Interesting feedback. I understand what you are saying about the ship types, but I don't know that it would make things less restrictive that way. Would a way to measure the size of the ships help with the issue you are having?

Hull size set by set by role is a really cool idea. It always seemed in GC3 Hull size was only related to Hit Points and scale in the creator/ battle viewer. When you unlock larger hulls through techs it would be more exciting to unlock specific battle roles instead of just ‘cool my ships are bigger’

There’s chatter in another thread about how battle roles should influence combat. This could work really well in conjunction.  This would be a big change from 3. 

Also big agreement that hull sizes in the workshop could get frustrating. You love a ship design but it doesn’t fit into the hull size you want in your game. 

I've thought about this quite a bit too. It's overly complicated and headache inducing.

My solution is:

The ship "designer" does away completely with "size" categories being involved in anyway in the design of the ship's look. You simply design a ship shape putting your pieces together (not components that make it functional).

During play you assign from your library of designed ships to whatever type of ship is required: probe, colony, bb, dd, carrier, etc., Whatever you have researched.

The ship gets scaled automatically, and you modify this overall if you want. But it adds a certain number of hardpoints, etc. to which you then need to assign your actual functional components- the number and type of hardpoints is decided by your current technologies, the ship type/size, etc.

Now, obviously you could have designed a detailed Battlestar Galactica type ship and assign it as a probe and it'll look silly, but that's on you and easily avoidable. It's just appearances- it still only got (making this up) three hardpoints: engines, sensors, power source. Or whatever.

This would simplify the entire scale thing and weirdness associated with the invisible parts and invisible ship size cube starter thingy. The ship designer as is is really crap and feels like it is held together by string and gum.

Thanks for the tips!  It seems like a lot of hoops to jump through to make your fleet scale look totally BA. I also do not own 4 yet (still putting away for the right laptop). 

Definately.

I'm not sure how it was in GalCiv I but certainly after GalCiv II & III and now IV the whole ship/fleet system really needs an innovative rethink as currently it seems to be case of "well that how it's always been done so we will keep doing it."

The Civilization Series and Stellaris to a certain extent also fall into this trap. Where the 'Standard' in these sort of 4x games was set decades ago and has remained fairly stagnant. This can apply to all mechanics from diplomacy to economy too.