewise the Immobilizer 418 (aka Interdictor cruiser), which carries 24 fighters, is built on the same hull as the Vindicator class that carries 36 fighters (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vindi..._heavy_cruiser)

What I tried to do was find the right sizes for components and hulls so that ships could have exactly the same equipment they do in the cannon universe, but it wasn't forced. In the example of the X-Wing, I would add all of the components (cockpit, life support, astromech droid, shield gen, 2x proton torp launchers, 4x laser cannon, etc) and then reduce or increase the X-wing hull size accordingly. They also designed to move at very specific speeds with very specific # of engines. You could design an X-Wing hull with only 1 or 2 engines and a bunch of extra armor, but it would definitely be far slower than the "real" designs. You could also design all the ships and save them with the empire styles, and perhaps force the AI to not design new ships (is that possible?) and strongly encourage the players to use the existing designs.