how thick is your ship?

[Sven_The_Slayer]

As defined by the arbitrary rules that I have assigned myself that I follow when I build... All ship classes from corvette and up are required to have no less than 2 meters of hull between pressurized cabin and space, therefore ships have an inner and outer hall. All larger military vehicles typically have a layer of shield capacitors between the inner and outer hulls. I suspect as I build bigger ships my layer system may adapt but I probably won't build anything else until future versions with more complete features, such as hyper-drive, the HP system and the Engine Overhaul.

 

[russweis]

ya.. I think I'm going to run 2 or 3 layers till I get more hard hull plus build rooms with layers for extra support. Is it better to have a large shield pool or fast recharge?

 

[rocketman221]

Multiple layers are a waste. Put shields in there instead and you will be much better off.

 

[TrainDodger]

For me, the thickness of the outer hull varies depending on the ship's design. My latest builds have placed all the interior compartments in an armored "cage", with component blocks like shielding used to fill the space between the inner cage and the outer hull, so there's always no less than 10m of blocks between the outside of the hull and the innermost compartments. In my newer titan designs, the core is enclosed in an armored sphere or octahedron at least 25 to 50m across, and this inner armor is enclosed in a compartment protected by multiple layers of hull and components in all directions. Most capital-class ships use weapons that cannot tell the difference between hardened hull and components. One cannon projectile = one block destroyed. Or far more than one block, with the right effects.

If you want armor that will deter fighters after your shields are downed, then sure. But don't think for one second that it will stop the primary (or even the secondary, or tertiary) armaments of a monster ship that goes over the credit cap. The titan I was recently building has eight forward guns with a combined 3,000,000 DPS that have Cannon-Laser-Punch Through, and do a damage of nine million with each shot and have 2km range while consuming 150,000,000 power with each shot.

I built a test target that was 500m long of solid hardened hull in a square prism shape. The gun punched all the way through and out the opposite side. I have no doubt that if the target had been more than twice as long, it still would have punched right through and continued all the way out the back of the target, or at least the length of a default sector or more. No matter how thick your armor is, there is no protecting your core from that once your shields are down. Know your enemy. Know the limitations of the firing arcs of their weapons, and exploit them. Your priorities for defense should always be Avoidance > Shielding > Armor. Never the opposite.

 

[NeonSturm]

I design my ships with:

• Room, 1 wall, 1 empty, 1 wall, Room

and

• 1 Ceiling
• 3..5 Room
  
• 1 Floor
• 3 Engineer-deck
  
• 1 Ceiling
• 3..5 Room
• 1 Floor
• ... repeat
• sum= 13..17 meters|blocks per 2 main decks + 1 engineer deck.

with

• 50% of the engineer-decks filled.
• some rooms filled which may take 2+ decks.

With this you can make sneaky paths between walls and have an engineers-only deck between 2 others.​

Good RP ships use 5 decorative (hull, deco) blocks per 1 vital (reactor, weapon, shield) at least => vitals are 1/6 of your ship.

But expect RP ships to have from time to time 5..10 non-functional blocks per vital.

This includes a 5% thick hull.
5% bottom + 5% top = 10% of ship thickness.​

The problem I currently have

Engineer-deck layers are 5m, not 2.5m and UN-naturally high.
5m = shared ceiling, shared floor, array connection + 2 m to walk upright below a connection line.
2.5m = 2* 0.5m floor/ceilling, 0.5m connection line, 1m crawling.​

I think that breaks immersion a bit too much (ceiling > 3 m for a deck ???)

 

[russweis]

If i make a ship that is 2 hull blocks thick with 3 hard hall thick and still jack up my shields and guns ill still be able to kill pirates right?

 

[NeonSturm]

Against pirates you need 2 turrets the size of 1/4 their fleet (both together = 1/4) and evade in circles (DEAQ... = right, up, left, down repeat)

Or fly backwards and keep shooting (until the new patch is out with distributed thrust)

 

[Valiant70]

I design my ships with:

• Room, 1 wall, 1 empty, 1 wall, Room

and

• 1 Ceiling
• 3..5 Room
  
• 1 Floor
• 3 Engineer-deck
  
• 1 Ceiling
• 3..5 Room
• 1 Floor
• ... repeat
• sum= 13..17 meters|blocks per 2 main decks + 1 engineer deck.

with

• 50% of the engineer-decks filled.
• some rooms filled which may take 2+ decks.

With this you can make sneaky paths between walls and have an engineers-only deck between 2 others.​

Good RP ships use 5 decorative (hull, deco) blocks per 1 vital (reactor, weapon, shield) at least => vitals are 1/6 of your ship.

But expect RP ships to have from time to time 5..10 non-functional blocks per vital.

