I've never built any big ships before, and I'm not sure how big I want this ship to be. I want it to be decent at everything. I also want to have some cannon/beam and missile/beam turrets all with the punch-through effect, but that's about all I know. Is having turrets with missiles as primary a good idea? Is having a ship that's decent at everything a good idea, or should I specialize in one type of combat? Also, should I have drones/AI fighters or should any turrets I put on be able to deal with smaller enemies if needed? Sorry if I'm not really making sense, I'm just trying to get my thoughts/questions out for someone more experienced with shipbuilding to answer before I go out and make some really weak ship.
Advice on a large ship I'm wanting to build
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MrFURB
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I'll see what I can help with.
Missile/beam can easily finish off damaged enemies or chunk their shields nicely but suffers from being able to be shot down by point defenses. I would recommend you either have a number of these turrets to ensure your target is hit or have some sort of distraction missile system, such as logic activated missile/cannon or even turreted missile/cannon. The goal being that your rapid fire dummy missiles will occupy the enemy anti-missile turrets while the beefy missile/beam turrets slip through and wreck the enemy.
1. Anti-shield
Lots of players prefer to focus on shield tanking. Shields are pretty much just a massive health pool you have to get through in order to actually begin afflicting damage on the enemy. So it follows that to counter that you need to deal a very high amount of damage as quickly as possible. A favorite anti-shield weapon of mine is beam/beam/ion. It is accurate, has a 1.5 sector range, and with full ion effect throws around 30 seconds worth of damage at the enemy shields all at once.
2. Anti-block
Once the enemy shields are down, you need to finish the fight with block damage. Some weapons are better than others for this. As a general rule, rapid fire weapons and missiles have very good block destruction while beams and weapons that have a long reload time have poor block destruction. Cannon/cannon/punch is a popular all-rounder, a large number of rapid beams can shave off blocks quickly, and missiles can create some very nasty craters.
3. Range
If your ship is slow and only has short range weapons, you will find yourself harassed by smart players in railgun or missile platforms. You should make sure that you have either good mobility (usually means better than 1.0 thrust/mass) or long ranged weapons. Having both makes a ship great for skirmishing.
If you have any other questions feel free to toss them here.
Both of those are good choices. Cannon/beam can snipe at brawlers from beyond their range. Their only notable weakness is a lower block destruction rate due to how damage propagates in Starmade.
Missile/beam can easily finish off damaged enemies or chunk their shields nicely but suffers from being able to be shot down by point defenses. I would recommend you either have a number of these turrets to ensure your target is hit or have some sort of distraction missile system, such as logic activated missile/cannon or even turreted missile/cannon. The goal being that your rapid fire dummy missiles will occupy the enemy anti-missile turrets while the beefy missile/beam turrets slip through and wreck the enemy.
Either route can be done. When you're coming up with a combat ship's offense there are a couple things that I try to keep in mind.
1. Anti-shield
Lots of players prefer to focus on shield tanking. Shields are pretty much just a massive health pool you have to get through in order to actually begin afflicting damage on the enemy. So it follows that to counter that you need to deal a very high amount of damage as quickly as possible. A favorite anti-shield weapon of mine is beam/beam/ion. It is accurate, has a 1.5 sector range, and with full ion effect throws around 30 seconds worth of damage at the enemy shields all at once.
2. Anti-block
Once the enemy shields are down, you need to finish the fight with block damage. Some weapons are better than others for this. As a general rule, rapid fire weapons and missiles have very good block destruction while beams and weapons that have a long reload time have poor block destruction. Cannon/cannon/punch is a popular all-rounder, a large number of rapid beams can shave off blocks quickly, and missiles can create some very nasty craters.
3. Range
If your ship is slow and only has short range weapons, you will find yourself harassed by smart players in railgun or missile platforms. You should make sure that you have either good mobility (usually means better than 1.0 thrust/mass) or long ranged weapons. Having both makes a ship great for skirmishing.
