How do YOU start building YOUR large ships?

[LethalOwl]

Just to make something clear; I've over 500 hours in this game and I'm not interested in getting a lesson in how to build a basic spaceship. That's not what I asked for.

I'm curious as to how you guys begin designing your bigger ships, on the path to get the end result. Edit; Mostly refering to Creative Mode.

Do you start on one compartment and finish it before you move on to the next?
Do you start with making the entire hull and then fill in the interior?
Do you build the entire interior and then plate it up afterwards?
Do you build a skeleton framework and then place things accordingly within?

There's probably several more questions to ask, but this is the basic of it - How do you go on about starting, continuing and finishing your ships? The longer your replies are, the better.

Edit; Here's a sample list of things I'm hoping to include in an upcoming build.

A control bridge, hangars for various vehicles - Medium and small, medical bays, cargo hold, refining and assembly yard, weapon / defense systems, communication components, engine control rooms, crew quarters and other recreation areas / crew facilities, maintenance shafts, decently understandable corridors and directions, full conveyor support for the entire ship, airlocks, "life support systems", properly plated hull overall and cheese - Most of all cheese.

This is a multi-purpose capital ship.

^ That's my stage one of planning a new ship. All of my ships are mod-free, so the areas that doesn't have any blocks suited for their purpose are left empty - Crew quarters and facilities, for instance. But they are present, in case of future updates.

Edit2; Having read so far, maybe you also want to look through the dozens of replies of great ideas that you can use yourself in future builds! A lot of people have spent a lot of time and effort to write and post screenshots of their ways of building, so it's certainly worth a watch/read.

[Okim]

I build it layer by layer starting from the very center of the ship. I manually place the blocks according to the scetch and then weld them with the welder ship. Then move to the second layer and etc. until the ship is ready. Painting is done during the initial block placing.

I draw the ships before that layer by layer either in excel or on any paper with a grid. This way a have a true blueprint block by block for me to build my ship.

And i always start building them as stations to prevend floating,

[LethalOwl]

So you design your ship by drawing it beforehand - That's handy. Do you draw it from every angle?

[VanGoghComplex]

My ships are usually built with a dedicated function in mind, so I place in all the major systems first. I don't weld in this phase unless it's necessary to prevent burying something. After I've placed all the functional blocks, I weld it up to full and take it for a test run. If it fulfills the intended purpose, I spend the next couple of hours lovingly placing every single armor block to try and make it have good lines.

[SievertChaser]

I'll admit that my extensive experience of building ships I scrap in the end is that I build an armoured citadel that I fill with crucial machinery, and then build up the cosmetic light armour plating and maneuver thrusters.

Most of my warships are built around Titan Thrusters, which set up the basic lines of the citadel pretty easily.

[LethalOwl]

Added a long edit for one of my own ways of building ships, to add to the list.

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by LethalOwl:

Added a long edit for one of my own ways of building ships, to add to the list.

And it's bad. Multi-purpose capital ships sucked IRL and they suck in-game. Hangars degrade their direct combat ability.

[Loues.S.Cat]

Building methods vary depending on whether you are in survival or creative.
I prefer to build from the back/bottom forward/up. Once I get the main thrusters in I have an idea of how tall and wide (or deep and wide for vertical ships) the ship should be, then I can fit things roughly within that adjusting it in the third dimension as I need to!
Haven't built any huge ships recently... The last one I built was only about twice as big as the little yellow ship in each dimension. I did follow from the pattern of building from the back end forward though. I wanted a slope to the sides and a 6 sided basic shape to the ship and I knew I wanted to use large engines and I didn't want to rely on uranium and I fancied a slightly asymmetrical form ;)
So I got the tail end down.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=390667718
That determined scale, and then the basic concept of the ship took over. I armoured over the thrusters, then went to the power issue, putting in a pair of small reactors. I decided to have an engineering section in the back which included the refinery, arc furnace and 2 assemblers, gravity generator (hidden under the floor). I also fitted in the programmable blocks. because of the slipped sides I had room for 2 access passages down the sides as well, one of those became an airlock and I added all my cargo storage there on the back of the assembler/arc furnace line which filled out the same space as the refinery on the other side perfectly. from there I added an elevated area overlooking engineering with a stair for access. that area got divided into 2, parts one becoming the medical bay while the other was the hallway connecting medical, engineering and the bridge.
It all just fell into place perfectly. I added armour and shaping the ship up as I saw fit, adapted the design where I needed to and stuck with the original concept without being rigidly attached to anything I had already laid out.

I'm happy with how things turned out. Especially the lack of symmetry just to annoy people that cant live without it. That's the ships best feature! ;)

[LethalOwl]

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

Originally posted by LethalOwl:

Added a long edit for one of my own ways of building ships, to add to the list.

And it's bad. Multi-purpose capital ships sucked IRL and they suck in-game. Hangars degrade their direct combat ability.

Well, it's not necessarily built to fight anyone - It has multiple functions, it's not designed for combat. It just have the option to, if required.

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by Loues.S.Cat:

I prefer to build from the back/bottom forward/up.

Works for warships too. Most of them will have the moderatelty expendable systems and weapons up front.

[LethalOwl]

Thanks for the long and detailed reply, Loues.

[Loues.S.Cat]

Originally posted by LethalOwl:

Thanks for the long and detailed reply, Loues.

I'm nothing if not verbose ;)

[LethalOwl]

Just got hold of your ship and gave it a glance - It's pretty darn impressive!

[Loues.S.Cat]

What mine?
Goodness only knows what revision is on the workshop now XD

[LethalOwl]

Your Prospector, yes - Full of technical gadgets 'n stuff I'm not all that confident in poking at. I'm kind of a symetry-addict myself, but this ship's neat.

[Loues.S.Cat]

Eigh. I build the ship to test out scripts. so it keeps getting expanded withenever anything new is added. Originaly it didn't have any LCDs or Laser antenna because those didn't exist, now I don't know what I would do without them. I certainly wouldnt be able to connect to my network of spy satelites ^.^