Survey: Ship Stats

[Viridis00]

I'd like to get a better feel of what players look for in terms of ship stats in relation to their size. I'm mostly a builder, but I've been getting back into the game gradually and to sharpen my ship building skills I'd like to know what other players look for when they take a look at the stat sheets. With the ever changing values in the config files, and an extended absence, I am somewhat lost in all honesty.

So, what I'm asking for is, what do you think is "good" or rather, what would you consider a standard of a quality ship in such categories such as but not limited to
Energy Cap/Regen
Shield Cap/Regen
Thrust/Mass Ratio
Structure and Armor HP
Weapon Damage and DPS

and any other category you feel is necessary to what makes a ship of quality in relation to the size of the ship and more importantly the role of the ship as well as the intended user. (so roleplay is pretty much not a factor at all in this survey) When I say a ship of quality, I'm not referring to a ship that is the best in its class, rather a baseline of effectiveness that can be judged as what every ship "should be" if you catch my drift. A standard of quality.

I'm aware this is very much so all down to personal preference and has a lot of potential responses because everyone has their own definitions of what makes a good "corvette" or "cruiser", "titan" and whatnot. And everyone has their own definitions of what those kinds of ships are supposed to be on top of that. So this is strictly an opinion gathering venture without a poll. I think this kind of thread can be a great resource for PvPers, salvagers, and builders alike as a general guideline to planning out good quality ships.

 

[NeonSturm]

1. Energy Cap/Regen
2. Shield Cap/Regen
3. Thrust/Mass Ratio
4. Structure and Armor HP
5. Weapon Damage and DPS

1. highly depends on alpha weapons.
2. If you can spend 1000 blocks in shield cap, you should spend at least 100 in regen. Just use a fraction and then fine-tune it.
3. Depends on the game version, updates and server-config
4. Depends on shield-weapon balance and ship type.
5. Make at least as many guns to beat 1/8 sized ships or eat the energy you already built for other stuff (use overdrive weapons).

I'd say ships should dedicate 1/5 of their systems to versatility. Except for drones and fighters that fly together with a mother-ship.
If you have a fighter, make it pure combat. An shuttle? Add versatility. A interceptor (FTL-fighter)? Add some versatility like a light cargo bay.

If something is meant to be alone, add versatility.
If something is meant to be used as spam or escort only, make it efficient, but add versatility to supporting ships (mothership, shuttles or freighters that can travel along).

 

[Thalanor]

Concerning 2): Always ensure that you have "surplus" power regen to cope with the 10x higher shield regen energy cost during combat. Because of this, do not use more than 100k shield regen per full softcap you have (e.g., 100k for a 2M regen ship, 300k for a 2M regen ship with two 2M power modules, 150k for a 3M regen ship...)

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

My "minimum expectations"...

Energy Cap/Regen

Enough to be able to move while firing primary weapon (if any) while shields are at 50%, for at least 10 seconds.

Shield Cap/Regen

I tend to go with a huge amount of shield regen and not so much shield capacity; with the idea being to regenerate under fire quicker than the average enemy can do damage. This requires a huge ship with docked cells supplying power (due to "Energy Cap/Regen" above). Scouts are an exception (cloaking and weak "higher capacity, low regen" shields).

Note: my old designs used "docked shield plates" (mostly just a ship with its own power, shield and armor; designed to absorb damage before it gets to the mother-ship; that are easily replaced). I'm currently re-thinking this approach.

Thrust/Mass Ratio

Always 2.5 or higher.

Structure and Armor HP

Never cared much (if your shields go down you've done something horribly wrong). I just put 1 layer of advanced armour on external surfaces on everything except scouts.

Weapon Damage and DPS

Depends on ship role. For scouts just some missiles (with overdrive) so you can charge up, fire (de-cloak), then re-cloak while charging up again. For miners it's similar missiles with huge amount of salvagers. Jump drive is more important than offence for both of these (better to run away, then come back in a war ship and start "asking questions violently").

For war ships I tend to go with a mixture of larger "disabling" turrets (some with 100% stop effect and some with 100% ion effect) and a bunch of smaller anti-missile turrets; where none of the turrets are able to damage blocks. Then (on the mother-ship itself) I have long range "lock on" missiles, an array of cannon+ion ("shield breaker"), an array of dumb-fire missiles ("shredder"), a power drain beam, a single beam with punch-through ("surgical knife"), and salvagers. The basic idea is to launch missiles while getting in range for the other weapons; then strip their shields; then hit them with power drain (preventing shield recharge, thrust, weapons); then shred them and/or take out key systems while they're disabled (with turrets helping to keep them in place and unshielded). Salvagers are for cleaning up after (I don't like leaving wreckage behind, and if my shields are good I'll completely salvage the remains of an overheating ship before moving onto the next target).

Passive Effects

New category! Overdrive for scout ships. I need to do more testing/calculations for ion effect to determine when it's better/worse than using the same space/power for more shield capacity/regen.

 

[alterintel]

How I do it:

• Come up with a basic shell and internal crew space for the ship
• Spam fill the whole ship with blocks to find out how much mass it will be. (useful for thrusters and passive systems later)
• Remove the spam fill (advanced build remove filter)
• Fill it up with as many power strips as is reasonable for the ship size.
• Add weapon systems so that they use approx 50% to 75% of the power, or with combo of power caps can fire for approx 10 secs without power failure
• add thrusters up to 1:1 or 2.5:1 depending on your preference. Use the number from the second step
• Add what ever passive system you want. calculate numbers from second step as well.
• Fill up the rest of the ship with shield blocks and recharges. Me personally I go for 10% recharge ie. 500,000 shields would get 50,000 recharge

Hope this helps
Good luck

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Ok... I'll bite. The following is the approach I take toward combat effectiveness. You mileage may vary and I'm sure others will chime in if I've missed anything.

