Any online tools for ship building?

[Jeffreyac]

I found one, but it wasn't really what I was looking for, as it didn't include things like total price. Trying to find a place I can build out my ship in advance so I can have some idea of how I want it to go, how much money I'm going to need, how many dice I can expect from the build, etc.

Did find one that at least showed me the dice, but was missing total price.

Any suggestions?

edit: for that matter, any way to look at ship stats in a little more user friendly manner? At least in my browser, the official page entry just shows me a small portion of the window, and it makes it tough to compare various ships - all the data is there, but I can only view a small portion of the sheet at any time, so it's hard to scroll back and forth or see the info. A fell page spreadsheet would help, but I'm also having trouble finding one of those that's current...

So, any suggestions from all you pro ship designers out there? Or are you all just smart enough to pick your hulls and design/upgrade on the fly? :)

[davea]

The one that you found, is that the pinned thread? If not, try that.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/335620/discussions/0/3974924267093194153/

Also, if you are investigating about which hull to buy, you can try this wiki page:
https://startraders.fandom.com/wiki/Ships

Personally, I save my game (using an external zip file if playing permadeath) just before I land to purchase a ship. Then I play around with the builder, and if I mess up, I can reload. Also, in case I go to fly the ship a year later and find out it sucks, I can go back and do it over.

(Yes, it would be nice if there was a handy ship editor in game.)

[Tomcat]

For your last statement, it's been trial and error. After you play it once, you get an idea of what gets unlocked and what you like.


Though it may take time, you can just play a custom game where you just get money fast and see what's good with all the money raining down on you early on.


As for hulls, you can just look at their default setups when buying a new ship. Hulls are like almost all the same but I look at it as "what costs the least to swap out components" since my second ship usually is just a bridge to get to the final ship. The final ship always been Sword Battlecruiser for me.


There's a ship design tool somewhere but I've never used it. It's probably what you've found.

[Jeffreyac]

Originally posted by davea:

The one that you found, is that the pinned thread? If not, try that.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/335620/discussions/0/3974924267093194153/

Also, if you are investigating about which hull to buy, you can try this wiki page:
https://startraders.fandom.com/wiki/Ships

Personally, I save my game (using an external zip file if playing permadeath) just before I land to purchase a ship. Then I play around with the builder, and if I mess up, I can reload. Also, in case I go to fly the ship a year later and find out it sucks, I can go back and do it over.

(Yes, it would be nice if there was a handy ship editor in game.)

Yep been trying to use the Wiki, but that's the one that (at least for me, in my browser) only allows me to see a small portion of the data sheet, making it tough to parse the info or compare ships.

And also yes, that's the shipbuilder I was playing with. Pretty good, really, just found I couldn't see a total cost anywhere - though I may be missing it somewhere.

I'll keep playing with it - thanks for the responses!

[Jeffreyac]

Originally posted by Tomcat:

As for hulls, you can just look at their default setups when buying a new ship. Hulls are like almost all the same but I look at it as "what costs the least to swap out components" since my second ship usually is just a bridge to get to the final ship. The final ship always been Sword Battlecruiser for me.

This is exactly what I was trying to build -I remember I used to have a plan, but coming back after a long absence, and I don't really remember my target mid-game ship. Think it was a vengeance class - I seem to recall wanting bigger officer compliments so it was either a 6/36 or more crew complement...

My plan was to do as I've done in the past, play the starter ship with few upgrades (basically, a weapons locker), then go to a midgame ship, and stay there until I've got enough for my endgame ships. But it occurs to me I could probably drop the money into the starter and stay there - I'd just be hampered by what feels like to me to be a small crew.

I'd be curious to know if other folks do this, or what your preferred upgrade paths are for ships?

[davea]

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

Yep been trying to use the Wiki, but that's the one that (at least for me, in my browser) only allows me to see a small portion of the data sheet, making it tough to parse the info or compare ships.

Yes, that particular table is tremendously wide, and the wiki doesn't let you scroll it. Maybe that page could be redesigned somehow; but probably the wiki meta language doesn't accomodate wide tables very well.

My usual second ship is in the 7000 class, as soon as I have 2x the ship cost available. I've used the dragoon cruiser or recently the basalt carrier. I frequently give up on a playthrough by the time this second ship starts getting outclassed in ship combat, I can't find enough interesting things to do after that. YMMV.

[Jeffreyac]

Originally posted by davea:

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

Yep been trying to use the Wiki, but that's the one that (at least for me, in my browser) only allows me to see a small portion of the data sheet, making it tough to parse the info or compare ships.

Yes, that particular table is tremendously wide, and the wiki doesn't let you scroll it. Maybe that page could be redesigned somehow; but probably the wiki meta language doesn't accomodate wide tables very well.

My usual second ship is in the 7000 class, as soon as I have 2x the ship cost available. I've used the dragoon cruiser or recently the basalt carrier. I frequently give up on a playthrough by the time this second ship starts getting outclassed in ship combat, I can't find enough interesting things to do after that. YMMV.

