Starter vessel

[Dominus Gary]

What would be good for a cheap but reliable vehicle for starting the campaign?

[FourGreenFields]

Cheap or reliable. You don't get both.

I usually go with some torpedo/missile boat (no recoil, low volume needed for the missiles), or a slightly larger boat with a howitzer.

[Carolus Magnus]

If you wait untill the deepwater guard declares war on you first and harvest all the time throughout, you can count on getting about (my start build relies on this ;) ) +- 55000 resources. But I exhange the starting fortress for a more pragmatical build of my own.

I prefer a broadsiding sabot/torpedo/cruise missile hovertank. Many small DWG enemies are unshielded. The Sabot will take care of them.
The torpedoes can do massive damage to larger builds, and the paddlegun family is especially susceptible to them.

The cruise missiles should have either 3-4 frag or 4-5 EMP warheads. I ussualy go with EMP.

That gives it a good all round arnament to deal with most small-expert threats the DWG can throw at you.

My Design has 6 cruise misseles, and 6 torpedoes, all 8 blocks long, two 30 mm sabot gatling turrets of small size, and a light particle EMP cannon.

Armour is metal all througout, with heavy armour around the AI, ammo and vital engine components.

Being a hovecraft, torpedoes can touch it. Flares and shielding are a must. Using Advanced control blocks and a naval AI in combo with unstable pitch/altitude PID's will ensure that CRAM hits will be very. very rare. Especially if you combine this with maintaining a certain range. I also use this with ACB's that continuously modify the air speed and thrust output of the craft.

[Dominus Gary]

do you need to add any extra resource extractors?

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Ninjacobra534:

do you need to add any extra resource extractors?

The default amount of resource mines doesn't harvest at the speed the zone regenerates at - one or two (not sure which) more will increase your mat/s, but anything beyond that will not (or only for a very short while) while wasting fuel (-> wasting material).

On a side note, I just built a (small) starter vessel (mostly for fun, but also to help a type of swarm craft I use). 9.3k material, IR-flares, anti-torp capabilities, some torps and guns of itself, ~20m/s (have only tested with the avatar skills, does about 22-23m/s for me). Also looks good, will probably upload tomorrow.

[Carolus Magnus]

If you want further help, I could upload my starting vehicle too. I don't know what other advice to give really.

If you build a more expensive craft, then you sure aren't going to want to lose it until you take over the first resource zone and destroy the gantry to the north of it. Any starter design that takes those few tiles and the gantry fleet out while staying below 59k cost is a good enough one for me.
So make sure to experiment with defenses and test it against some enemies in the designer.

If it can survive the marauder, Kalmar, Corsair, Swordfish, with only a few percents of damage, then it should be good. You won't meet many more fearsome things before the start phase is over.

This might not be "optimised" advice, but it gets me rolling over the DWG every time I start a new campaign.

[luxon001]

A starter vehicle should be able to ferry some resource, have an efficent engine (or just RTG+battery) and fend off attackers before they get in range...

That way you get to keep all resource you didnt use and wont spend any on repairs...

I have a 10k ship that does that (if you are interested)

[Doombringer]

You can build a cheaping mining rig for ~1.5-2k
(7mining laser, min size steam turbine, electric engine with 21 batteries, blueprint spawner, lots of wood triangles and material storage boxes & maybe a strategic antenna)
If you scrap the starting fort you end up with ~24k material.
So your starter boat can be over 20k...

Starter resource zone requires 7 mining lasers to gather mterials at max (sustainable) rate.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Doombringer:

You can build a cheaping mining rig for ~1.5-2k
(7mining laser, min size steam turbine, electric engine with 21 batteries, blueprint spawner, lots of wood triangles and material storage boxes & maybe a strategic antenna)
If you scrap the starting fort you end up with ~24k material.
So your starter boat can be over 20k...

Your starting boat can definitly be slightly bigger, just need to wait until you have a little more materials.

Also, that mining rig is a tad too minimal for my taste. The steam engine saves you a refinery, but you're wasting material that way. A small fuel engine + efficient refinery is probably the better choice on the long run (allthough you can allways retrofit the design once you have some more materials, and use your minimal version as a stop-gap to get a little more mats for your first boat).

