Ship design tips

[VoidSpawn]

What the title says. What should you focus on when designing a ship? What type of ships should you create and what types should you avoid?

[Cessnatore]

I guess it depends on your playstyle i tend to make capships relatively small focusing on blitzkrieg like tactics (speed and power) and i try to make them as cheap as possible the more the merrier. on supports i focus on "synergy" trying to make ships designed for a purpose. i tend to make a dps laser a tank gauss and some arty missiles.

[TamaSaga]

Each ship has a designated role. When it comes to flagships, unless I have some specialized function in mind, I tend to build balanced ships for a simple reason...

Each weapon has a certain use when busting up the enemy...

Missiles cause excellent damage and are long ranged. But if you're testing a missile ship in a the designs sandbox, you'll notice that excellent damage means squat. I mean, when a missile hits, you'll see a line of hexes get nullified. And that's it. You'd need a direct hit through armor that drills a path all the way down to the enemy's bridge in order for a one-shot one kill.

But missiles take several seconds to reload. So that first shot is what counts. And...it's likely to bust a subsystem, if you hit the enemy with a super-damaging missile that enters one point and exits another, but the enemy ship is going to be up and kicking.

Railguns are great for peppering the enemy ships. However, where it falls short is the damage that it causes. The reason that this is a problem is because railguns are inaccurate. They impact everywhere on the enemy's hull. Everywhere! If I can't get it to hit the same spot repeatedly, it's no good. Because, with damage amplifiers, I can't get each railgun shot to penetrate more than 2-3 hexes deep. For a bridge buried deep within the ship, I'd have to wear away at everything before the juicy center is exposed.

Lasers are great for causing that pinpoint damage. But they take lots of power so you'll lose internal space for power supplies. And not only that, laser damage is heavily mitigated by armor. It's still possible to punch through armor with a laser though, you just need a big one. With a lance of the laser, you can damage a wide swath of the enemy's ship as long as the armor isn't there.

And that's why I try to make a balanced ship. I need the missiles to create an opening, the railguns to keep that opening open, and the laser to finish off the enemy.

Lasers are also decent at finishing off support ships, but it's better to have your support ships do that since your flagship's lasers are unlikely to finish off an enemy supportship in one burst. Wasting a shot that would have more effect on the enemy's flagship.



As for what you should build, the scout that you get at the beginning of the game should be modified so that it has more engine and less armor. Same with the tractor and the mining ship. The vanilla designs look good, but they don't perform very well.

That reminds me, the vanilla battleships and carriers should also be equipped with more armor. But try to keep your speed above 4 u/s. Anything slower and you'll go nuts over how slow your ship is moving. Especially for interception missions.

[FourGreenFields]

I usually consider anything having less than about 10 acceleration to be too slow, and anything slower than 5 a much more mobile defensive station.

Most of my designs are fast ships, with little armor, and pretty much only front armor. I try to add shields asap to keep the occasional hit on the rear from doing damage.

Mostly rails for bigger ships, and lasers for scout-like ships (however, that is not because they are better for smaller ships, but because scout-like ships are meant to operate in enemy territory harrassing stations and the trade network, which means they can't replenish their supplies as fast).
Sometimes I also use torps to kill supports.

The high speed enables my ships to reach the combat zone fast, and maneuver around too (flanking!).
Usually I have some ships (cruisers, battleships) to keep them busy and tank the enemy's fire, while even lighter ships (destroyers, motorboats) flank.
If the enemy runs, he is dead. The AI just doesn't build any ships which are fast enough to escape. And to a worn down, fleeing size 750 Oko AI ship with worn down supports, even a ship below size 200 is a serious threat.

I don't usually use supports though. I prob should, but I just don't like the idea.
(Btw: Can a flagship with construction bay construct supports?)

EDIT: High speed also makes weapon range matter less (payload amplifiers!), and allows for strafing runs when having to fight 1 vs 1 (hyperdense lasers, and rocket pods are good for that)

[TamaSaga]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

I don't usually use supports though. I prob should, but I just don't like the idea.
(Btw: Can a flagship with construction bay construct supports?)

I saw a design in community with construction bays. I believe the advertising tagline was that it could build reinforcements deep in enemy territory.

The ship was 32k in size though. I'm guessing tiny capital ships with construction bays won't build supports fast enough for it to be useful.

If I'm serious about bringing down an enemy capital ship, I rush to size 16+ supports. That way, I can use a size 200 capital ship and still bring down size 500 enemy flagships. The trick is to bring in supports that are bigger than the enemy's. That way, their supports can't kill yours, and your supports actually hurt the enemy flagship when they pepper it with ammunition.