Yeah, my whole limiting factor seems to be crew, or really officer slots, so my natural upgrade seems to be vengeance so I can go 6/36, or if I've got the faction rep Azure Defender for 7/36. Normal early runs I don't have any officer ground combat guys except my combat medic, so adding the extra officer slots allows me to promote two more of the away team to officer status. The extra normal crew allows me to flesh out by taking some guys I don't normally have room for early, like a second explorer or a scavenger or two, but mostly they get filled up by military officers or something else to generate command points if I have the contact to recruit them.

Tonnage wise, I hate going too slow, so I try to limit to no bigger than 6000 so I can at least get 15 speed (19 with a traveler engine, if I remember right, though I could be mistaken). I still like to mission run to build up cash and reputation, so going slow makes the mission take a lot longer...

[Tomcat]

A small ship is really hard to play if you want to go all the way. It has to be a specific build on higher difficulties.

I also am not sure why people talk about "travel speed". High tonnage ships to me just means more gas cost. But mission money, at the right sources, never makes cost an issue.

All ships travel the same via the interface. If there was a "time cost" between ships via travel, I've felt it to be negligible. Repair times, however, are impactful and are what you should monitor and minimize.

[Jeffreyac]

...uh, I believe that's incorrect, the speed rating of the ship, in addition to being the basis for dice in combat, is also the number of AU travelled in a week (slightly slowed by factors such as missed skill checks).

So, my starting longbolt with speed 23 is about two and a half times as fast as my speed 9 battlecruiser on the map.

Now, granted, if you're not working story missions, and not worried about cost (say, lategame) then you really don't care. But eraly/midgame I like to have a little speed.

[Tomcat]

Well I am a story runner and hit every possible mission. Faen and arb sidequests.

My experience is that repair times make the biggest impact if you are looking at repairs of 30 weeks etc.

Travel time, on the other hand, seems unimportant vs all the benefits you gain from a big ship.


EDIT: Also, yes, it's a basis for dice. But when electronics, pilot, command, navigation, and tactics make up like 95% of this dice, the 5% that an engine provides is so minuscule. But I think it probably is more impactful in the early game when you have less stats to work with.

[Teralitha]

The devs have said that a customizable, sort of 'try before you buy' drydock feature is on their long term to do list. So it may be a few years til we see something like that.

[Jeffreyac]

OK, cool.

Shoutout to the Devs - love STF, and Templar Battleforce, and the support and dedication they've shown convinced me to preorder and back Cyberknights - looking forward to see what else they do!

I know they're in here from time to time - so if you all wander in, know I appreciate what you do, and your efforts help your market! :)

[MasterShake]

Afaik the most impact on travel time is not from internal flights, but jump times. Engine speeds may have impact if you plot course ineffectively, or on early stage, but endgame SBC has no trouble with mission running as well as starting M3400. Ofc the top-tiered smallship will be faster, but if you play mindfully you never have to be that fast, no gain from it. And the top-tiered bigship offers many other opportunities instead, even for mission runners. You just need to play your deck right.

As much as idea of smallship sounds sweet, when it comes to numbers they inevitably fall behind. More mass, more dice.
Now:
1. it IS possible to beat the game in small ship. But yes, like it was stated by ppl before - it has to be very dedicated build.
For combat purpose you will have to throw in every single drop to survive and constantly choose your enemies carefully. Probably prioritize boarding ram build, because effective gunfight requires components.
Same with any other purpose - be prepared to be restricted from others and space combat include.
Doesn't sound much fun, huh?
2. I actually find ship classification a bit vague. We call M3400,M500 - small ships, while M7000-9000 are bigships. Come to think here, approximately M7000 is barely 2x M3400 in size, and less 2x in crew staff. M9000 is frankly less 2x M5000 in both categories.
I believe that devs mentioned that approximate size of ships is about modern submarine, yes? Which are 100-200m lengs and 100+ crew.
An Early modern period brigs were about 30-40m length and could fit in a bit more than hundred of crewmen.
In a sense all STF ships are "small". Some are just smaller.
(Or could they be all comparable in fact, but some trading "space" (mass) for propulse powers (engine speed/agility)? Wild speculations, I know, but I don't believe there were ever explanations about void engines from the sci-fi point.).

[davea]

I also prefer small ships, partly to make the crew less anonymous but mostly for travel speed. In the "early mid" game, say year 2-10, I try to stack missions to the same nearby quadrant, and even in a fast ship my turn-ins come "just in time". I suppose it could be in the "mid late" game when you can afford a big ship, the mission destinations are too spread out for that to matter.

[Tomcat]

Originally posted by davea:

I also prefer small ships, partly to make the crew less anonymous but mostly for travel speed. In the "early mid" game, say year 2-10, I try to stack missions to the same nearby quadrant, and even in a fast ship my turn-ins come "just in time". I suppose it could be in the "mid late" game when you can afford a big ship, the mission destinations are too spread out for that to matter.

So you don't run slave ships where most of the crew was conscripted from Char's faction?

[davea]

On my second and third ships, I do conscript to get crew. But, I fight my own faction ships to conscript. Although it makes no difference in-game, I don't like to see crew on board from the enemy faction.