Turrets should be able to keep light craft at bay, however don't let that stop you from adding your own drones if you desire. It's been proven time and again that a number of small ships is usually stronger than a single ship of their combined mass... They just get a little bit hard to control.
If you have any other questions feel free to toss them here.
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About missiles Mb (missile/beam) to be specific.
Tips: Have multiple outputs so that some reach through the AMS turrets.
Have them firing forward so that you can hit even if target is jammed.
3 Effects I can recommend:
Piercing effect, good for everything, the AP missile is different and is not weak against shields like the other AP weapons.
Punch, is good to destroy enemy armour faster.
Explosive makes the potential destruction area even bigger, and is good but best used on systems with a total size larger than 500 blocks.
Tips: Have multiple outputs so that some reach through the AMS turrets.
Have them firing forward so that you can hit even if target is jammed.
3 Effects I can recommend:
Piercing effect, good for everything, the AP missile is different and is not weak against shields like the other AP weapons.
Punch, is good to destroy enemy armour faster.
Explosive makes the potential destruction area even bigger, and is good but best used on systems with a total size larger than 500 blocks.
If you use missiles, you need decoys - on many servers and on standard SP, PDTs are insanely effective, downing 90% of all missiles coming at them if the ship is suitably overarmed with turrets. As the difficulty goes up this number goes up quite quickly, and there is a very easy to reach point where, given high AI accuracy and a sane number of incoming missiles, the PDTs on a ship will not fail to destroy all incoming projectiles, or at least sink their combined damage below your shield tanking capacity.
So, shields and armor. First off, shields are basically a shell around your ship that must be entirely destroyed before your ship can suffer damage - and it regenerates for free. Your usage depends on what you want the ship to do, and what it ends up able to do. For staying in long, tough fights, high regen (above 20% of capacity every second) is necessary to keep your shields up. For hit-and-run, lower regen can be chosen (10% is lowest I would go to still be able to tank against smaller or less efficient vessels) in favor of using the space for higher capacity. I would recommend filling with shields - after your weapons, thrust, and power grid are in, then add shields. Leave space until the bitter end of the massive effort of filling a large ship in order to adjust your thrust and power grid to your liking (i.e. add more thrust or power to run all systems aboard). Don't build around the shields.
Armor: These are basically suicide blocks capable of withstanding a good amount of punishment before going away. Advanced Armor is, in my opinion (not the only one out there, btw), the only one worth using on larger combat ships. The other option is to go for hull-only construction, and rely on shield tanking and the massive speed boost from shedding metric tons of armor from the ship. That's my opinion, and it may be wrong and/or nobody will agree to it. If you're using it, go for layers. Layers upon layers. Some heavy warships (800m long in this case), i.e. NFD Cherokee class heavy cruisers (the designation, heavy cruiser, is a personal thing - choose to class your ships any way you like), have up to and exceeding 100m of solid advanced armor before you find any systems. That's a little extreme, but dang that's tough.
Another suggestion is to layer the serious amounts of armor over only those systems essential for combat. For instance, sheath your power grid and weaponry, plus the core and computer assemblies (to FIRE the weapons, slightly important) in 8 layers of AA, but leave the rest of the ship under 2 layers of Standard or AA (standard having a smoother texture than hull, and also being more resistant to light explosions while costing less than AA). Most important of all - don't place armor where it's not needed. Currently living quarters are unnecessary - use them as blast shields directly beneath the hull, to absorb explosions in pure space, and to deplete other munitions by fiddling with SM's ludicrous damage penetration system.
And use your shield capacitors, then your rechargers, then thrusters as a sort of secondary hull to defend weapons and power. If they're getting shot, they're doing you no good at the moment anyways, because you don't have shields charged (but you might yet charge them, defend the recehargers), then you haven't gotten them charged in time to stop damage, but you might still get away from heavy warships; then you're screwed and your only option is to go down fighting (thruster bank annihilated).
Thrust! Go for high thrust. As you build bigger, thrusters become less efficient, to the point that adding more is pointless and you need to A. lose weight for a faster ship or B. give up and build tougher. Adding more, that is, unless you're building a Titan and need it to move faster than 1 m/s on a server where max speed is lightspeed.
