Ship Construction
Now we arrived at the meaty part of the guide. How do we build a PvP ship?
Some players manage to build clever and well optimized ships, using their wealth of experience. They can write books on how to build. Here we will keep it simple.
The basics
Core
Thruster scheme
Armor scheme
Gun placement
Size
Note: check the se-server info page on discord for up to date info on block limits.
The Core
The core of your ship is where all the essentials are. A bridge, an area for miscellaneous blocks, one for blocks with a primary function and a conveyor skeleton. Below a list is provided of all block types.
Where you place the blocks is up to you. When blocks with important functions are more spread out, your ship is less vulnerable to catastrophic failure. When more tight together, you get a smaller core and thus need fewer blocks to armor the ship.
Use Ctrl+ to determine the direction of blocks. You will want the shield blocks to face forward so the shunting of your shield lines up correctly.
The bridge should be heavily armored and as deep in the ship as possible.
The screenshots below are just an example. Click to enlarge.
Conveyor skeleton
laying down a conveyor skeleton will ensure everything can be connected easily.
Misc blocks
4x shield blocks.
1x hydrazine thruster (gives x16 stopping power to other thrusters).
1x radar.
1x rotor (with small head attached combats desync).
1x beacon (prevents grid deletion).
1x jumpinhibitor (prevents enemies from jumping away).
1x projector (place this block first to have blueprints pre-aligned when repairing).
1x build and repair (optional, helps with repairs).
Bridge
1x seat or cockpit.
1x survival kit or medbay.
1x door to outside, or Atlantean transporter.
1x oxygen tank.
Primary function blocks
10x reactors.
20x batteries.
10x h2 engines.
4x jumpdrives (or more).
H2 tanks (as many as it takes).
gyros or base gyros.
2 or more small or large cargo containers.
When placing thrusters keep in mind what you want your ship to do. Equal mobility in all directions, or perhaps more thrust forward?
You can choose between small and big thrusters, and internal or external thrusters, armor and unarmored. Usually a combination is used.
Thrusters
internal thruster - less vulnerable, more weight due to enlarging ship.
external thruster - less weight, more vulnerable.
small thruster flame size 2x1 blocks - easy to use internally, bad thrust to weight ratio, good thrust to volume ratio.
large thruster flame size 7x3x3 blocks - good thrust to weight ratio, internally bad thrust to volume ratio.
armored thruster - good replacement for regular armor blocks.
Each thruster in one direction is weight for a thruster in another direction.
Ship weight is the factor in determining speed. On this server, below 10M a speed of 300 m/s is easy to reach, then it drops off via a curve. At 25M you can still reach it with normal thrusters at considerable tech expense. Beyond that it becomes a question of spamming large epstein thrusters.
Don’t be too scared of losing thrusters in a fight, as long as you have plenty of them. Consider which thrusters you spend tech on.
Below is an oversight of the efficiency of various thrusters (click to enlarge and scroll left to right).
(click to enlarge)
The armor scheme
When armoring your ship, determine what side would receive the most damage. This is usually the front.
There are alternatives to the standard heavy armor block. Some functional blocks are pretty tough and can be missed.
Heavy armor block alternatives
buster block - breaks sooner, but does not translate damage (deform).
laser hole.
jumpdrive.
base gyro.
vanilla gyro - has only 1 side for attaching to blocks, tends to float inside a ship after taking damage.
armored thruster.
Note: gyros do not give you more armor than the equivalent weight in heavy armor blocks. It is simply the concentration of ability. They give more integrity per volume. See the oversight below.
Note: blocks with the most integrity per volume are not necessarily the best. Sometimes total integrity counts for more. And small gyros have only 1 attachment point. If the block behind it is destroyted they float inside your ship breaking it apart.
You do not need to fill your entire ship with blocks in order to get maximum shields. If you do need filler blocks consider these.
Filler blocks
lights - 0 weight, can not be build on.
column - 150 weight, all 6 sides can be build on.
Gun placement
Guns… Where oh where should we put these?
Rules of thumb
all guns should be able to see the target as close as 150m from the front of your ship.
guns are best place midships or aft. The more forward, the more vulnerable they are.
ideally your guns do not have a background. Backgrounds (blue) can be use by the enemy to more easily target your gun via painter mode.
T3 fixed lasers can have maximum of 6 laser hole blocks in front. For aiming the closer the beams are to each other, the better.
Bad setup (click to enlarge):
Good setup (click to enlarge):
Size
Again we can provide rules of the thumb.
Rules of thumb
the heavier the ship, the more tech is needed to move it. Thrusters and gyros.
the larger the ship, the more essential blocks and weapons can be spread out.
26x26x26 is the size for optimal shields. See shields section for more info.