Ship designs

[FangzUra]

Anyone else can't design ships for ♥♥♥♥? Mine just end up being boxes with weapons all over, some of the ships i've seen look fantastic.

[A Worthless Husk of Nothing]

These tips might be easier said than done, but here's some advice from me:

- Use angled armor to form out your shape from Basic Box to Proper Ship. Just make sure you have the thrusters to compensate for the weight.

- Try to picture the ship as though it were in three dimensions. How would sections be cordoned off? How would everything be positioned on the inside? Let the outside be informed by that.

- Avoid the temptation to make every ship bristle with weapons. Purpose build your ships. Is it a trade vessel, a miner, or a military vessel? If it is armed, is it a little patrol craft meant to protect orbital stations, a destroyer meant to be agile and take down larger ships with heavy weaponry, or a screening vessel designed to be big and bulky and physically shield still bigger ships? Not all military ships require tons of weapons. Sometimes one or two well-placed guns do wonders.

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And as for some tips for methodology, here are a few you might try to get yourself in the aesthetic mindset:

- Take real world battleships as inspiration. How many guns did they have? How were they positioned? Use that as inspiration and see how you interpret it in space.

- Try placing down key systems in blueprint mode first, then connect it up. Start with your thruster block(s) and cockpit. Add a weapon or two. Then seek to add duplicates of what you already have very sparingly if at all as you tie everything together with corridors, support systems, and armor.

- Head to this generator ( https://www.rolegenerator.com/en/module/spaceship ), generate some single-deck plans (many will be multiple decks), and try to recreate them in Cosmoteer. Since this doesn't show the exterior shape all the time, you'll have to use armor to build a shape around those core designs.

[Gunman]

look for inspiration from other game, try your best to make a version of that ship in this game.

[FangzUra]

Thanks chaps, i mean functionality, i think i can copy, i'm just dissapointed my ships are all ugly as hell. Also, why the angles armour?

[JarH3ad]

you can also always swing by the discord and ask for help there, people there are always willing to help out

[CptnRedstone]

I'd recommend checking out 0neye's guide, you can find it on the Cosmoteer forum (there's also a steam guide linking to it)

[A Worthless Husk of Nothing]

Originally posted by Fang:

Thanks chaps, i mean functionality, i think i can copy, i'm just dissapointed my ships are all ugly as hell. Also, why the angles armour?

In real life, angled armor tends to deflect shells. Not sure if it does so ingame (I doubt it), but having angled armor nevertheless creates the appearance that it would, so it looks aesthetically pleasing.

Plus it's a good way to give the ship a nice aerodynamic look.

To illustrate, here are two of the same ship, one with angled armor and one without:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2879163547

[lalelunatic]

if only those "neat" looking ships would also be as efficient as the ugly boxes... so far most of the "angled" ships i came across in the demo just suffered instant defeat against a huge block of double layer armor with a shield on top and multiple heavy guns behind...

[Ad Victoriam !]

Originally posted by lalelunatic:

if only those "neat" looking ships would also be as efficient as the ugly boxes... so far most of the "angled" ships i came across in the demo just suffered instant defeat against a huge block of double layer armor with a shield on top and multiple heavy guns behind...

I've played a lot to the first demo (outside of Steam) and I confirm. The best designs I was able to make were all boxes, especially railgun ships.

[Diarmuhnd]

Originally posted by Fang:

Anyone else can't design ships for ♥♥♥♥? Mine just end up being boxes with weapons all over, some of the ships i've seen look fantastic.

I made this killer in the demo, simple, fast, hard hitting but very fragile if mistakes are made.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2867024707
But she was able to destroy everything she ran into in the demo. And captured nearly 20+ enemy ships. I only started running into problems when I did not have enough crew to man her properly because I was putting skeleton crews on all the captured ships and stations we took.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2867229392
One of the captured ships used to draw enemy fire allowing the Rogue Trader to swoop in and take out enemy ship cockpits.

[A Worthless Husk of Nothing]

Originally posted by Diarmuhnd:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2867024707

A design that says, "Undercut my profits at your peril."