Weaponry: Missile/Beam is probably the only missile worth considering for a slow, heavy vessel. It's a fast missile, long range and fast moving. Missile/Pulse is a nuke - slow and vulnerable, but makes a gigantic crater in unshielded, basic-hull coated targets. And if you put it inside - game over. Missile/Missile - heatseeker shotgun, will target anything and everything but the ship that launches them. Including friendlies and indestructible stations. No good for use with allies nearby, or for defending anything you care about, but might be a useful anti-fighter weapon if they're a problem for your ship (only insanely large ones). Missile/Cannon - rapid-fire dumbfire missiles. Dunno, haven't used them much but at small scales they don't hit that hard.
Cannon/cannon/punch-through is the fallback weapon of choice, if you're not feeling inventive. Amazing all-rounder, but shortranged - good for light-ship-killing but gonna need some time on big ones, for smaller systems. Can lag servers into messing up calculations at 100% effect, resulting in lost shots. Cannon/beam - long-range sniper weapon, 4 second reload at maximum effect but insane range (AI only at top ranges, you don't load targets in lol) and good damage boost. Cannon/pulse - ah, not sure about it. Massive reload for a cannon system, but smaller weapons can go through a lot more if equipped with Can/Pul/Overdrive. However, they do draw more power by a massive margin, so be careful of that.
Beams can be used for hitscanning targets, which basically means killing things without fail if you can see them and can aim well. They have several well-known glitches and I don't know if they've been adjusted yet to solve those glitches. These include glitchy damage mechanics and occasionally dodging the target - see somebody's sig, I can't think whose, has a quote in it about beams. However, like salvage beams, if you set it to a size to eliminate one AA block per tick, it should be the maximum efficiency it can hit, and then you just need to add outputs to it. Beam-Cannon can become basically a continuous beam outputting damage every tick; Beam-Pulse can be a massively devastating anti-shield weapon, as can Beam-Beam although the extra range may not be useful if you can't render your target out there. For AI turrets Beam-Beam should be reasonably effective as an anti-shield weapon because of its range and hitscanning (they don't have to lead correctly; I don't know what all the accuracy factor accounts for though). I haven't tested thoroughly because of the glitches with it, but it is a weapon and technically has the same damage output over time as equivalently sized other weapons. Especially versus shields as there's no need to calculate block damage, just bulk damage.
So, shields and armor. First off, shields are basically a shell around your ship that must be entirely destroyed before your ship can suffer damage - and it regenerates for free. Your usage depends on what you want the ship to do, and what it ends up able to do. For staying in long, tough fights, high regen (above 20% of capacity every second) is necessary to keep your shields up. For hit-and-run, lower regen can be chosen (10% is lowest I would go to still be able to tank against smaller or less efficient vessels) in favor of using the space for higher capacity. I would recommend filling with shields - after your weapons, thrust, and power grid are in, then add shields. Leave space until the bitter end of the massive effort of filling a large ship in order to adjust your thrust and power grid to your liking (i.e. add more thrust or power to run all systems aboard). Don't build around the shields.
Armor: These are basically suicide blocks capable of withstanding a good amount of punishment before going away. Advanced Armor is, in my opinion (not the only one out there, btw), the only one worth using on larger combat ships. The other option is to go for hull-only construction, and rely on shield tanking and the massive speed boost from shedding metric tons of armor from the ship. That's my opinion, and it may be wrong and/or nobody will agree to it. If you're using it, go for layers. Layers upon layers. Some heavy warships (800m long in this case), i.e. NFD Cherokee class heavy cruisers (the designation, heavy cruiser, is a personal thing - choose to class your ships any way you like), have up to and exceeding 100m of solid advanced armor before you find any systems. That's a little extreme, but dang that's tough.
