Tips on Building Large Ships

[ShadowExile]

I've been playing this game for about a week now and I've been following various sources and learning new things about the game constantly. I'm really enjoying it but one thing I seem to have a problem with is building large ships, with a good design in mind, taking care of all the important factors (core, frame, defense, etc), and still having it look good.

I was wondering if there were any particular steps that are helpful which somebody could take to help build a good, larger ship. Where would you start first, (other than obviously from the core), and how would you build up from it? Obviously some major questions are how you make the ship both accessible and have the core heavily defended.

Another big issue I'm having is with wedges and corner pieces. Are there any good tricks to getting the orientation right and to help make some good design with these pieces? Thanks.

 

[BigD145]

Framing is a good place to start. Don\'t skimp on details even at the large scale. Go nuts. Really. You\'ll go crazy or give up before hitting on details.

You might as well make internal hallways able to take 2-3 people across. It\'s a big ship. Stretch your arms out.

 

[Morrigi]

What about core placement? That\'s always the thing that screws with my designs on both large and small ships.

 

[GamingWolf]

I like to hid my core somewhere inside the ship and use cockpits as the view point makes the ship saver :D

 

[Greiger]

I often build the reactor room first. As it just makes sense for the ship\'s core to be where all the power is, and the size of the reactor can be used to judge how big the ship will be if yer just freestyling. Don\'t actually have to keep ALL your power storage and generation and what have you in there, but it\'s useful to make the core room look like it is actually the heart of your ship, as it should be.

Then I place long lines of single blocks out to roughly the dimensions of the ship to try to get the length width height ratios where I want them. If I have a design in mind with measurements I\'ll place a diffrent color block at key points on those blocks as a guide. Some people like longer thinner ships, some like taller fatter ones, all a matter of prefrence.

After that I build a frame to match what I want the ship to look like using the single blocks as a guide, then fill in the frame, then add some internals without being afreaid to run some AM cannons or anything like that through the outer hull blocks, you can cover them up with extra hull on the outside, and it helps break up flat spaces.

After that I add embellishments in any long flat spaces left over, maybe a few windows here and there, and toss on the turrets.

 

[VZ Snipez08 Impactz]

What I do first is get the general frame design of on a piece
of paper.Then I will make the frame in the game.I start to make the vitals after that in locations you normally wouldn\'t look.I get the hull done,and that\'s when you worry about details.With wedges and corners,you use them to make the ship not look so box-like.Adding wedges and corners takes out the squareness and you can decide where to put them after making the rest of the ship.

 

[JimmyJamba]

All these tips are good. If I had one thing to add it would be this:

Don\'t be afraid to change/delete/restart something you don\'t like or did wrong. You will probably be spending a lot of time on it, so what\'s an extra hour to change something that once your done the build you may not be inclined to go back and fix.

 

[HJK148]

I started building a big ship a while ago. I just built a room around the core. Not sure if it can be called a reactor room. It\'s a big pillar of blue plex lights with a Ship Core and a Faction Block in the middle. It kind of looks like the main room of a TARDIS.

Anyway, I built the interior around that core room, building the engines, generator room, weapon rooms, crew quarters, etc. Then I started building the exterior of the bridge and built down from there.

I still have a lot to do though, and I\'ll probably expand the interior quite a bit before I finish the hull.



Anyway, I\'m just saying this is something you could do if you\'re focussing on the interior, not that it\'s the best way to build a big ship.