Any tips on ship design?

[Heavy Spanker]

I am pretty new to the game, but I have been enjoying it a lot. I just beat the fleet combat level on the campain, and unlocked ship design. I tried it out, and had basically no idea what I was doing. I got what certain numbers were about and what I had to do, but I don't know what the difference between modules were and how much thrust is good and etc. Does anyone have any tips on it? Thx.

[Cake >w0]

Do you unlock modle design?

[Admiral Obvious]

Where do you want to start? The game is pretty damn complex.

Ideally you want something with a high Delta V regardless of what you build, with some exceptions.
Then you want to look at acceleration, the bigger the number the better, but that usually means you get less delta V, unless you scale down the design in comparison to the engine.

You're going to get more when you unlock the module editor, and you can fine tune everything yourself eventually.

Armor type depends on what the ship is supposed to do. A good standby is Reinforced Carbon-Carbon, since it's light, and relatively durable, and cheap. Of course there are tons more, but it's a good start.

A general rule of thumb is that Nuclear rockets are more fuel efficient than "basic" combustion rockets, and resistojets are technically even more efficient, but typically come at the cost of power, which means actual power production, and the radiators going with it. The last type is the Ion Engine which is even more fuel efficient by many magnitudes, but can barely accelerate your ship at all in a reasonable time, great for probes, not great for warships.
Gimballed engines allow your ship to turn by "twisting" the engine so the ship rotates over time. Another good idea is to add sideways facing rockets, which will help the ship roll MUCH faster than with just a gimballed engine.

Conventional guns are cheap, and tend to fire tons of shots very quickly, but have poor range. They also tend to explode when shot, so keep them away from crew compartments.

Coilguns are also usually cheap but typically power hogs, and serve as a midline between railguns and conventional guns, though it's not hard to make a coil gun shoot further than rails when made right. They also typically fire much bigger shots than railguns usually do.

Railguns are snipers in space, but usually fire exceptionally small rounds, which like to bounce off sloped armor, and are really expensive. However they have the longest ranges in game, and good accuracy, as a result they are really powerful, especially if the shots penetrate, often killing crew compartments.

Lasers are mainly used for point defense, but higher power lasers are also great for slicing holes in ships once you get close enough.

Missiles are really their own ships in themselves. As are drones. They all need launchers to work, which typically have a high power draw if they are decent at their job, and they also need radiators.

I could drone on and on, but I think I got the gist of the ship designs.

[Heavy Spanker]

A lying cake lähetti viestin:

Do you unlock modle design?

No, not yet.

[Heavy Spanker]

Thanks for the reply Admiral Obvious, It'll be really helpful.

[Jonen]

Something to note is that power draw, and heat radiating demands are calculated for a single weapons module.
If you have and are planning to use more than one weapon of the same type simultaneously, you need to provide enough power and radiators to supply that number - else all you have is redundancy if something where to happen to the firing weapon.

[newageofpower]

Jonen lähetti viestin:

Something to note is that power draw, and heat radiating demands are calculated for a single weapons module.
If you have and are planning to use more than one weapon of the same type simultaneously, you need to provide enough power and radiators to supply that number - else all you have is redundancy if something where to happen to the firing weapon.

One note: Heat capacity is actually calculated in the game. If you have enough cooling to cool 1 10GW laser permenantly but install 2x 10 GW Death Beams, you can fire both continuously for quite some time before the radiators saturate.

[cantab314]

I've not played with ship design much. But maybe I can give some suggestions. In all cases I'll be thinking about the stock modules, not custom modules.

When you only have Ship Editor you can only design crewed spaceships. You can't make your own drones and missiles because you can't make the launchers for them until you unlock Module Editor.

WEAPONS.

Missiles are good for softening up enemy capital ships. Nuclear, but not flak, missiles are also good as anti-missile and anti-drone weapons.

Lasers are for stopping drones and to an extent missiles.

Drones will wreck enemy capital ships without lasers, but get swatted by ships with them.

High-velocity guns are for if your plans involve having greater effective range than the enemy and approaching relatively slowly to maximise the time when you can shoot them but they can't shoot back.

Low-velocity guns are for if your plans involve screaming towards the enemy at high speed so you close the gap quickly and can open fire.

Flares are for people who don't have lasers :-D

ENGINES.

It helps to pick these first in Ship Designer, just seems to make it behave well.

Chemical rockets are for if you don't need delta-V. But usually you do. They're mainly drone and missile engines.

Nuclear rockets are capital ship main engines.

Resistojets are for steering if you choose to use non-gimballing main engines.

MPD thrusters ... I dunno. Maybe if you want to build a missile and drone carrier that gives the enemy the run around and never gets into shooting range?

It can be a good idea to standardise on propellant, because some of the later campaign missions recommend you use a fuel tender and that only works well if everything needs the same fuel. Methane is one of the best all-round choices.

Delta-V wise, most of the stock ships are around 4-5 km/s and that's plenty. Really you just want to be fairly consistent because your fleet's delta-V is only as much as its shortest-ranged ship. (Unless you plan on splitting the fleet).

ARMOUR.