Another suggestion is to layer the serious amounts of armor over only those systems essential for combat. For instance, sheath your power grid and weaponry, plus the core and computer assemblies (to FIRE the weapons, slightly important) in 8 layers of AA, but leave the rest of the ship under 2 layers of Standard or AA (standard having a smoother texture than hull, and also being more resistant to light explosions while costing less than AA). Most important of all - don't place armor where it's not needed. Currently living quarters are unnecessary - use them as blast shields directly beneath the hull, to absorb explosions in pure space, and to deplete other munitions by fiddling with SM's ludicrous damage penetration system.
And use your shield capacitors, then your rechargers, then thrusters as a sort of secondary hull to defend weapons and power. If they're getting shot, they're doing you no good at the moment anyways, because you don't have shields charged (but you might yet charge them, defend the recehargers), then you haven't gotten them charged in time to stop damage, but you might still get away from heavy warships; then you're screwed and your only option is to go down fighting (thruster bank annihilated).
Thrust! Go for high thrust. As you build bigger, thrusters become less efficient, to the point that adding more is pointless and you need to A. lose weight for a faster ship or B. give up and build tougher. Adding more, that is, unless you're building a Titan and need it to move faster than 1 m/s on a server where max speed is lightspeed.
Weaponry: Missile/Beam is probably the only missile worth considering for a slow, heavy vessel. It's a fast missile, long range and fast moving. Missile/Pulse is a nuke - slow and vulnerable, but makes a gigantic crater in unshielded, basic-hull coated targets. And if you put it inside - game over. Missile/Missile - heatseeker shotgun, will target anything and everything but the ship that launches them. Including friendlies and indestructible stations. No good for use with allies nearby, or for defending anything you care about, but might be a useful anti-fighter weapon if they're a problem for your ship (only insanely large ones). Missile/Cannon - rapid-fire dumbfire missiles. Dunno, haven't used them much but at small scales they don't hit that hard.
Cannon/cannon/punch-through is the fallback weapon of choice, if you're not feeling inventive. Amazing all-rounder, but shortranged - good for light-ship-killing but gonna need some time on big ones, for smaller systems. Can lag servers into messing up calculations at 100% effect, resulting in lost shots. Cannon/beam - long-range sniper weapon, 4 second reload at maximum effect but insane range (AI only at top ranges, you don't load targets in lol) and good damage boost. Cannon/pulse - ah, not sure about it. Massive reload for a cannon system, but smaller weapons can go through a lot more if equipped with Can/Pul/Overdrive. However, they do draw more power by a massive margin, so be careful of that.
Beams can be used for hitscanning targets, which basically means killing things without fail if you can see them and can aim well. They have several well-known glitches and I don't know if they've been adjusted yet to solve those glitches. These include glitchy damage mechanics and occasionally dodging the target - see somebody's sig, I can't think whose, has a quote in it about beams. However, like salvage beams, if you set it to a size to eliminate one AA block per tick, it should be the maximum efficiency it can hit, and then you just need to add outputs to it. Beam-Cannon can become basically a continuous beam outputting damage every tick; Beam-Pulse can be a massively devastating anti-shield weapon, as can Beam-Beam although the extra range may not be useful if you can't render your target out there. For AI turrets Beam-Beam should be reasonably effective as an anti-shield weapon because of its range and hitscanning (they don't have to lead correctly; I don't know what all the accuracy factor accounts for though). I haven't tested thoroughly because of the glitches with it, but it is a weapon and technically has the same damage output over time as equivalently sized other weapons. Especially versus shields as there's no need to calculate block damage, just bulk damage.
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Turrets. Turrets are your new friend now.
You will want most of the turret underneath the hull. You will want it to be self powered. If you do this right, you will have some very nasty guns that will be completely self sufficient. It will affect role play room however.
You will also want to test your ships out on a single player server with collision set to on, and attack a pirate station. A lot of the "pvp" designs here can not survive 4 minutes in a collision on environment. This is the ultimate test for your turrets: if they can kill the isanths before they run into your ship to destroy you, then your ship is capable of surviving on it's own.
You will want most of the turret underneath the hull. You will want it to be self powered. If you do this right, you will have some very nasty guns that will be completely self sufficient. It will affect role play room however.
