Early Game - designing ship vs Workshop ships

[BoydofZINJ]

First why do people consider 2 million credits and 50K Naonite (which I have not seen yet) and 100K Titanium as early game?

Answer: Once you played the game, you can rush to specific zones and make tons of money and resources?

First, I am a MEH designer. My ships are mostly blocks, but sometimes they look like triangles too!!! I have about 100K thru 200K in credits and I have 3 ships... I use 1 ship to make small templates and 1 ship as a miner ship. My third ship is a combat vessel/hauler.

I found a few really low level designs on the workshops. A cool looking bird of prey (Klingon ship from Star Trek) a few cool Federation ships (Star Trek) and a few others.... but....

Most of the designs seem to be either:

1. Too expensive (even when labeled as "early game"

2. Not maneuverable. They lacked agility. I finally got enough credits to get the NX series Star Trek ship from enterprise and that thing moved around like a tug boat with no cargo or space for much. I felt I was fighting the controls much more than I should. I tried to fix it... but it completely destroys the look or nearly impossible.



So... my question is this:

Are there any good really cheap "EARLY" design ships which have mostly empty on the inside so I can build them the way i want or are they all mostly filled and I should either try to work with the designs or make my own?

[OndeTv]

I have had one such starter ship up on the workshop for a couple years now i think. It is basically a hollow oblong cube, built as small interlocking iron armor plates so you have some freedom to "pixel" paint your cube ship and make it a little personal without having to do actual ship design.

But other than that it is hollow inside (apart from a few lights so you can see what you are doing in there). It costs a total of 1243 iron to build, so it is an absolute starter edition with the freedom to customize the insides as you want them.

So, if you dont mind hollow box ships, i'd give this one a go:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1210354006

I also have a mid/late game version of it up. Honestly i cant remember if it comes prebuilt inside or not, it has been so long. But as a ship it/they are as viable as anything else (i have completed the game a few times with them).

[OndeTv]

Oh yeah, might as well put this here too for the design above:

- The inside has framework going in each axis. What i used to do was either make rings of each type of system along this framework or make groups of them on the "floors".

Either way, it makes it easy to add/remove whatever you lack or have too much of as you grow and progress through the game without messing with the actual exterior.

Go to the builder, zoom inside the ship, pick a block you want to build at and press F to focus the camera at that block. Rinse and repeat.

Once it gets too small for your needs, you simply scale the entire thing with the "modify entire ship" function.

Enjoy ;)


(and if Koonschi ever actually gives us the option to show/hide what we want instead of just view 1 specific block type/material, designs like these become even easier to maintain)

[azhockeynut]

the nova corp ones are good. not sure who makes those. i have had good luck with an early miner that is cheap it has 2 big solar panels on the sides and pretty much a blockish design and 2 slots. I add a mining system to it if i have one and extra turrets if i can but right out of the box it is only a few K credits and a tiny bit of iron and titanium. put a captain and crew in and set it to mine, if it dies you rebuild fast and cheap.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1389353691&searchtext=miner

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1251607184&searchtext=miner

[gussmed]

You should probably be looking at "starter ships" rather than "early ships." I've seen quite a few ships labeled as starters that can be built for a few thousand iron.

As for why... I think the tendency is to upload ships you've used in the game. By the time you're halfway skilled at making decent looking ships, you've got 50k naoanite and 100k titanium. I didn't upload my first ship until I had about a million titanium.

Building a real, practical starter ship that looks decent means going back to a much earlier part of the game.

[Cy]

starter - early game ships with good stats ofcoourse require higher amounts of ressources and credits ( from early game perspective ) to get their stats the way they are in 1st place. So if you want a cheap ship you will have to go with worse stats.

Try to look for a ship that is made almost entirely out of titanium for the start. Iron sucks as material for ships except for them dampeners =)

You have the possibility to change the size of workshop designs too so that you get reduced cost for them same design with lowered stats.

To obtain a ship with good stats relative to your current progress in this game you will need to grind ressourses and cash. Also can you write down what kind of stats you would like to have?

[BoydofZINJ]

Personally I do not think "starter" ships should be anything but Iron and Titanium and should be under 300K or something. After all, most newer players or casual players would not have 300K+ within an hour or two. I know, i bet vets can quickly rush to 300K and get some rare materials within 15 minutes... but they would not be looking for newbie "starter" ships either.

[Soul Solarflare]

Take a page out of my book, grab the ships you like (in my case Trek) and refit'em down to iron/titan while reducing the overall scale so they become affordable at the start. For something like 2-5k iron I can pop out Defiant, Intrepid and NX classes at the start and Peregeine for about 200-230 iron (excluding the 500 startup cost). Best part of games like this is that we have the option to take something we don't fully like, gut it and refit it to our personal standards.

[BoydofZINJ]

I decided to make a Klingon Miner - loosely based on the Star trek Armada games... heh... bricks!


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2173828410&searchtext=Klingon

[SkollUlfr]

one of the things that isnt advertised is that you can change the material a ship is made from when applying a template.

[OndeTv]

Originally posted by SkollUlfr:

one of the things that isnt advertised is that you can change the material a ship is made from when applying a template.

However, if all you have is iron and there are blocks in the template not available in iron, this isn't possible if i remember right (i may be wrong, it has been a while since i have tried).

Anyway, if the above is a problem, you can always make a creative game (giving you access to unlimited resources of all tiers) and modify the template there for your single/multiplayer needs.

[Popo Bigles]

Originally posted by OndeTv:

Originally posted by SkollUlfr:

one of the things that isnt advertised is that you can change the material a ship is made from when applying a template.

However, if all you have is iron and there are blocks in the template not available in iron, this isn't possible if i remember right (i may be wrong, it has been a while since i have tried).

Anyway, if the above is a problem, you can always make a creative game (giving you access to unlimited resources of all tiers) and modify the template there for your single/multiplayer needs.

You are correct. If you do not have the material, you have the option of discarding the related pieces (Say you are full titanium ship, but you lack x amount of Naonite to complete the technical parts: you will get a pop-up or a selectable square saying along the lines of 'Unable to apply design template- Missing X amount of Y. Load the design with missing modules?' I don't remember it fully, but it carries that type of message.

[SkollUlfr]

you just need to tick the box for convert to blank hull.