Hull Material and Thickness?

[Tamren Shade]

What do people use for the basic hull/spaceframe of ships and how thick do you lay it on?

And more specifically, I'm starting work on my next ship which will be a large heavy cruiser/drone assault carrier based on the Battlefleet Gothic Dictator Shell Encoded put on the docks a while ago. The ship is 500 meters long and tapers from 200 wide and 150 tall at the rear down to about 80 high and 80 wide at the front. I'm guessing I'll finally be pushing past 1 million blocks by the time I'm done.

Do I have enough volume to pull off 4 layers of advance armor for the base hull, and kicking that up to between 6 and 10 on the Ram and gun deck? And still be able to move :p ?

 

[Malacodor]

Let's simplify it a bit and assume the ship was a 500x100x100 brick. That's 5 million blocks and 220 000 surface blocks. Build a lengthy brick out of 4.8 million system blocks, consisting of as much thruster blocks as you want to have and enough reactors to power them, then add 220k blocks of advanced armor. Make a test flight, then replace 220k system blocks with advanced armor (make sure you can still power the thrusters) and test again. Rinse and repeat until the ship gets too slow. And keep a fire extinguisher at hand in case your computer overheats.

 

[sayerulz]

If your going for a 40k build, you can never go wrong with advanced armor. Just lay it on.

 

[Edymnion]

When I build big, I usually go for just a double layer main hull, and then individually have bulkheads around important areas. So once you're through the main hull, you might get some thrusters and shields, but the reactors and weapons are encased in another layer or two of armor deeper in.

Same level of protection for the vital systems, much less overall weight.

 

[Calhoun]

Spaced armour is important too don't forget!

 

[Deserea]

Depends really

For my bigger ships, the interior spaces I usually use some kind of hull, but the frame will either be made of standard(if I want any kind of speed like I did with my battle cruiser) *or* advanced if I want a pure warship like I have been with the cruiser im working on now. My armor is layered like mad around vital systems so even if you break through the outer armor, to hit the important stuff, you have to get through more armor, like Edy said.

 

[Malacodor]

Depends really

For my bigger ships, the interior spaces I usually use some kind of hull, but the frame will either be made of standard(if I want any kind of speed like I did with my battle cruiser) *or* advanced if I want a pure warship like I have been with the cruiser im working on now. My armor is layered like mad around vital systems so even if you break through the outer armor, to hit the important stuff, you have to get through more armor, like Edy said.

I don't think standard armor is worth it. It has only 25% of the effective HP of advanced armor, but 60% of its mass.

 

[Deserea]

I don't think standard armor is worth it. It has only 25% of the effective HP of advanced armor, but 60% of its mass.

Its not if you want a ship meant for nothing more than fighting. The ship im talking about in particular I also use for scouting among other things, so having that reduced mass is helpful, plus to me it looks better. If I made that same ship out of advanced armor it would weight probably double what it does now(95k without all docked entities), and that would kill its speed, and be really expensive to make.

That's why I pointed out my other cruiser which is nothing but advanced armor, different role entirely, and it needs a different build to suit such a role

 

[Master_Artificer]

"put your thickest armor where your mouth is"

Aka, have it in the front, for your fore is where you hurl insults and damage at people.
Thus, your ship should be pointed at your foe
Thus, the fore of your ship is where you should count on the most damage happening.

Exception: Missiles
People love vertical and side launched missiles, so have the armor of your 'not-front' area of the vessel be spaced armor and such. Types of armor to defeat a missile impact, even though it is weaker than just solid armor against cannon cannons.

Also have all your fancy interiors in the front, before your systems. It can be a sort of "spaced armor" that also makes your ship look nice.


Use hull or advanced (advanced is way cheaper than it used to be, and not a pain in the butt to make anymore), standard is only really good for looks or roll play purposes. Otherwise, advanced-hull composites are more efficient.


Now, "IS YOUR ARMOR THICK ENOUGH?"

Take your ship gun and shoot at a brick to test the penetration. Then, if you think you are going to be facing people with similar sized weapons, make it so your own ship cannot pen itself. My 71 block long ship has 16 blocks of frontal armor (and 1 hull block of side armor, you need to make sacrifices somewhere) and is really only killed by missiles. In that 16 blocks of frontal armor is a cockpit and a room, which adds spaced armor to the front of the design and helps against missile-cannons and makes it look good. 4 powerlines do snake though the armor, and same with cannon barrels, but they are not straight lines so a lucky shot doesn't move through the entire line to the back of the ship.

Hope this helps.


EDIT:
Another tidbit: it takes exponential damage for a single missile hit to get though progressively more layers of armor, so much so that 5 layers of advanced armor will shield you from almost all types of missiles out there on the first hit. Thus a battleship of 400+ meters in length would do good to have 5m of advanced armor (0r the equivalent in spaced armor) as the all around armor, and the 40-50+ meters of advanced in the front to prevent cannon cannon waffles from disintegrating you.
Sloped armor allows you to get up to the 40 meters thick without a large addition of weight/mass but limits your internal volume. So too much slope hinders you and too little slope hinders you.
Thank you for your time.

 

[BDLS]

Is the ship going to be used in multiplayer servers or just single player creative? Getting enough ferkiteen to create that much advanced armor is going to take ages if you're mining for it.

 

[Nickizzy]

Is the ship going to be used in multiplayer servers or just single player creative? Getting enough ferkiteen to create that much advanced armor is going to take ages if you're mining for it.

but mah fleet miners...

