Can you play without building your own ship?

[[L9] Loaded Squirrel [FAM]]

I want to get into this but bypass the shipbuilding part. what is the best way for me to use builds to bypass my frustration here and get into the rest of the game?

[Inquisito]

Find a ship from the workshop, use its design - if you are into that one - you can even scale it up after progressing further (dont need to build something, it just scales the entire ship bigger).

This, of course, needs a good ship from the workshop. You can search every tier-level for a new one and use that new design if prefered. Note: you need the ores to construct those ships!

[umop-apisdn]

The shipbuilding part is the best part of the game, though.

Shipyard/faction ships and workshop ships are a decent starting point, but without building your own ship you'll never know the joy of flying a ship that was tweaked to fly exactly like you want it to.

Then again, maybe the stock ships are "good enough" for you; I guess it could be a playstyle thing... or maybe I'm just weird.

[F.D.Roosevelt]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

The shipbuilding part is the best part of the game, though.

For you. I myself HATE any game that requires you to build stuff yourself. I end up with ugly creations that are sub-optimal because I actively dislike spending time designing and building. Lots of people love the engineering side of games, such as factorio, Space Engineers, etc., but there are far more that just don't jive with that stuff than the opposite.

I myself love having a beautiful ship but the amount of HOURS needed to design multiple ships that look like the awesome ones in the workshops is beyond what Im willing to spend on a game doing something I don't like, not to mention that even spending years designing a single ship, I wouldn't ever come close to how well designed some of these ships are. I don't doubt that the creative process is wonderful, but only if you value it or you feel comfortable with it.

I always use the workshop for everything and I wouldn't even be playing this game if there was no workshop.

[M]

The only time you HAVE to build a ship is during the tutorial / starting story mission. Past that, you can use either the workshop or the auto-generated ships from NPC shipyards. Personally, I sometimes like to use the NPC shipyards over my own designs since it's a fun challenge to get them to work properly (they are almost always lacking in at least one stat, usually directional movement) without fundamentally altering their appearance.

That said, this is often a lot more work than just either building a bunch of things yourself or downloading workshop items and hitting the 'apply design' button, so if you want to avoid build mode completely, just use the workshop. It is worth noting, however, that you will need to interact with it at least a little bit, since it's the only way of adding weapon turrets to your ship, and until you hit Trinium, turrets are the only method you have of defending yourself from pirates.

[Freyrsohn]

To be perfectly honest, you don't need to build from scratch. Although, the ships you can purchase do need a little modification. When you find a ship that you like from the shipyard, you may need to add either a bit more of a power core or crew quarters for your carriers. You can usually get around adding on by transforming larger structural blocks into the ones you need. The "transform block" box is in the lower left of your building block menu.

[M.Red]

give an order to the shipyard - costs some money and ressources
you can select the class, and size and go with the design you get there

[Bear]

Originally posted by L9 Loaded Squirrel:

I want to get into this but bypass the shipbuilding part. what is the best way for me to use builds to bypass my frustration here and get into the rest of the game?

I'm currently minmaxing an Iron mining drone upgrade and a Titanium Heavy Corvette for game starting for players (or myself) who don't want to design their own ships to start new games, would you like me to link you to the uploaded designs once they are up?

[FromHell2k]

Workshop offers something for everyone. While not being a necessity, due to the option to change all components with 2 clicks, a single design can carry you a long time (for example upgrading from iron to titanium etc.). Need to go bigger? Just click re-size..

[Niuq]

I struggled finding early game ships that could handle things up to the first boss so i built my own. I dont think ill ever build more ships for Avorion, so i can understand your aversion.

Few things i recommend while grabbing ships off the workshop.
Load them into a creative world give em crew with commands and see how they fly.
Using build mode with the view tool, see if they have framework blocks. These framework blocks can become what ever you need them to be with a quick block replace.
Will the ship do the job you want to use it for.
Cargo space , turret mounts / placement, hangers ( or place holder space for them )

[Niuq]

After playing the game more since i built it the pancake shape has some real limits, but wanted to show off the framework i was talking about.
One of the first few screenshots, using the view tool set to framework shows what i was talking about.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2673575100