Differences between ships?

[Jfry]

I'm thinking about upgrading from my 2400M Scout Cutter to something a little bigger. However, each the 3400M and 5000M size classes have like a dozen ships available each. As far as I can tell the only difference between them are very slight differences in the distribution of slot sizes. Am I missing something here?

[Trese Brothers]

Each ship hull type has some built in attributes -- base shield, base armor, base fuel, max crew size, max officer size, its own mass, and its own slot arrangement.

Wiki might be helpful -
https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Ships

[Gilmoy]

Slots are important, but max officer/crew size tends to be even more important.
That is, first you choose your target officer/crew size, and then you maximize slots.
Crew are permanent, ships come and go. Losing crew to switch ships hurts, so we avoid that.

In math terms, officer/crew size partitions all ships into equivalence classes.
Within each class, you could buy 1 of each kind of ship and freely switch your crew between them, with zero XP lost, and zero turns of delay per switch

Specific distribution of slots also matters.
(L) = capacity (cargo, passengers, prisoners, small craft)
(M) = medical/officers
(S) = defense

So if you want to max out cargo, you prefer +1L for -1M, or similar.
If you want to stack defense modules, you prefer +1S or +2S for -1L.

The base armor/shield and fuel does make a small difference. Sometimes it means that your design for this ship must include +1 fuel component, just so you can fail 1 jump (and save), Skip from a xeno, and still reach a planet on the other side of the jump.

Within each mass class, the higher-end ships have more slots than their mass limit (assuming average mass per slot), so you must set 1-2 of the extra slots to Mass Reduction. They still tend to be better than a smaller ship in the mass class, because they have more base armor/shields and fuel.

[Tuidjy]

Within each mass class, the higher-end ships have more slots than their mass limit (assuming average mass per slot), so you must set 1-2 of the extra slots to Mass Reduction. They still tend to be better than a smaller ship in the mass class, because they have more base armor/shields and fuel.

Another reason the ships with more slots are better than the others is that even the mass reducing components can make your ship better.

For example, while the medium Hawk mass reducer module does take up a slot and increases jump fuel cost by 2, it also adds Pilot and Ship Ops dice, and increases shields.

[Shad1902]

I've gone through the "buy new ship" hell recently and I can understand that you're completely overwhelmed.

Best course of action is (IMHO):

- make some notes or think about what you want your captain/crew to do
- look up the ship prices and number of slots
- write down what is important for your new ship (speed because you want to be a fast travelling smuggler, or number of slots for weapons...agility because you're a boarder....etc). a bit like in the beginning with the A/B/C/D/E priorities of your captain
- compare the starting equipment of the ships. For example, if you don't need to change the engines of your future ship, it's quite a bite of spare change you have.
- keep in mind that you won't fly your ship immediatly, you will probably take some months or a year to upgrade your ship while flying your old.

you will begin to narrow your choice to 1-3 ships which will make the choice easier. Some ships are more pricey, but have better starting equipment. but the "better" starting equipment is not necessarely the one you want, so keep that in mind. That's where your lists comes in handy. Sometimes a cheaper ship is better, sometimes a cheaper ship can also cost far more than a more exepansive one if you mismanage your upgrades.

some additional tips:

- find a contact with price reduction for new ships
- retrain your engineer with the price reduction talent (you can retrain him later, and you'll save a lot of money)

Both savings made me buy the Longbow cruiser for 319.000 instead of 390.000. Retraining my officer was like...3000 credits I guess.

- use the talents that gives price reduction on upgrades for your big upgrades. Queue the upgrades (so instead of immediatly advancing time, the upgrade wil be done over time while you continue flying your old ship).