Ship Design For Dummies

[PaulMClem]

Ok, so I want to get into designing my own ships. Even if the AI does a decent job (which I assume it does) at generating the best combination of parts, I'd still like to give it a go myself. As such I have some entry level questions.

Spoiler: Ship Designer Screenshot

First questions (more will almost certainly follow) which all relate to the screenshot:

Top Section

Are the three guns shown in the three "S" boxes below "Interceptor" the three guns you can see on the roof of the Corvette? If so what are the things on the front...they look like some sort of weapon too.

Right Hand Section

These are presumably what the core ship is made up of i.e. Warp Driver, On-board computer, Ion Thrusters, Radar?

Bottom Section

In the six boxes at the bottom is the only rule that the letters need to match i.e. you can only put Small/Medium/Large/Auxiliary into the corresponding slots? If you want 5 Fusion Reactors in all 5 M/S slots you are free to do so etc?

As an side is this how the designer screen will always look i.e. with the three top/right/bottom sections?

Any general thoughts on ship design will as always be lapped up.

Cheers,

PaulC.

 

[FonVegen]

Top section: The three guns are the top guns, yes. There are no other weapons, that is just part of the model.

Right hand section: Yes, and you can only change the tier of those, not add two thruster components or anything.

Bottom section: Do whatever you want, yes. Add five reactors, add shields, you just need to know that the "Power" stat needs to be at at least 0 so that you can save the design.

The design screen will always look like this, but with bigger ships, you have more sections that can be freely interchanged. Just click on the name of the model (in the screenshot "Interceptor") to see which ones are available.

Other tips: Don't use missiles for now... and, of course, make sure you research better weapons/reactors/shields/armour. There are also several threads on optimal cruiser/battleship designs, if you really want to minmax your fleet in the mid- to lategame, but doing so is not really necessary against AI opponents.

 

[Kayden_II]

Are the three guns shown in the three "S" boxes below "Interceptor" the three guns you can see on the roof of the Corvette?

Yes ...

If so what are the things on the front...they look like some sort of weapon too.

No ... Pure Graphics ...

These are presumably what the core ship is made up of i.e. Warp Driver, On-board computer, Ion Thrusters, Radar?

Yes ...

In the six boxes at the bottom is the only rule that the letters need to match i.e. you can only put Small/Medium/Large/Auxiliary into the corresponding slots?

Yes, but the real Rule is the One, that your Ship has to have at Least +/- 0 Power, so that You have the Ability to save your Ship-Creation in the Ship-Designer, so that You can build It ...
Reactors create Power, whereas nearly all other Stuff, Exception: Armour, consume Power ...

If you want 5 Fusion Reactors in all 5 M/S slots you are free to do so etc?

Yes ...

As an side is this how the designer screen will always look i.e. with the three top/right/bottom sections?

The right One - Yes ...
The top and bottom One rather No since Ships are made by "Sections" - A Corvette has 1 Section, a Destroyer -2 Ones and a Cruiser/Battleship -3 Ones.

 

[Anaraxes]

In the six boxes at the bottom is the only rule that the letters need to match i.e. you can only put Small/Medium/Large/Auxiliary into the corresponding slots? If you want 5 Fusion Reactors in all 5 M/S slots you are free to do so etc?

Yes. But notice that power reactors and shields of different sizes have different costs and benefits. A "small" is usually half of a "medium", which is usually half of a "large". So which slots you use for which items does matter to the ship stats. It's also a useful detail to pay attention to if you want to meet the power >=0 goal, but not go too much over (perhaps trading a reactor down a slot size, and upgrading something else to its place, for instance).

When it comes to guns, notice that the smaller guns often have different tracking, accuracy, and range values than the larger ones. There are reasons to use hull sections with more small boxes to fight little ships, but fewer, bigger boxes to attack the main line of battle.

 

[Kourgath223]

The top and bottom One rather No since Ships are made by "Sections" - A Corvette has 1 Section, a Destroyer -2 Ones, a Cruiser -3 Ones and a Battleship -4 Ones.

If I recall correctly Battleships are only 3 sections in a vanilla (un-modded) game.

 

[Slynx]

when you unlock certain tech (torpedoes, point defense and etc) it'll also unlock new sections for your ships.
but...you said you wanted to have fun with ships designer..so i guess i will not give you tips(except avoid missiles and armor on smaller ships). trial and error brings more enjoyment

 

[AndragonLea]

The rule of thumb so far has generally been to make your ships as effective as possible in the weapons category, balance out the energy and use left over bottom slots for defensive purposes.

General advice for weapons: point defense slots fight strike craft and missiles, small slots are good against corvettes and destroyers, medium slots work well against destroyers and cruisers and large slots work good against battleships and cruisers.
This is just in general - the reason it works out that way is because bigger slots have higher range and base DPS as well as (mostly) better modifiers, but they have a worse tracking value, which means they are more heavily affected by evasion which is primarily used as mitigation for corvettes and cruisers.

You generally want your fleet to be balanced to be able to take on all comers and as such have a good mix of hulls with small, medium and large slots. Take away all the small slots and you will be vulnerable to big swarms of highly nimble corvettes - take away the large slots and you'll be ground down by the heavily shielded and armored capital ships.

You will also have a good mix of weapons good against shields and armor so that an enemy can't stack armor and mitigate all your damage or soak it all up in rapidly recharging shields.

Lastly you will want to have a screen of ships that have some sort of point defense to take out bombers - if you do, bombers and hangar slots become useless as the bombers all get killed and won't bother you again for that fight, if you do not, bombers can rip your bigger ships to shreds.

 

[Kayden_II]

If I recall correctly Battleships are only 3 sections in a vanilla (un-modded) game.

Ah Yes - Thanks.

 

[PaulMClem]

Thanks as always for the input folks. Much appreciated.