Comprehensive Guide to Ship Building[WIP]

This guide's purpose is to give you tips and techniques on how to improve the speed and quality of your builds.

Note: We are not liable for any nuclear meltdowns, fatal heat waves, engine failures, spontaneous combustion, CLANG, crashes, unexplained power failure, rodent infestations, meteor storms, pirate assaults, death by ravenous wolves, demonic summoning, alien spider sieges, firearm malfunctions, torpedo backfires, sudden attraction to table legs, multiplayer griefings, tunnel collapses, tearing of the space time continuum, naked singularities, slowly and painfully transforming into a chair over the course of three months, and/or melting like a snowman on Mercury oh and being sucked into a black hole

Purpose

Each ship is built with a purpose in mind. Small ships are generally more suited for utilities while large ships make excellent carriers and cargo ships.

Large Ships

pros:
- Capable of supporting solar arrays
- Large enough to hold small ships
- More powerful weaponry
- Large cargo capacity potential
- Access to jump drives
- Access to refineries
- Access to assemblers
- Increased ore detector range

cons:
- Generally slow
- High material cost
- Costs more fuel to operate
- High fuel cost for planetary mobility

Small Ships

pros:
- Lightweight and maneuverable
- Cheap to produce
- Low fuel consumption rate
- Excellent utility ships

cons:
- Weak to all forms of damage
- Less blocks
- More difficult to design

Tools of the Trade (Ignore if in creative mode)

Now that you have chosen what your ship will be, It is time to gather your tools together. A grinder and welder are necessary for any project. Welding ships or welding arrays are extremely helpful for larger builds or faster construction, but are not required.

Design

Ships come in many different shapes and sizes; most commonly referred to as classifications. Classifications are very important for deciding the resource estimate and overall function of the ship.

Link to classifications guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=371336482

It can be helpful to use a notepad and pencil to sketch out a basic hull shape and interior layout. This tactic can be faster than building from thought if the builder has a lazy memory. Inspiration is very important as well; whether it be interiors, engines, floor layouts, or even the entire hull. Science fiction movies and TV series such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, or even Buck Rogers are excelent sources for inspiration. Other video games or even other Space Engineers ships are acceptable as well.

Example: ISS Anastasia by UltraEmailMan
Inspiration: Constellation from Star Citizen

Hotbar Setup

Hotbar setup is one of the most tedious parts of ship construction, but it can save you having to dig around the G menu at a later time. A good strategy is place a grinder and welder in the first two slots for hotbars 1-9. Then add blocks of a certain category to each hotbar preset.

Examples
Hotbar 1 - Hull
Hotbar 2 - Navigation
Hotbar 3 - Internal Systems

Introduction to Hulls

Hulls make up the basic shape of your ship, apply protection from unfriendly entities, and can make your ship look amazing. Hulls are not required and can add quite a bit of weight to your ship in addition to using lots of resources.

This portion of the guide will be broken up into three main sections:
Structural Hulls, Armored Hulls, and Aesthetic Hulls

Structural Hulls
The primary use of this type of hull is to reinforce weak connection points and act as a roll cage for vital components. They are the least resource intensive kind of hull, but also supply very little protection should you be attacked.

Armored Hulls
This hull type provides a massive amount of protection to vital ship systems at the cost of resources, fuel, speed, and maneuverability. This kind of hull consists of one to three layers of heavy and light armor covering the entirety of the ship.

Aesthetic Hulls
The more complex of the three, aesthetic hulls are added to both protect your ship and make it look better in multiple ways. They can make the ship look like it was constructed from scrap, newly built, combat worn, or even alien in design.

Basic Conveyor Design

For the automated transfer of resources conveyors are a wonderful tool that should be used. In order to have automated transfer of resources you will need to connect blocks with a conveyor system such as assemblers refineries and cargo containers with conveyor tubes. Also medbays need to be connected via the conveyors to replenish hydrogen and oxygen. While not necessary to connect the blocks with a conveyor system it is wise to do so as you won't have to go between blocks manually taking out and inserting resources.

Movement

You will need gyro's, multiple thrusters (directing foward, backward, left, right, up and down for optimal movement) but you dont NEED 6 thrusters or more you can but not recomended to build one thruster and move your ship opposite the way you were going to stop. Power is requires to make movement happen if you don't you're not going ANYWHERE!

Power

• place a reactor and put uranium in it
  
• place some solar panels and make sure the star is in view
  
• place a battery, use in conjuction with the either of the other 2 to make sure you dont drift of into space
  
• or use all three combined to make a quite good ship

Block Tools and Weaponry

Ship utilities include grinders, welders, and drills.