Really. If you set it up right, you can make a cargo ship and fly around parking where you have a couple of asteroid sectors in view range(rendered), then send out the drones and make a small refinery platform depending on where you are(and what you brought with you), you could make a automated adv armor factory in the corner too. When you mine all the sectors in range, strip the station and fly to another spot. Leave the station, they can be either outposts or you can leave them for your next run through(regenerating asteroid sectors) so you don't have to pay 50k each time.

While the drones are mining, you could mess around on forums(I'm totally not doing that right now guys), be social in chat, experiment with something, or if you make a BP or copy/paste of the station and you add a shipyard, design/create small crafts. Spending hours under the white glow is a thing of the past in my world.

 

[BDLS]

Eh, I still think manually mining planets is a lot more lucrative, but even doing that its gonna take forever to get enough advanced armor for what the OP talks about. 500 meters long? 4 layers of adv?

I'd probably go adv outer to take the initial hit, then maybe a couple standard layers underneath.

 

[Edymnion]

Is the ship going to be used in multiplayer servers or just single player creative? Getting enough ferkiteen to create that much advanced armor is going to take ages if you're mining for it.

Not really, ever since they upped the asteroid size after the chunk update, I can get roughly the same amount of ore from an asteroid sector as I could an entire planetary plate.

I actually have a waypoint bookmarked for my home sector named "Fertikeen Sector" because it has three nice big fertikeen asteroids in it. Warp in, eat them, go eat the big 4k fert asteroid in the next sector, go home with 80k+ fertikeen in 5 minutes.

 

[Tamren Shade]

So it's possible to go super thick on the front, which is something I've been starting to do anyways. Just not to the point where a 70m long ship has 15m of advanced armor on the front :p

I've also been adding 5m thick advanced bulkheads that divide my ships into sections from bow to stern, that way if one section gets holed from the front, it may stop at the bulkhead.

I'm on a build server where I'm constructing this thing, and the survival server I'm has a 32x Owned Sector Bonus. I can get the resources in a few hours of mining to spawn it in after I've built the thing on the build server. ;D

 

[EricBlank]

6m is a fair thickness for most armor, I've gone up to 12 on the bow of my frigates and that is more than enough to discourage missiles, such as those from an Alpha pirate station, approaching from the front. Don't have to lay it on more than 2-3m thick for parts of the craft that aren't meant to be heavily armored, and of course you want internal bulkheads to divide it up. Do like was suggested above and put shield capacitors beneath your armor, for further protection. You can definitely fit in enough systems to run everything, so long as you don't go absolutely nuts with the weaponry and thrust. A lower T:W ratio is okay for something that big, you should have multiple turrets fit for dealing with other large warships and fighters anyway.

Just be sure to save it in your shipyards so you can repair it after a battle.

 

[-Moose-]

I have a 200 ish long ship with 5 layers of advanced in the bow, 2 along the sides and composite armor in any hard to reach areas. It is also covered entirely with standard armor because I like the look better. I recommend not going overboard with your armor. 2 layers adv and 1 standard seem to be enough to keep out grazing shots or smaller hits. If anything big enough strikes you to get passed 5 layers and take out a significant chunk of the ship, you are better off using shields to prevent the shot from hitting in the first place and using your lighter weight to get out of dodge.

Also PUNCH AND PIERCE EFFECTS these make the difference almost more than anything.

 

[AtraUnam]

As Moose said use Punch and pierce, between them they double the EHP of any armor blocks. Also what people forget about advanced armor is that it eats far more AHP than it provides causing you to run out more quickly if you don't have some hull or standard armor to bolster it. Finally weapons have a damage drop off that is also based on number of blocks hit as well as the amount of HP they have so a thick layer of weak armor may be more effective than a thin layer of strong armor, especially considering the amplified sloped armor effect of thick armor.

 

[Madman198237]

The sloped armor effect is a bit exaggerated in this game. There's no shot deflections/ricochets, so sloped armor is only taking advantage of thickness vs. slope, and even that is somewhat meaningless in a voxel game. Imagining a tilted plate is all well and good, but with a voxel structure, you still need the same number of blocks in between you and your enemies. Sloped armor that is not simply really thick relies on enemies shooting down its length as opposed to at a perpendicular angle.

 

[Panpiper]

The main advantage of sloped armor in Starmade is that it creates extra internal protected volume for the same quantity of blocks. An alternative way to view this is that the same internal volume can be covered for a smaller number of blocks if they are sloped. This can be visualized by imagining a line of stacked blocks. There is no surplus volume generated from a single line, but if you stagger the blocks half way out and then back again for the other half way, you get a triangle of additional block space. This is a definite advantage to sloped armor.

 

[Madman198237]

Are you certain? Because it shouldn't really. A sphere's volume to surface area ratio is far better. I don't remember all my volume formulas (I know, what a terrible person), but I think that a triangular...prism? Right? (Wedge-shape in space, basically) has a formula of 1/2b*h*w, compared to a rectangular prism's l*w*h, and a sphere's funny equation that I can't remember. Basically, you produce smaller internal volumes with your surface area, and because of voxel physics, you gain none/fewer of the advantages of sloped armor in real life, because your armor actually has to have the same thickness. Four blocks from straight on when the plate is sloped is the same as four blocks straight on when the plate is not, even if the first block is a wedge rather than a regular block. Exceptions might come from other angles, but still, almost no benefit. Especially if you get flanked.