Upgrading the site's ship catalog

[WatcherCCG]

The ship listing, as it is right now, is quite frankly a horribly inefficient mess. I know this sort of thing would be bottom priority for Schema, but I had to get the idea out of my head. We need more options, and more features.

1. Better Listing Options: Listings by author, by price, by block count/mass, etc. There are specific shipwrights who make guaranteed masterpieces, like the master of HeldTech and of course our darling slavedriver Mister Vec of Vecordean Fleetworks. At the moment, the HeldTech line is hogging the top page. There are other gems out there, made by less well-known shipwrights, but searching via ship rating keeps them hidden behind several pages of fan favorites. Searching for a ship by name, or being able to search for a particular shipwright by name, will make finding specific blueprints much easier. And being able to search for a cheap or small ship will seriously help out those thinking about their wallet or video card, respectively.
2. Mandatory Screenshot: This is a no-brainer. I see a lot of ship uploads with zero info and no screenshot. I and many others are often forced to tell the uploader "no screenshot, no download", because we refuse to download a ship that could potentially be a piece of crap or worse. So, simply add a place in the upload screen where you can link or even upload a screenshot of the ship as part of the process. Displaying Build Mode stats is optional but encouraged.
3. Classifications: This would be another option to add to the upload process. The uploader can specify if the ship is a fighter, corvette, frigate, salvager, carrier, gunboat, city-ship, and so on, or just put "Other". These ship classes would need to be decided by the community, obviously.
4. Tags: Identifier tags for the source material of the ship, or a brand indicating who the ship came from, such as HeldTech, Vecordean FleetWorks, or Bohemian Builders. (suggested by Ultraviolent Dugong)

Alright, there you have it. My two cents. Make of it what you will.

 

[XxDanclarke96xX]

Here have my two cents aswell, this site just needs some general maintanence... like that damn chat bar which pops up half way through typing something.

 

[Ultraviolet Dugong]

I would like some sort of tagging system for use in sorting. So, for example, if you wanted to find all the Star Trek themed builds, you could search for \"Star Trek\".

 

[WatcherCCG]

I\'ll add that in. Didn\'t think of that one.

 

[Sithrazer]

It could probably stand some upload controls, too. There are people that like to download a bunch of popular ships and spam re-upload them so that all the popular ships are at the top of the downloads list (sorted by date) with their name on it.

Whether or not they\'re doing it to try and claim credit for the ships, I don\'t know, but it seems kinda fishy and fills the list full of duplicates. Unfortunately, most of my ideas for how to reduce this would prolly do more harm than good.

 

[WatcherCCG]

Searching for a specific author would help here. Everyone knows Mister Vec and the other major shipwrights. If you searched for their names in the catalog, you\'d find the genuine article.

 

[z1967]

Just +1

 

[WatcherCCG]

Thanks. If anyone else has ideas, they\'re welcome to add them.

 

[I_is_Tinsy]

Maybe when uploading it, you could type in a faction name for it, if you\'re building it for a faction and then you cluld search by faction.

 

[WatcherCCG]

That would actually fall under Better Listing Options, but that\'s definitely a good idea.