This includes a 5% thick hull.
5% bottom + 5% top = 10% of ship thickness.​

The problem I currently have

Engineer-deck layers are 5m, not 2.5m and UN-naturally high.
5m = shared ceiling, shared floor, array connection + 2 m to walk upright below a connection line.
2.5m = 2* 0.5m floor/ceilling, 0.5m connection line, 1m crawling.​

I think that breaks immersion a bit too much (ceiling > 3 m for a deck ???)

I think you're focusing too much on RP if your ships are that bad. It's possible to strike a good balance, with aesthetics taking up a lot less mass than you'd expect.

 

[Jonj57]

Multiple layers are a waste. Put shields in there instead and you will be much better off.

Wont be a waste if they follow up on the armour/HP system they said was coming. You really are right though, as it stands now the current hull/hardened blocks are practically downright useless.

 

[jayman38]

If i make a ship that is 2 hull blocks thick with 3 hard hall thick and still jack up my shields and guns ill still be able to kill pirates right?

Yes.
If they never get through your shields, they'll never touch your armor at all. More shields!

 

[Lecic]

When the new HP system comes out, it'll probably be worth it to have a few layers of hull. I build my ships with that in mind. 3 layers of hull on military vessels larger than a corvette. 1 or 2 on fighters and corvettes. Miners and repair ships only get one, most of the time.

Where you layer your armor is important, too. You shouldn't be layering it thick around non-essential extremities, but important sections, like the core/bridge (once we get the HP system), logic banks, storage, react0r (if you've got one instead of easily sliced lines), main weapon systems, etc.

EDIT- Ablative shielding is nice, too, if you can fit it in. I've only built a single ship with it, but it can be very effective if you use it right.

 

[russweis]

Right now i am laying 2 layers of advanced hull over my ship then a 3rd layer will be for the paint job. Right now i am adding my engine and i just realized how to i protect them? After my shields go down and armor soak up damage, the bad guy will just get behind me and pop my engine blocks out that only have 25hp and no armor. Is there a way to make them harder to hit?

 

[Aecetym]

Right now i am laying 2 layers of advanced hull over my ship then a 3rd layer will be for the paint job. Right now i am adding my engine and i just realized how to i protect them? After my shields go down and armor soak up damage, the bad guy will just get behind me and pop my engine blocks out that only have 25hp and no armor. Is there a way to make them harder to hit?

By building engine structures around them like this:

No reason for them to be not covered by hull and lights.

 

[Keptick]

When the Hp system comes out I'll be weaving armor into my ship's systems. But until then, it's 1 block thick hull for me. A single layer of shields is just superior to an extra layer of hull.

@Aecetym That is the most epic engines I have seen so far. It puts mine to shame...

 

[Aecetym]

When the Hp system comes out I'll be weaving armor into my ship's systems. But until then, it's 1 block thick hull for me. A single layer of shields is just superior to an extra layer of hull.

@Aecetym That is the most epic engines I have seen so far. It puts mine to shame...

What if I told you they are the failed result of me trying to copy the design and combine your engines with those of others.

 

[russweis]

Holy poop how big is that ship? My ship is about 2000 long 400 tall and 600 wide.

 

[Thalanor]

@russweis can you still buy that thing with credits? :D
(or view more than half of it at once for that matter)

On topic: I only use one layer of advanced armor for the external shell, plus alot of decorative plating (that doesn't cover 100% of the shell) on top of that. Instead (also with the upcoming HP system in mind) I have thick armor plates in strategic positions like shielding the core from incoming fire from the front. Usually, the outmost shell is followed by a large amount of shield blocks that are mostly redundant and serve to soak up missile radii. This won't stop an entire guided missile battery when the shields are down (if I don't manage to shoot these down I just... have lost), but it does stop stray missiles from tearing open the walkable interior at a glance.

 

[Aecetym]

Holy poop how big is that ship? My ship is about 2000 long 400 tall and 600 wide.

700 long, 203 tall and 325 wide. I don't know what the dimentions are of the engines but the prefab engine is 38 long, 86 wide and 86 tall to keep it copy/past-able. Most detail structures I put on ships these days are prefab parts put together. 1 engineblock is just 4 prefab engines designs put together with a shell build around them, allowing me to create endless new designs with the same parts.

 

[DaveC9000]

My ship is so thin that if you stare at it really hard you'll probably pierce the hull. If I had a chief engineer (I hired a crew, but they all flew out into space) I would yell at him for MORE SHIELDS!!!

 

[Vengeance42]

Speaking of aesthetics, my middle layers of hull are black, so that if just the outer hull is stripped away, the black hull underneath might look a bit like carbon scoring. Once I take my current project into a test run against some isanths, I'll know if that idea worked or not.

Carbon scoring! Well, I think this is a made-up term from Star Wars.