The most complex thing available in Ship Design. I really don't know what works well and what doesn't. Just bear in mind some materials are expensive, so you could look for cheaper alternatives to the 'standard' Al/RCC combination.

Partial armour can work well but you need to have good situational awareness in combat to stop the ship from getting turned the wrong way. Complete armour is simpler to do.

OVERALL

Have some idea what you want your ship to do. A cheap missile carrier to add to any fleet for long-range striking power? A fuel tanker with guns and armour so it can actually handle itself in a firefight? A specialist drone-defense ship with lots of lasers? Just an all-round battleship?

[newageofpower]

There's a vast wealth of data on the official CoADE forums.

[Heavy Spanker]

thanks for the answers

[A Midnight Dreary]

"Coilguns are also usually cheap... Railguns ... are really expensive."

I have the exact opposite problem. My railguns are light, cheap, and have exceptional accuracy. My coilguns are an order of magnitude more expensive, heavy, and much less accurate.

Typically my rails can strip off all the weapons off of other ships before they can get in range for their main guns.

I usually go with coilguns when I want to fling a payload, such as a kinetic kill vehicle or nuke. Although I have a railgun design that flings needle thin explosive darts at 13 k/s that shreads anything in the game.

A tip on armor: Boron is a good all-around armor. Moderately light weight, cheap, high melting point, and very hard. The key to success on armor though is how you layer everything. Read up on whipple shields.

[Admiral Obvious]

A Midnight Dreary lähetti viestin:

"Coilguns are also usually cheap... Railguns ... are really expensive."

I have the exact opposite problem. My railguns are light, cheap, and have exceptional accuracy. My coilguns are an order of magnitude more expensive, heavy, and much less accurate.

Typically my rails can strip off all the weapons off of other ships before they can get in range for their main guns.

I usually go with coilguns when I want to fling a payload, such as a kinetic kill vehicle or nuke. Although I have a railgun design that flings needle thin explosive darts at 13 k/s that shreads anything in the game.

A tip on armor: Boron is a good all-around armor. Moderately light weight, cheap, high melting point, and very hard. The key to success on armor though is how you layer everything. Read up on whipple shields.

I went with a basic "fast and loose" description of things.

In my experience a decent coilgun is usually cheaper than a similar railgun. The two weapons are supposed to fulfill different roles.

Provided the coilgun isn't made of the "Magic" Magnetic Metal Glass (which when used in a coilgun defies the laws of physics in many cases, since it doesn't saturate like it should), the coilguns usually turn out cheaper.

Still, if you want a spaceship to fire slightly smaller spaceships at other spaceships, coilguns are the way to go.

[Lieste]

My current ship of choice has no armour at all, four 8mm railguns & 1 violet laser (all mounted on one side of the ship, nothing on the other side), 3 gimballing water NTR, 3 60MW reactors and 65 crew.

The 8mm railguns are a modified design with a 90km @ 1000m^2 accuracy and a low rate of fire (by lowering the loader power), but the design is still very potent even with the stock ~46km at 1000m^2 8mm railguns due to it's relatively small size and high firepower. (812m^2 size, the gun firepower greater than most much larger vessels).

I have an armoured version, using a sandwich of 1.5mm Osmium, 80cm Graphite Aerogel, 1cm Boron ... 1cm airgap ... 1cm Amorphous Carbon, 6cm Diamond, which is sufficient to protect against a few scattered shots from most weapons (and little can get close enough)... but increases weight from 6450 tons to 7470 tons, and cost from 54.6Mc to 72.1Mc. It also reduces combat potential by increasing size from 812m^2 to 1150m^2 and doubles the time it takes to roll - which is really important with a single battery platform. Removing the armour also added almost 1km/s delta-v to the 4.02km/s of the original design, which makes combat endurance better.

A pair (with the long range gun module) can defeat the drone squadrons and ships in a 6x fleet carrier force in the sandbox in every tested AI mode with no "ignore range" used on the laser.

[Naiba]

I tend to spam with small ships and no armour, Fleet normally goes with all front mounted turrets, most ships with two green lasers and few with 4 8mm railguns and flare launchers.

Oh, and remote control unit on everything near the back in case of crew death during combat while weapons are still viable.

[ulzgoroth]

...If you're running nose weapons, wouldn't a little end-cap armor go a long way at a low cost for protecting against long-range laser burn and such?

I'm currently designing unarmored drone missile boats, but that's for crushing a particular mission.

[Naiba]

ulzgoroth lähetti viestin:

...If you're running nose weapons, wouldn't a little end-cap armor go a long way at a low cost for protecting against long-range laser burn and such?

I'm currently designing unarmored drone missile boats, but that's for crushing a particular mission.

Not really. The flock of laser ships can counter enemy lasers before they take damage. In closer range combat, weapons you fit to your own ship puts a hole in the armour anyway. As soon as the turret is destroyed, the rest of the ship behind it is vulnerable anyway and putting enough armour to stop projectile weapons cuts into the fuel too much on something so small.

Armour only really works with side mounted weapons and larger ships with redundancy, where you can roll your ship to show an undamaged side of it to the enemy and continue firing when a weapon is taken out.