Ship Building: How Do You Design Your Ships?

[Thalanor]

For me it turns out best when i start with just a basic idea (maybe a very crude sketch) and work from inside out.

From the ships you have built, which are elaborated monuments of awesome, I gather this method has something to it.

 

[Aecetym]

I start building with an idea in my mind. After that is just build as I go, most of what I build is just a accident that with a little luck looks great. After that is just refining and more refining. Like the power generator I build for my carrier.

Spoiler: V1

Spoiler: V2

Spoiler: V3

Repeat this proces a few times with different structures and you detail a ship pretty quickly.

 

[jzimmerman4]

For me it all depends on the size of the ship I am about to build. If it is going to be anything below 100m I usually just go for it(shell then interior then systems). For my larger ships I like to first make a sketch on paper then create the "wire frame" before I do the shell and then interior then finally the systems last.

 

[An Old Banana]

I build mostly on a hardcore RP server these days. The constrictions of the “cost” of a ship in blueprints depict what a ship needs for crew quarters mess hall bathrooms et al. in Cases of fighters, I add my basic systems first and body to cover.
With larger ships I layout the RP elements and take as much inspiration as I can from good ol’ Google image of my personal favorite ships. (almost never looks close)
Then jam as much efficient power and weapons in as I can and adjust those pesky yet satisfying RP requirement. Then cry man tears when they get destroyed.

 

[Qweesdy]

I start with an initial concept. From this I write a list of "things" (rooms, special features, etc); and some sketches.

Next comes maths to estimate the size, volume and price. Usually (for large things) the goal is to scale the ship up so that the estimated price is about 2 billion credits. After that comes more maths, to estimate the number of blocks for various things (thrusters, power tanks, shields, weapons, etc).

Then I start building. Typically I start with the exterior and interior rooms/passages at the same time. Then I do "dockables" (turrets, fighters, etc) to make sure they fit right. Once I'm happy with that I start filling in the ship; starting with the first round of power regen (big XYZ frames until I get to over 1 million e/sec), then thrusters and power tanks. Then comes weapon systems; then the second round of power regen (while making sure I meet the power required by weapons/thrust). Lastly, the remaining gaps are filled with shields.

For smaller things (fighters, scouts, turrets, etc) I don't bother with any of that and just build it.

 

[Krazykat]

I draw a rough sketch, mainly ideas for different components, then improvise most of it as I go. I like to have fun with my builds so not too much planning go into them

 

[Keptick]

Most of the time I'll make a frame on which I then throw on hull. From there I fill it up with extremely redundant layered systems (ok, I've only done that part once but it works extremely well).

Spoiler: Like so

To be honest, I haven't completed enough ships to have a standardized technique yet. It's mostly due to my titan taking soooooo much time to build (easily over 250 hours up to now).

 

[Mariux]

1. Place a core
2. Build a ship
3. Proft

 

[OverlordDarkWolf]

To be honest I just build on the go.
Sometimes I get stuff like this:

Spoiler: This from pre-V0.16

Glorified outdated battle tugboat!

Other times I get stuff like this:

Spoiler: This from V0.171

Retro Battle Carrier!

I probably should try building from a plan, next time; might be more fun that way.

 

[Unnamed25]

1. Draw and set target size dimensions
2.Start placing down the core corridor(yes, my core room is more like a corridor)
3.I make the center/core area of my ship first
4. After i make center area i start placing down blocks on the "middle" of the semi-flat incomplete shell
5. After some blocks i expand upwards with symmetry to get more build space
OPTIONAL: Find out i can't build that part so i make the part a deformed flat area
6. Finish the semi-flat shell part
7. Start filling out the sides or the top and bottom
8. Finish the top or the sides and begin on the other ones.
9.Finish the hull
10. Start filling all the things and making sure the thrust:mass ratio is more than 1:1 so it's fast
11.Finish the ship and catalog it, then start pewing stuff with it

And that's how i built a 200k mass ship with basic details on 12 hours(counting the time that i was away on the same day)

Spoiler: Construction, Hurray!

