Hi, so I've several questions about building, and doing it in an efficient, logical, manner. Largely everything applies to CV / SV building, because I don't really use HV except for deforestation early on and throwing fauna and zirax into a woodchipper. I've created my first CV, heavily drawing from icewolfen's T4 Topaz Destroyer CV, but my design inside sucks. And the theory behind design process itself is lacking. As a result, my ship is large, a little cumbersome, a labyrinth of long elevators / corridors inside and simply inefficient. as it were, I designed the hull first , and after some 17+ iterations, I settled on what I could work with and built the interior. Ish. So, lots of questions now: 1) with respect to PVE combat in SP / Coop, do I need to be double lining areas for armor protection? I double lined my L thrusters, core, warp / shield, and fuel areas with 2x combat steel. 1a) if so, what is "critical" to double line, and what exactly should we line with? Can I use hardened steel over combat steel as an inner liner because it's lighter? Carbon fiber seems like an awful lining material. On my first revision, I double lined the nose of my CV, because that's where the majority of my incoming fire goes. I'm not sure why, my core is amidships. 2) for combat applications, assuming no material limitations, should I be using Xeno over combat steel? Less texturing I understand. But xeno weighs less and had more hp. Also harder to acquire. But for incoming damage purposes (from other npc vessels) do they take the same damage, or does say combat steel take 0.75 damage while the xeno takes full? 3) suggestions for the design process in general? I have very genetic ideas, or see a model and want to recreate something similar, but tend to try for hull first then building the insides. Is building the insides first then laying the hull around that work best? How do you maintain an external design like that? 4) purpose / classification. So far I've really not seen a lot that helps differentiate corvette from cruiser, or from say home away from home base. Carriers arm to make sense(in a nautical big flat deck design) or a combatant cv that is nothing but guns, ammo depot, and a pilot. What do you guys use to help define what a ships purpose is? 5) combatant CVs. Thus far, having beaten zirax ships up to the kamirat classes (with help), I don't see or understand gun strategy. What I've picked up is more = better. So do I want to max out my weapons at the 42 allowable (with cpu / etc limit on), or is there more strategery involved in this? 6) manual weapons. For a CV, I've got pulse laser and rockets, and try to use them equally while in a fight. But I can't use both at once. Is there a preference for usage? Also, for SV, raiding POI, I've tried the plasma, rocket and laser, but can't really strafe run a POI while cycling weapons and accurately firing them. Is there a weapon preference or way to set a hotkey to cycle and fire all weapons at once? I briefly checked out a few HV "POI Busters" butt generally disliked using them. I can't use the manual weapons to fire because I'm hovering, so I had to move forward/back to get an angle to shoot at something, but usually was out of range, so is the hv just mostly using auto turrets to bust a POI? Also, lastly, what are the opinions of having a big cv that holds your mobile base / stash of goodies, a big ole rations garden, etc, and just docking a smaller purely combat CV to it and traveling that way? How big would that primary mobile base cv need to be? Thanks for all the assistance!
I think it's important to first decide what the purpose or "mission" of your ship will be. You don't explain that but you mention the Topaz Destroyer, so I'll assume you're designing a ship with a combat mission fighting POIs or possibly PVP. You don't mention if you're carrying SVs or not but I will assume for the sake of discussion you intend to. The second important design consideration is if you're playing on a server with Block Limits enabled or disabled - especially since you're building a T4. A T4 CV or SV has the CPU capacity to mount a LOT more weapons if Block Limits are disabled. Weapons require places to mount them, or "Hardpoints" as I call them. Because of the Minecraft nature of building in Empyrion, you need to really consider hardpoint placement in your design. Me personally, I play with Block Limits disabled if for no other reason than I don't like being limited on each type of weapon. To me, I should be able to give up the pulse lasers and mount 8 rocket launchers instead of 4. So I stick to designs that allow for lots of flat places for turrets. Lastly, I will tell you that in terms of design, I always put practical considerations ahead of artistic. To me, an ugly ship that performs really well is better than a beautiful ship that performs badly. And I tend to believe that starships, like naval vessels, will always be very utilitarian in design. To a naval or starship commander, surviving a battle is 1000x more important that graceful curves or a pretty paint scheme. 