[Doombringer]

A minimal steam setup to run 7 mining lasers takes 1 material per 88 mined, but only costs 39 to build... (+450 for batteries+electric engine)
Can replace with RTGs or fuel later.

Just as a note: a minimal steam engine (small control, small boiler, pipe, compact turbine, small generator) produces 1550 electric charge per material.
RTGs cost 15 material per electric charge/sec.
so after 23250 seconds (~6.5 hours) RTGs are a better choice, but at the start of the game materials are a little tight, and 39 is much cheaper than 2250 for RTGs.

[mellow]

flying missle controller

[FourGreenFields]

And I uploaded my example of a starter boat:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=974753583

Also uploaded one of my slightly older designs (after minor modifications):
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=974768171

[Dominus Gary]

I built this 37k maerial hovercraft and put it on the workshop. Could you test it and provide feedback?
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=974915681

[FourGreenFields]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1045276851
Changes in the description.
Some notes:

• The cannon is not very effective. HE is not that good (unless exploding inside a hostile craft -> APHE - but it's not APHE without a penetration fuse), and the only thing the AP head does is add speed. Considerer using 2 frag warheads instead, or 2 HE, or one HE, one HEAT head (with low special on the HE warhead, because small HEATs don't do much).
  You need more ammo input feeders for the autoloaders. The belt-feds have a very long down time like this. I'd at least place one on the sides of each autoloader, so you have 3 per belt-fed.
  Keep in mind that a powerfull HE-shell could blow the belt-feds right off. Turrets are treated as seperate objects, so big explosions will ignore the craft armour, and damage the turret - if you have the room, place some armour on the actual turret too, even if it's inside the hull
  
• Ammo storage is very poorly armoured. Will easily blow, so make sure not to take hits. Also very close to the ammo clips on the turret, so there might be a chain reaction there (but haven't checked if it really is chain reacting).
  
• Has enough power to fly straight at full thruster output now, but not enough to turn while doing so. May want to add a tad more power.
  
• Still rests at a pitch-down position, causing it to move forward. Might be possible to fix this with ACBs or better AI.

Also, speed in game is not kph (with, btw, is kilogram-force * hour, and not km/h, but that's just me being a unit-nazi ), but m/s.

[An Ning]

I usually start with this:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=861733436

build it, then scrap the main fort, then build this (and scrap the other starter fort when done):
(I keep forgetting to add in the wireless controller for the satellite).. gives basically everything you need to take on DWG early on: a spy sat, a fighter, and a sub
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=914074228

[Dominus Gary]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1045276851
Changes in the description.
Some notes:

• The cannon is not very effective. HE is not that good (unless exploding inside a hostile craft -> APHE - but it's not APHE without a penetration fuse), and the only thing the AP head does is add speed. Considerer using 2 frag warheads instead, or 2 HE, or one HE, one HEAT head (with low special on the HE warhead, because small HEATs don't do much).
  You need more ammo input feeders for the autoloaders. The belt-feds have a very long down time like this. I'd at least place one on the sides of each autoloader, so you have 3 per belt-fed.
  Keep in mind that a powerfull HE-shell could blow the belt-feds right off. Turrets are treated as seperate objects, so big explosions will ignore the craft armour, and damage the turret - if you have the room, place some armour on the actual turret too, even if it's inside the hull
  
• Ammo storage is very poorly armoured. Will easily blow, so make sure not to take hits. Also very close to the ammo clips on the turret, so there might be a chain reaction there (but haven't checked if it really is chain reacting).
  
• Has enough power to fly straight at full thruster output now, but not enough to turn while doing so. May want to add a tad more power.
  
• Still rests at a pitch-down position, causing it to move forward. Might be possible to fix this with ACBs or better AI.

Also, speed in game is not kph (with, btw, is kilogram-force * hour, and not km/h, but that's just me being a unit-nazi ), but m/s.

I am aware of the long down-time on the cannon, but not of the penetration fuse being required. The autocannon on my still-in-development battleship, the Broadsword, does use APHE though, so I will go back and use that ammo for the Dagger. The long down-time though, doesnt bother me because the Dagger is intended for a blitzkrieg-type strategy. It can wreck 10 vanguard retrofits unscathed, but I have not done any testing against capital ships, because I am working on an anti-capital ship called the Gladius.