[MiKye200]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

I usually consider anything having less than about 10 acceleration to be too slow, and anything slower than 5 a much more mobile defensive station.

Most of my designs are fast ships, with little armor, and pretty much only front armor. I try to add shields asap to keep the occasional hit on the rear from doing damage.

Mostly rails for bigger ships, and lasers for scout-like ships (however, that is not because they are better for smaller ships, but because scout-like ships are meant to operate in enemy territory harrassing stations and the trade network, which means they can't replenish their supplies as fast).
Sometimes I also use torps to kill supports.

The high speed enables my ships to reach the combat zone fast, and maneuver around too (flanking!).
Usually I have some ships (cruisers, battleships) to keep them busy and tank the enemy's fire, while even lighter ships (destroyers, motorboats) flank.
If the enemy runs, he is dead. The AI just doesn't build any ships which are fast enough to escape. And to a worn down, fleeing size 750 Oko AI ship with worn down supports, even a ship below size 200 is a serious threat.

I don't usually use supports though. I prob should, but I just don't like the idea.
(Btw: Can a flagship with construction bay construct supports?)

EDIT: High speed also makes weapon range matter less (payload amplifiers!), and allows for strafing runs when having to fight 1 vs 1 (hyperdense lasers, and rocket pods are good for that)

I used to subscribe to the theory that high speed equals better design.
High speed CAN be used to outmanoeuvre slower fleets(although generally even a much slower fleet can do a reasonable job of facing a flanking enemy).

The trouble is that using lightly armored high speed fleets is extrememely micromanagement-intensive, and wastes a LOT of time.
This being a real-time game, there are so many other things that need to be done: planning future colonies, satisfying colony resource requirements, scouting, research, building on colonies, building new ships, modifying ship designs as research discovers new technology, scanning the map for threats or new resource asteroids, diplomacy and checking for useful cards, etc. etc. etc.

I found that if I used higher speed fleets and micromanaged battles, time passed very quickly and very little else got done.
Micromanaging a fast fleet to victory against a more powerful enemy fleet can take twenty minutes!
One also needs to keep a constant eye on one's weaker, faster fleets else they get blown up by stronger fleets when one is distracted elsewhere.

So, I eventually found that building slower, more powerful fleets, designed for fighting effectively in frontal combat even when unsupervised, to be a much more viable strategy.

[way2co0l_2003]

I have to say I agree. Yes, faster fleets have their place for hit and run raiding tactics and for rapid response, but dropping a much stronger ship in an enemy system and forcing them to challenge it with their weaker ships presents them with a very difficult task to get rid of them. I prefer decent speed, but not as much as others hold to. Fighter supports at least 8, bulkier supports 4-5, combat flags anywhere from 1-3. So far that's been good for me.

[mystical4281]

I use one carrier design for home defenses (slow monstrosity) and gates for quick responce as supports I use 20ish very large lasers for artillery, shield type with missiles and a rail brawler with supplies for raids

a titan with a lot of guns for capturing planets with defenses
and a massive sized "tank" ship for capping planets without defenses (shields and power with 4 slots for weapons no extra supply storage)

[Foocubus]

I've been playing around with three designs so far that are working for me.

- The default heavy carrier, modified for better armor placement, fewer guns, more support and supplies. Relies on support ships to do the fighting, and has decent sublight speed. Good because it requires minimal micromanagement.
- Very fast, unarmored torpedo boat for long-range bombardment or drive-bys of enemy fleets. Can outrun all enemy weapons except lasers. Very effective for softening up Remnants. Also useful for grabbing up enemy planets without defense. Useless against big flagships that have no support fleets.
- Battlestar: (hyperdrive only) Very slow w/ ion engines; insane amounts of armor, missiles and torps, plus support; relies on FTL drive to go anywhere as hyperdrive is not slowed down by ship weight. Inspired by a certain 2000s-era show. Still needs enough ion engines to turn at a decent rate, though. Best when equipped with an ion cannon so the enemy cannot flee.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Evil Dinner Fork:

I've been playing around with three designs so far that are working for me.

- Very fast, unarmored torpedo boat for long-range bombardment or drive-bys of enemy fleets. Can outrun all enemy weapons except lasers. Very effective for softening up Remnants. Also useful for grabbing up enemy planets without defense. Useless against big flagships that have no support fleets.

Replace torp with missile and it'll be a good flagship-killer support (only missiles just don't cut it, but you can easily rip them open with several missiles, then finish them off with rails and/or lasers).