1, 1a> I don't line my thrusters. It's impossible to protect them with armor because they're too exposed. I recommend redundancy instead. As for the rest, I pretty much agree with what you've done. The basics of operating your ship are CPU, Fuel, Power and cockpit. To move you need at least some thrusters and an RCS. There are several ways to protect important components. Those are armor, location and redundancy. Some things you can only have one of. CPU is first among those. I also consider an RCS to be a single item due to it's really high cost. You can have as many fuel tanks and generators as you want. Generally, I have at least two engine rooms located on opposite ends of the ship. CPU and RCS go in the main engine room along with shield, gravity and power generators. On a T3 and T4 design, these usually have at least a double layer of hardened and/or combat steel depending on CPU level and availability of extra CPU. I also try and encase the CPU and RCS in an additional layer of protection - either armored glass or steel. And, like you, for warships I place a lot of extra steel on the nose of the ship if there is a main battery (what you call manual weapons). Presumably, you'll be pointing them at the most dangerous enemy and while you're shooting at them, they will be shooting back. I also locate my main engineering behind that thick wall. It may seem counter-intuitive, but those main battery weapons have a LOT of hitpoints. Place a row or two of combat steel behind them and that's already a pretty tough nut to crack. My secondary engineering tends to be at the very back of the ship. This is due mostly because gravity generator fields should not overlap any more than you can help it. I usually have some extra generator and fuel along with the second gravity generator in the aft engineering. 2> The problem with using Xeno is that if you put it on the design in Workshop, you have to have sufficient quantities of it to put in the factory in order to build it in game. Xeno is great, but I'd use either hardened or combat in the blueprint then replace it with xeno after you spawn it. 3> I'm not sure there is a one-size-fits-all design process. I generally start with at least an idea of what the ship will look like and a good notion of how it will be laid out and what I want to put in it. But I don't start with one and then switch to the other. I've found a basic layout I like and I tend to stick with it at least in general terms. Because they are so large and hard to armor and because I think it looks better, I put my hanger decks in the back of the ship. This means the crew areas are at the front of the ship. I tend to mount my main battery on the very front of my ship due to range restrictions. A CV can easily get to be 100 or more meters long or somewhere between 10% to 30% of the total weapons' range even in space. So if you mount your main guns near the rear of 150m ship, you've reduced the effective range of your weapons by 150m right out of the box. But then my external designs tend to lend themselves to being expandable during the design process if I discover I need a bit more room for my engine room or such, I can just cut and paste to make the ship longer or wider. 4> There are no hard rules. Here in vanilla, because of it's nature, mission isn't super important as you can build a jack-of-all-trades ship. In Reforged Eden, CV ship design is more limited so ships need to be designed with a more specific mission. As far as ship types goes (destroyer, cruiser, carrier, etc.) it helps to start with real world naval vessels. Taking aircraft carriers out of the picture for a few moments, generally speaking, cruisers form the backbone of a wet navy. They are powerful and versatile warships in their own right and are often flagships for fleets. In a peacetime role, they are usually the most powerful ships a navy routinely operates. Destroyers and frigates tend to be escort vessels who's job it is to protect cruisers or even merchant shipping. Battleships are generally wartime vessels and are only minimally operated in peacetime as they are expensive to maintain and operate. In the modern U.S. Navy, aircraft carriers are the backbone of the fleet. It is hard to overstate how powerful and United States aircraft carrier is in terms of wartime strength. A single aircraft carrier battle group (an aircraft carrier, ~6 escort vessels and accompanying munitions and logistics ships) has more firepower than the combined navy and air-force of 95% of the countries in the world. In the real world, carriers are extremely expensive. In Empyrion, they're dirt cheap because hanger space is dirt cheap. Every ship is a carrier. 5> I'm still learning gun strategy myself. Generally, I use turrets as defensive weapons and try to put a mix of them pointing in every direction. Their job is to fight off any fighters or other ships while I focus on my main target. The exception is the artillery turrets. I place them at the front of my ship to assist the main battery. Generally, turret AI tends to focus on weapons placements so I find them useful to target weapons on the structure (ship or base) I'm after while I plug at it with the main battery. 6> As far as I know, there is no way to hotkey weapons. This is the main reason why I started playing with Block Limits disabled so I can have a lot for flexibility with my weapons. I tend to prefer rockets for long ranged attacks. I'm old and slow so the brute force approach of rockets suits my play style. So I will mostly have rockets in my main battery. I will keep a few lasers for attacking smaller targets at closer ranges. Generally speaking, I'll have 2-3 rockets for every laser. And of course I have the artillery turrets to help. I sometimes take manual control of an artillery turret if I want to snipe a specific target. Here is the most recent CV I built. It uses what I've talked about in terms of design philosophy so perhaps it can serve as some inspiration for you. Note that there are two versions of it: one each for block limits enabled and disabled. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2599169417
I also forgot to mention that your mouse wheel will switch between your weapons when piloting a CV. With practice, you can use your mouse wheel to quickly switch between weapons and alternate fire that way.