Energy Cap/Regen: Push toward the 2 million power regen soft cap. You can easily get 2 million out of a 100m long ship. If you build bigger, your efficiency will start to tank. I tend to call it quits after 3.5 million/sec regen but you can always use docked reactors to boost your recharge even further. Push your power capacity as far as you can. Push it even further if you're a missile addict like me. Missiles drain energy like nothing else in the game, with the sole exception of cloaking.

Shield Cap/Regen: With capacity, more is always better. Add as much as you can in between your power grid. With regen, keep a close eye on your power regen. When your shields are at full power, they put a drain on your power based on the number of rechargers. Power drain increases to an insane rate when your shield tries to recharge after taking damage. Consider ionizing your shields to give them damage resistance, like before, keep an eye on your power. Docked shield generators are also possible but tend to be cumbersome and inefficient.

Thrust/Mass Ratio: Strive for a minimum of a 1.5 : 1 thrust/mass ratio. Get it higher if you can but do not let it go lower or your ship will handle like a beached whale driven by a bunch of drunken sailors using cattle prods... I recommend turn auto dampening on in your thrust menu as well. This will help to keep you from overshooting your destinations like shops. Also, thrust consumes power; design accordingly. Capital ships almost never get a good thrust to mass ratio but when they do, they can easily run into power grid issues. Heaven help them if they take shield damage and have to recharge.

Structure and Armor HP: Largely irrelevant. Place your thickest, heaviest armor at the front of your ship so you can attack and defend at the same time. Try not to leave any weak spots or you'll end up with gaping holes in the side of your ship when a nuke hits. Experiment with baffled armor, passive punch-through and/or piercing effects to boost your defense. My observation is that most PVPers focus more on armor rather than shields, as it negates a lot more damage

Weapon Damage and DPS: Ok... Here's the fun part. I find that DPS only matters when you're trying to take down (and keep down) an opponent's shields. If shields weren't an issue, you could slowly kill a capital with a frigate by evading it's line of fire, hiding in its blind spots and aggressively unloading your ordnance. But alas, you'd be hard pressed to find any unshielded ship besides "Isanths". Once the shields are down on your target, you need to do as much internal damage as possible. Now for the weapon types.

- Alpha strikes like nukes (missile, damage pulse, explosive) are devastating; especially when the shields go down. They are weak against AMS turrets, thick or baffled armor and sometimes, shields and can be evaded by fast moving ships. They reload VERY slowly; 90 seconds for a 1:1:1 ratio.

- Large Ion cannons (damage beam, damage beam, ion) will knock shields offline like a light switch. Reload for a 1:1:1 ratio is 15 seconds

- Cannons (especially large fast firing cannons) tend to excel at straight line block penetration. Get creative with these, as I've seen them tear ships apart when set up properly. If you have an idea where your target's weapons and jump drive, computers are, you can fire in their direction; slicing through until you hit something important, thus disabling their combat and escape capabilities. It's kind of like "coring" a ship back in the pre-HP days.

I hope this helps you.

 

[Az14el]

I'll try and answer as literally as possible since all those questions really depend on how big you want to go.
So I'll say this, the most efficient size by mass can be determined by the power soft caps, as in for maximum efficiency per ship you want a ship than can easily achieve & use just slightly under the power regen cap, while still having room for good shields, thrust & power capacity. In as small a shell as possible. Why I'm not talking about super-ultra-giga titans is because to be effective they need either spam placed power (VERY inefficient) or docked PSU's (50-60% efficient due to the amount of power cap/supply/cannon blocks required).

Basically this is the range I'd consider as a frigate/destroyer, 100k-200k blocks, for the sake of being literal lets say exactly 150k blocks.

Energy Cap/Regen - 20m/2mil
Shield Cap/Regen - 1.5m/80k (Regen can be complimented/largely replaced by shield drain weapons or docked SSU's effectively if player piloted, SD beams require situational awareness and SSU's have effects to be turned on)
Thrust/Mass Ratio - 2.0
Structure and Armor HP - Dunno/1.5-3mil (really depends on 'class', close range brawler types need adv armor, snipers need to be light with basic to standard hull to maintain their range easily)
Weapon Damage and DPS - Alpha Dmg - 5-8 million, Delta Dmg - 120-200k

This is for a ship that's probably like 75% function/25% rp as I consider my own, and anything really pushing these stats (including the size limitations) without overly sacrificing on others is impressive in my mind.

 

[Dannage]

My shps are always woefully underpowered so it doesn't really matter... :/

 

[Captainredfox]

My shps are always woefully underpowered so it doesn't really matter... :/

That's why I don't even make ships for combat.

 

[Groovrider]

My most successful ship that engaged a larger enemy (player piloted) and won...mostly

1. Energy Cap/Regen 114 million/3.8 million per second
2. Shield Cap/Regen 1.2 million/175,000 regen per second
3. Thrust/Mass Ratio 40k/50k
4. Structure and Armor HP 14 million/8 million
5. Weapon Damage and DPS classified