You will also want to test your ships out on a single player server with collision set to on, and attack a pirate station. A lot of the "pvp" designs here can not survive 4 minutes in a collision on environment. This is the ultimate test for your turrets: if they can kill the isanths before they run into your ship to destroy you, then your ship is capable of surviving on it's own.
First advice of mine is don't build big. The game doesn't handle big ships well right now, especially on servers. It also takes forever, and you risk burnout and leaving the game. Build small quick projects you feel good about and practice all those ideas, templates, styles up to do a big ship later.
Are you building a noobcube big ship? ...cuz if so, take everyone's advice above. They're giving you great systems advice, but no actual "building" advice.
Do you want a big ship that looks nice? If so, draw it on paper or in photoshop first, or find a reference pic to copy online. I recommend Orpheus7 on DeviantArt . Then you can decide how big you want it to be, once you know what you want it to look like. Turn your drawing into a skeleton wire-frame in-game, then, and tweak that and adjust that to something that looks good in 3D, then start skinning the ship. Interior next. Systems last.
I wouldn't bother with dimensional x,y,z reactors anymore. Not worth it. Just "checkerboard" in lines of reactor blocks along the longest axis of your ship. Much easier and just as efficient.
Do you want 1 ship to fly around in all the time and be really proud of? Then be happy with the maxim "Jack of all trades, master of none" in your generalist ship. It will never, ever the best at anything, and you will get owned by anyone that comes along with a specialist ship, and you need to accept that fact before you ever start building. You will, however, be able to do everything, instantly, on a whim, in your 1 ship, and go everywhere in it and have it be your trademark 'famous' ship. Build big, take your time, because you'll probably keep adding to it and changing things constantly.
Do you want several ships to fiddle around with and keep switching between for different specialized roles? If so, then separate each role or tactic into a different ship, to specialize and be the best possible: a cannon dogfighter or anti-fighter gunship, an ECCM missile boat, a damage tank, a miner... etc
Once you have all that decided, you will know what weapons and systems you want and how much. On any "big" ship, you're going to struggle with reactor regen rate and thrust ratio. Just give up worrying about those now before you even start. As you approach 400m or above, it is a waste of time, IMO, to worry about thrust ratio. Get it to 100m/s, add a jump drive, and be happy with your slow, big ship.
Are you building a noobcube big ship? ...cuz if so, take everyone's advice above. They're giving you great systems advice, but no actual "building" advice.
Do you want a big ship that looks nice? If so, draw it on paper or in photoshop first, or find a reference pic to copy online. I recommend Orpheus7 on DeviantArt . Then you can decide how big you want it to be, once you know what you want it to look like. Turn your drawing into a skeleton wire-frame in-game, then, and tweak that and adjust that to something that looks good in 3D, then start skinning the ship. Interior next. Systems last.
I wouldn't bother with dimensional x,y,z reactors anymore. Not worth it. Just "checkerboard" in lines of reactor blocks along the longest axis of your ship. Much easier and just as efficient.
Do you want 1 ship to fly around in all the time and be really proud of? Then be happy with the maxim "Jack of all trades, master of none" in your generalist ship. It will never, ever the best at anything, and you will get owned by anyone that comes along with a specialist ship, and you need to accept that fact before you ever start building. You will, however, be able to do everything, instantly, on a whim, in your 1 ship, and go everywhere in it and have it be your trademark 'famous' ship. Build big, take your time, because you'll probably keep adding to it and changing things constantly.
Do you want several ships to fiddle around with and keep switching between for different specialized roles? If so, then separate each role or tactic into a different ship, to specialize and be the best possible: a cannon dogfighter or anti-fighter gunship, an ECCM missile boat, a damage tank, a miner... etc
Once you have all that decided, you will know what weapons and systems you want and how much. On any "big" ship, you're going to struggle with reactor regen rate and thrust ratio. Just give up worrying about those now before you even start. As you approach 400m or above, it is a waste of time, IMO, to worry about thrust ratio. Get it to 100m/s, add a jump drive, and be happy with your slow, big ship.
