How to calculate ship stats in advance?

[hakkarin]

Is there some method of calculating a ship's stats in advance?

For example, let's say that I want to create a ship that has a total blaster firepower of 4k. In that case, is there some way to know in advance how much power that would require even before you start building the ship? Same thing with shields, thrust, and so on. The reason I ask is that I want to be able to know in advance the requirements of a ship so that I don't just have to figure it out as I go along. I want to be able to make detailed plans before I even start so that ship building isn't just trial and error.

 

[AtraUnam]

1 weapon block = 10dps.
1 dps = 10 power draw.
1 weapon block = 100 power draw.

 

[hakkarin]

1 weapon block = 10dps.
1 dps = 10 power draw.
1 weapon block = 100 power draw.

Thanks! Any idea how much thrust is needed to move mass/blocks and how much power said thrust requires?

And how much power does shielding require?

 

[AtraUnam]

shields require as much power as they have regen when not under fire, and 10 times that amount when being shot at.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

Is there some method of calculating a ship's stats in advance?

For example, let's say that I want to create a ship that has a total blaster firepower of 4k. In that case, is there some way to know in advance how much power that would require even before you start building the ship? Same thing with shields, thrust, and so on. The reason I ask is that I want to be able to know in advance the requirements of a ship so that I don't just have to figure it out as I go along. I want to be able to make detailed plans before I even start so that ship building isn't just trial and error.

You can find the formulas for almost everything on the corresponding pages in StarMade's official wiki. As far as I know (haven't checked for a while) these are currently all correct, and nothing too important is missing (just minor stuff, like turn rate, I think).

My normal approach is to design a ship using either a spreadsheet or a crude utility slapped together in C; starting with using the ship's intended size and shape to calculate it's volume, then its surface area, then its mass. From there I use a bunch more calculations to determine how many of what types of blocks I'd want. For example, I might say "I want the ship to be 5% shield capacitors" and "I want shield regen to take 20 seconds from no shields to full shields"; and then have a bunch of calculations to calculate number of shield capacitor blocks and number of shield regen blocks, and the amount of power that shield recharge is going to consume, etc.

Once all this is done I tweak the numbers that everything is based on. Maybe thrust isn't good enough (it never is) and I need to make sacrifices somewhere, maybe the main weapons are too power hungry and I need to increase power capacitors, maybe I completely forgot to include a jump drive and have to add that, etc.

Note that it takes a lot of work to get all the maths done; but it's probably easier than rebuilding the ship to make major changes after you realise something is bad, and definitely easier than building an entire huge titan just to find out that it's impossible to make thrust acceptable (even if it's made of thruster blocks and the minimum power regen/capacitor blocks needed for those thrusters and nothing else).

 

[hakkarin]

1 weapon block = 10dps.
1 dps = 10 power draw.
1 weapon block = 100 power draw.

Interesting. I wonder why this info isn't on the wiki.

How much power do other modules consume?

EDIT: Never mind I found this on the wiki.

 

[AtraUnam]

Only one I know asside from shields and weapons is that jump drives consume power based on the following formula
10,000+(50n) e/sec
where n is the number of modules.

 

[Panpiper]

What I often do is scratch down a whole mess of figures, including surface area calculation for the geometry of the ship to guestimate armor. Once I have a rough idea as to the essential systems I intend to put into my ship, I will do a block build in single player, where I just pile on huge blocks of systems to test out the power, the movement, etc.. By doing this preconstruction test of the systems and mass, I often head off errors well before they would otherwise be built into a ship. It's also a good time to tweak power and thrust, and possibly to modify the intended resulting ship size.

Remember to factor in, that in combat your shields will drain ten times as much power, your power system may take damage, and your opponent may use EMP or power drain against you. It is a good idea to have at least a little bit of surplus power and some decent batteries so you can sporadically thrust despite such damage.

 

[Az14el]

Weapon output & Power requirements quite simple, as Atra stated and with multipliers for # of outputs per weapons computer, 10% (or 5%? agh, pretty sure 10) power cost multiplier per output for cannons & beams, 2.5% multiplier per output for missiles.

Shields certainly don't drain 10x while in combat in actuality (technically yes but practically no), it increases to 10 power per 1 shield while shields are under 100% capacity. At 100% its 1 power for 1 shields as a passive cost. In combat you will get at maximum 25% of your total recharge, thereby increasing the cost of shield recharge in combat relative to full shield idling by a maximum of only x4. 100k Recharge will be effective with 400k reserve e/s, and that would only be required when your shields are at absolute minimum but not completely down.

Jamming is a consideration most ships could benefit from, requires a hefty 50 e/s per mass, trivial on small ships, on large ships its still easy to cover but consider a 500k mass ship would have to sacrifice 25 million e/s, or a potential 2.5million dps before effects. Still a massive defensive and offensive advantage which can be toggled on and off, almost always bring a jammer, but don't necessarily build to fight with it on at all times, especially on larger ships.

If you're looking for more values then Starmade>Data>Config>blockbehaviourconfig.xml is a treasure trove (keep in mind some servers will make edits here and not always make a note of it)

 

[kingreol]

i generally balance post-hull. mostly because i tend to have irregular spaces. i thought of using a filler block to see how much system space i have. then calculate and then go. my issue is hull weight with pleasing designs. the texture update helped a little with basic hull looking better. but personally i hate the look on anything larger then 10k

 

[Croquelune]

Here an usefull spreadsheet done by Olxinos. It help a lot to anticipate things.

(Yet another?) weapon spreadsheet