People must do this. And yes, carbon blocks explode like water balloons when shot, but early on, in your starting system, having to harvest rock and trees to get your first starship up and running, especially in a hard mod on a hard world wtih little ore can be compelling. Plus, with those wimpy one block engines, which are hard to achieve early on, it's nice having extreme maneuverability. Do like Zonda does, make a steel frame so the ship won't crack in half from a stray plasma shot, surround the bridge and core in metal, but go light. Then don't go anywhere you can get shot at and focus on firepower to keep things away. But at least you have a starship. Or at least that's the theory. I'm gonna give it a try. Famous last words, huh?
The LCD material requirement for CVs are the materials tied to the lowest level CV Thruster. It's worth noting that Carbon Blocks have the ability to be upgraded to the lowest level Steel Block. Which ultimately allows access for upgrading the hull all the way to Military Grade steel without having to literally swap out the carbon blocks. I think what you might find is spawning with the outer hull shell already upgraded to the lowest level steel is probably more efficient, in that you end up with at least an outer steel hull and didn't have to sacrifice any trees in the process. ...trees being a bit the scarce resource on some starter planets. The only thing I don't like about carbon is the material texture seems to be one of the few (only?) that will not allow you to change the color without changing the texture. But otherwise it can be re-textured for whatever interior look you want. Ultimately, it's Sathium and Neodymium (sp?) that are my constraints for spawning CVs. Neo being an absolute min requirement for Thrusters and some Sathium for a few fancy armored windows. So in the process of acquiring those two, I typically find/acquire all the steel that I might need. I also haven't really found a need to spawn a starter CV that is not sufficiently sized to house every systems upgrade that I could possibly install (and a modest allotment of defensive weaponry). Blinking around the starter system with an SV to acquire Sathium is typically where I find myself constrained. ...but not for too long. So for starter systems, the gathering is probably really more focused on that lower material threshold SV.
The less obvious drawback is that carbon CV blocks take full damage from hand held weapons which makes it more vulnerable to say Zirax ground troops. I know at least one author on the workshop that makes most of their CVs with carbon. They all have shields though. They do it for operation in high gravity.
I've build a few CV's, actually, quite a few CV's, and have used Carbon blocks for things like interior walls and floors to keep weight down. I couldn't really justify using carbon for hulls. Thing is, even on resource-poor starter worlds, a light SV will get you into orbit, and an asteroid or two can provide enough iron ore to produce plenty of steel.
The idea that you can convert carbon to steel is interesting....This means, yeah maybe I was right to make myself a carbon blueprint. That way I can spawn it quick and then focus on upgrading to steel. A small ship is good but the constructor's limited. I'll figure it out or give up and go back to not playing like a lunatic. Mainly I want to do something different since my normal thing has me digging underground bases to avoid attacks. The opposite of a bunker might just be a carbon ship.
You can (should?) build space stations with stone... I have heard the reinforced stone is also a tougher armor than the top Mil Grade steel.
I'm going to give spoilers about Pandora in the Eden Reforged mod so be warned. Don't read any further if you don't want to know about Emporer Palpatine speaking or that Bruce Willis was a ghost. I know you're all on edge and can't sleep over my little carbon starship experiment. Kidding. But I think it was a really good idea. Or not. It's hard to tell. I did Pandora on the default settings and though I'm at level 14 and I got my ship parked in my backyard now, that's kind of meaningless. Pandora is really tough until you get your first small craft. Then it's really easy. At least for a bit. They got these big...uh, I call them *** rocks...about two hundred feet high, can you say *** here? I'll find out... but in no time you can get enough crushed rock and lumberjacking is fun because you get to kill tons of spiders and raptors with your chain saw. So all that carbon sil....carbon silicate? is freakishly easy to get. I needed about 7000 units of it, about 3000 of steel, which I got from the wrecks. And I got my ship in what seemed like a quicker than normal time, but who knows. Now I face an interesting new problem. I only got six small wimpy engines . I figure I need twice that to upgrade carbon to steel. Again, spoilers. The problem is that Pandora has few POIs or drones and I still haven't found any place to buy stuff, though I am nowhere near finished exploring the planet much less the moons and orbit. If I don't figure something out, my only clear choice is attacking the Z Empire bases and they're way more advanced than me and don't have ships made out of water balloons. I also could attack Polaris but they remind me of Amazon and I buy stuff on Amazon so I'm not attacking them unless I really, really have to. That's logical right? So this might have been a really stupid idea for Pandora. Maybe there's enough flux coils and blue intel chips in the wrecks for six more engines. I'll need at least that if I want a steel ship that, you know, moves. So that's where I'm at. Are carbon ships smart or dumb? No idea so far. Pandora's fun though. Got killed by an Ent.
Pandora is pretty fun. Still my favs are . . . oh God the Alzheimbirs . . . Uh, Ningues and Purgatory. The other one that is a lot of fun is the rainbow color planet that is chock full of alien nasty monster types . . . uh (fires up game for first time in 8 months) Masperon. That one is difficult to not die on.
Not too many spoilers here but still probably a few. Left Pandora via warp and found some big ole neo ore locations so I'm officially out of the starter stage. And will I do this again. Probably. Should you? Probably not. It really had no bearing on me except I had to drill rock and cut trees instead of salvaging steel on one of the wrecks. It helped lift the ship out of Pandora's heavy gravity but I could have done that with a steel ship if I'd put all the engines facing down during the launch. Use the ole roll and brake in orbit. I had to stay away from enemies but that wasn't hard at all. What was hard were the same things that are always hard on your starter world, finding flux coils and intel chips. I'm trying to think about where a carbon ship would be good. Heavy gravity worlds you need to putter around in and don't just want to use a small craft maybe. I think Carbon is more valuable as a quick fix if you're low on steel for some reason. I like it on spacecraft and in interiors but not on cap ship hulls. But honestly I like flying around in a really fragile ship. It's more realistic to me. With a steel ship it's not a big deal to get strafed by a fighter. To me, that's unrealistic. But my waterballoon ship means I have to plan for that likelyhood. I have to design it differently and scout out the routes and do stuff I wouldn't normally do. But from a gameplay perspective, nope. Bad idea unless there's a specific situation where it's not. Next I'm going to be looking at my indoor spaceship in the Reforged Eden Mod. It's great against early game POIs. But I've never used it against mechs.
