how to build a spaceship

[calabacina]

Hi all, im new to the game, I had finished my base and I will try to build my first spaceship!
any suggestion?

[casualsailor]

Creative or Survival?

[Delle(DK)]

I recommend that you build a building frame like this

Create a cross on the ground that is 5 in every direction... In the center buil up with 5 blocks.
On top of this place your cockpit and start adding things to your new small ship.
Once you are finished and filled your ship with uran so it can "hover" by it self ( if it do not hover try to press z )... when it hoever then exit the ship cockpit by pressin F and then cut away your X frame.

In general you ship need
1 cockpit
1 reactor
4 atmospheric small engines that you attack in every direction..
forward, rear, up, down so you ship can go in every direction.
1 gyro.
1 landing leg ( optional, you can just land on the belly if you like ).

This will give you a very basic transport ship.

If you play survival then choose the lander, and before you land fly arround the terrain and in a low height above the DARK spots on the ground see if there are materials in the ground.
you maybe have to press TAB and H to see the white icons on the screen.
Press K when you find something and mark the possition wiht yoru GPS and give it a name example ::: Iron - magnesium that way you can always find the material again at a later time... once you find several locations then try to put your base somewhere near Iron-silicon this is the most basic things to build things for a base. ;-)

[calabacina]

it's for survival, thanks! ^^

[calabacina]

I'll want to fly from earth to moon... do I need every type of thrusters?

[amyy]

atmospheric thrusters only work in atmosphere, ion only works in space
hydrogen needs a hydrogen tank but it works everywhere

[The Big Brzezinski]

I always start with the business part of the ship first. This might mean a cargo bay, drill head, welder/grinder array, whatever the job needs. Then I'll add in power, life support, avionics, electronics and such. I'll surround all that whatever armor is appropriate, anything from a simple cage for mining to armor sections for a combat ship. Finally, I'll add in engines and armor those up too.

This is a gross oversimplification, of course. Generally though, form follows function for me.

[Ed the Head]

This will help with building a small mining ship. I'm a new player myself, and found it helpful.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=824690653

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by Calabacina:

I'll want to fly from earth to moon... do I need every type of thrusters?

If you want to operate on the moon, I recommend first building a hydrogen ship to mine some platinum from asteroids and build ion thrusters. My own aerospace freighters use hydrogen thrusters for atmospheric flight and ion thrusters for vacuums.

I haven't had much luck combining atmospheric thrusters with ion thrusters. The ship always winds up consisting more than half of thrusters.

[Tom7i]

I'll try to give you a couple, based on my attempts at reaching space in survival :) Edit: got ninja'd in the time it took me to write this :D

Getting from a planet's surface to space requires a pretty specific thruster setup, so it might be good to first build a hybrid "transition" ship which functions both in the athmosphere as well as in near-planet space.
The most efficient way to get enough thrust to reach space are hydrogen thrusters (fueled by ice, converted with oxygen generators), especially a large one for the main thruster pushing the ship up.
You might want to add some athmospheric thrusters on it as well to help with short-distance repositioning and to save some hydrogen, but they will stop working above 3 - 4k meters, which is where the hydrogen thrusters come in.

Another important thing is if you want to build a space station or a long-distance space ship after reaching space; if yes, you should probably incorporate a cargo container (at least a small one) on it to ferry building materials from the planet to space and back.

Here's my rocket for instance; it has atmo and hydro thrusters (the large one is on the bottom), a large hydrogen tank, a large cargo container and a cockpit:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=770682568
I didn't publish it's blueprints, but hopefully you'll get the general idea.

When you reach space, you might consider building another ship for traveling over longer distances through space. That's becouse in space another type of thruster - the Ion thruster - is the most efficient while it's completely useless in a planet's athmosphere. Furthermore, since the distances of travel between planets are very long, a space-faring ship should definitely be equipped with at least one jump drive; those also don't function on or in the vicinity of planets, so building one on the transition ship would be a waste of material - unless you want to build an all-in-one ship, capable of landing on planets and flying through space.

In such a case your ship should combine all three types of thrusters - atmo, hydro & ion, but you'll need to take special attention to the ship's weigt and how many atmospheric & hydrogen thrusters are needed to land the ship safely on the planet.

Here is a good tool to calculate the needed thrust & number of engines:
http://www.ratuska.fi/se/thruster.php

Other than that, i've just recently found out (when testing my jump-capable drill ship) that jumping with the drive sometimes brakes pistons, but if you turn them off before jumping, they usually stay intact; so if you have any moving parts on a ship with a jump drive, turn them off before jumping just to be safe.

Hope this helped, good luck!

[calabacina]

thanks to all I have build ma first spaceship:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=839698752

:D

[calabacina]

mmmm, another naab question: what if I build an upward thruster (i mean pointing down) at the same level of the terrain? it need space or it work normally?

[Tom7i]

Haven't tried it yet, but it should work normally even right on the ground.

[calabacina]

oki, thanks ;)

[Darkaiser]

Originally posted by SANPYPR:

atmospheric thrusters only work in atmosphere, ion only works in space
hydrogen needs a hydrogen tank but it works everywhere

Not true. Ion thrusters work in atmosphere but are far less efficient (yiu need tons of them) to lift against gravity.

The usual method is to build a ship with hydrogen thrusters (which have tremendous power, are simple to build but burn through their Hydrogen fuel FAST) to get into orbit but put just enough Ion thrusters on it to manuver in space.

[Darkaiser]

Originally posted by Calabacina:

mmmm, another naab question: what if I build an upward thruster (i mean pointing down) at the same level of the terrain? it need space or it work normally?

You might want to give yourself a block of space underneath. Some thrusters explode if their output is blocked. Save the game before firing, as always