Grinders are larger versions of the handheld grinders that can affect multiple blocks at a time at a somewhat slower rate. The main advantage is a larger cargo capacity and the possibility of direct connection to a conveyor network.

Welders are larger versions of the handheld welders that can affect multiple blocks at a time at a somewhat slower rate. The main advantage is a larger cargo capacity and the possibility of direct connection to a conveyor network.

Drills have a larger radius than the handheld tool which allows for faster resource gathering and land clearing. They also have the option to connect to a conveyor network to increase carrying capacity.

Ship weaponry consists of rocket launchers, gatling guns, interior turrets, gatling turrets, and missile turrets. All ship weaponry has a range of 800m

Rocket launchers have two variants for small ships: normal and reloadable. Reloadable rocket launchers are connectable to conveyor networks and are not required to be hand loaded. Large ship rocket launchers are capable of firing massive volleys of projectiles while small ship launchers are only capable of a slow stream of rockets. They use 200mm missile containers as ammunition.

Gatling guns are only available for small ships and are decent for taking out stationary turrets or slow moving lightly armored targets. They use 25x184mm NATO ammo containers as ammunition.

Interior turrets are best used in interior spaces. (go figure) They have relatively low damage capabilities and are well suited as a deterrent against wolves, spiders, and enemy players. They use 5.56x45mm NATO magazines as ammunition

Gatling turrets, available for small and large ships, are stronger, harder hitting versions of interior turrets. They excel in point defense, destroying fighters, and negating enemy armor. They use 25x184mm NATO ammo containers as ammunition.

Missile turrets, available for small and large ships, are very powerful instruments of destruction. They are easily capable of destroying enemy turrets, slow moving fighters, lightly armored large ships, and vital ship systems. It is suggest to make sure they have a clean line of fire on all sides as they are somtimes prone to shooting the ship they are attached too. (on accident of course) They use 200mm missile containers as ammunition.

the pros and cons of the antenna types

basic antenna
pros
good range
can go through objects
easier to set up than lasers
cons
enemy can see your antenna and find you(including not just PVP but the NPC pirates as well)
laser antenna
pros
enemy cant see your broadcasts
REALLY good range
cons
cant go through objects requires a direct line of sight with the other antenna
you need the EXACT chordonites of the other one though it will adjuct for movement of the reciver


if theirs anything wrong with this i havent played in a while and ive rolled this out in under 10 minutes
any spell checks would also be appreciated but please no jsut saying a word and saying it right id like the whole scentence unless if its every instance of that word

Planned Guides

• Basic controls
  
• Useful and interesting mods
  
• Planets and asteroids

Suggestions and Credits

If you have any suggestions on how we could improve this guide, let us know in the comments section.

Desimatorg the conqueror - Topic generation
UltraEmailMan - Topic refinement and images
Tornadostorm18 - Spellcheck and grammatical errors

[Lemon]

Just noticed this is a four year old guide. Welp, there's some corrections if you're still planning on updating this at some point

Also I'd like to offer my help with spell checks on any other stuff you might make or have made. So if you need someone to check your text, hit me up!

[Lemon]

The pros and cons of the antenna types:

Basic antenna

Pros:

- Good range
- Can go through objects
- Easier to set up than lasers

Cons:

- Enemy can see your antenna and find you ( Including NPC pirates along with other players )


Laser antenna

Pros:

- Enemy can't see your broadcasts
- REALLY good range

Cons:

Can't go through objects, requires a direct line of sight with the other antenna.
You need the EXACT coordinates of the other one, though it will adjust for movement of the receiver.


If there is anything wrong with this I haven't played in a while and I rolled this out in under 10 minutes.
Any spell checks would also be appreciated but please don't correct just a single word, I'd like the whole sentence, unless if it's every instance of that word.

[iiDogez]

Not too much just physics changes and they made it so you have to use both a hydrgoen tank and oxyen generator to power hydrogeon thrusters and this makes hydro powered ships fail mid flight. honestly i dont really like these new changes

[Dez The Dapper Bocchi]

thnx lil doges though i havent been playing SE have they added anythning i should know about?

[iiDogez]

I came here from the
"How to build a awesome ship." and was thinking wow this guide was total B.S lets see the comments, so i did and i found this guide. This guide is a guide ill favorite and reference to for help building my ships. Thanks this guide really helped

[Dez The Dapper Bocchi]

Thank dud

[ritz car sponsored by bugatti]

rated n favd

[Dez The Dapper Bocchi]

the guide for elevators is almost done just doing finishing touches and spell checks

[Dez The Dapper Bocchi]

i can make a guide for that but i will need to test

[CJ]

like using pistons to make an elevator or lift