Comparative Advantages of Blocks

[Gunhead]

Hello Folks,

I have what I rather doubt is a quick question. I m looking for a guide that discusses the comparative advantages of each block. For example, cargo is most efficient if it is contiguous (one big block) and a cube. Thrusters, it seems, like a large surface area in the direction of thrust. If there are other basic rules that are contained in a guide, I would appreciate the referral.

Cheers.

[Bobucles]

Cargo and hangars are the main ones. Cargo loses 0.5 width on each side, making the storage somewhat smaller than the block. Hangars have a similar space loss, and also have 2 exits per block. Tiny blocks are useful for quick deployment but large blocks are needed for the storage space.

Structural integrity generators occupy 1% of the total volume they cover. However, they boost any block they can touch, giving them some reach outside their listed area.

The tiniest avorion hyperdrive unlocks rift jumping.

Gyroscopes are supposedly more powerful on ship center lines, but I think it doesn't actually matter other than gyros being pretty heavy and heavy things should be close to the center anyway. Rotational thrusters are more powerful on the far ends of ships. Never really found a use for thrusters compared to gyros/inertial dampers, but ymmv.

Everything else I think is one to one. Invest more space in a system and it does more. Pretty simple.

[Firefrye]

A few more details:
Most blocks work perfectly fine completely covered inside your ship. This includes thrusters, engines, and solar panels. Hangars work as STORAGE when covered and can "teleport" fighters to any uncovered hangar block on the surface of your ship (does not need to be connected, and the surface hangar can be paper thin). Torpedo launchers and docks also need to have a large exposed volume in front of them to work (proportional to the block and displayed when you try to place the block)

Fighters will enter and exit your ship faster/slower depending on the NUMBER of hangar blocks on the surface of your ship, not the size of those exits. Therefore you should install "clusters" of thin hangar blocks on the surface of your ships to allow your fighters to enter and exit rapidly.

Thrusters are needed if you want your ship to strafe (as opposed to gyros), and can provide some minor amounts of breaking in addition to your dampers

Solar panels only care about the surface area on their "top" surface, and can therefore be made as thin as you want. Material type does not matter for panels other than their weight. Note: you can manually type into the readout of the scale slider and input a scale as low as 0.001 allowing you to make panels that have virtually zero thickness. Pros: you can create a stack of a few hundred or a few thousand panels on a large internal surface of your ship and generate massive quantities of energy for virtually no volume and zero processing power. Cons: no durability at all, so they must be kept inside the ship. The cost does not decrease as the volume is reduced, so this method is very expensive compared to generators.

[Josh]

Nice info about the fighters, thanks !