Shell:

Finishing the sides:

Everything else that i didn't take a picture off and done!:

[ /spoiler]

 

[AAlexandrosTGreat]

Ok what i do is i start a ship....and finish it a month or a week later

 

[FunnyBunny14]

So far I haven't done anything to big, and I hardly decorated my ships. I did notice that with the smaller ships I end up making a few versions, just because it is so easy to start over with the general design.

With most of the things I do that require any significant amount of effort is to first think of what I want in general, then visualise it better in some way, and if that isn't clear enough I use a different method to make it easier to understand/read/visualise, and this step gets repeated whenever I deem it necessary. Once I've got the rough sketch done, and once I worked out the details in some way, I start working on it in its original form.

With my rectangular cubed salvage ship: I used starmade as visualisation tool. I made a general design, tested, removed/deleted, started over. This continued for a while until I had my final ship, after which I realised that it was fine for what I wanted, looked fine and stopped working on it (I wasn't really into ship designing back then, but I am now).

For creating custom crafting systems: I first write some details, but mostly general information, on paper. It is simple to use, can become a bit, well, "not easy to use", but that's what the next step is for. So the next step was putting all the details in excel (very easy program to use for this task). I put all the general resources used for making each block in it, and I put all the general information on paper again. Finally I used the block editor to change the recipes.

I suppose that if I were to make a bigger ship I'd draw something outside of starmade first, and then I'd loom up tutorials on how to design a ship :p

The next ship I'm going to make isn't going to be big, so I'll just use starmade to visualise everything. I'm basically just going to use the same method I used for my rectangular salvage ship (which had 625 salvage beams, and it was actually quite cool; it had lasers!).

Oh yes, my ship is going to be a modular one with different tools that can be equiped to acheive different tasks.

 

[Winterhome]

I always stretch out the ship's dimensions with some spars, and try to design it so the core is in the center of the thickest part of the ship.

Then I design one central element of the ship (the shape, the gun, the power generator, the engines... Whatever is the part I feel like doing the most with). I usually experiment with it, test it, see how well it performs on its own for its own function - specifically, when it comes to power and weapons. Then I put a case around it and build the rest of the exterior of the ship around it.

 

[DivineEvil]

1.Visual concept. Describes the visual style of a faction or race ship is produced by, specifies rough proportions, size bias and placement of turrets if present. Performed manually or with Paint.
2.Technical concept. First all fix-mounted weapons, defensive and utility modules are listed together with secondary and tetriary sub-systems. Then, interior areas are drawn relative to the visual concept's silhouette. Remaining spaces are used to hold listed modules in rectangles, and everything else is reserved for shield system.
3.Analysis. Excel table is filled up with ratios and relative values, that are used to analyze the overall efficiency of present and future designs.
4.Startup. Ship core is used as the relative pivot for power generation clusters, and every such cluster is extended to the dimensional limits of the ship in all directions, while not standing in the way of interior rooms and corridors. Power lines are solidified with interconnected power capacitors to isolate them from modular space and provide vacant parallels in case additional power clusters had to be added. Then, interiors are fleshed out.
5.Modules. Weapons and systems are placed in accordance to TC. Rectangular modules isolated by hulls or other decorative blocks allow for easy repairs.
6.Exosystems. Exterior hull is outlined to form a rough shape of the ship. Shield generators and capacitors are placed, filling up the gaps between modules and hull normals, then covered up entirely by hull using shared density rule. If any system seems statistically or tested to appear inadequate, additional clusters are added on top in reasonable locations, except for power generators, which are only added within.
7.Finishing. Exterior armor plates and decor is added. Engines are placed in the rear to accomodate ship result mass. Turret/Docking nodes are added on demand.
Further details are added to excel table. Ship is given a class and a signature in accordance to predetermined designation rules, using varying ship stats.

 

[Ulfengaard]

EDIT: Moved this to PM as I realized it is a bit off-topic. Apologies.