Pyrotech51

Just finished the core sections on a 7.5mil volume ship, with the modules I have installed, it comes in at ~250K health, and just over 1mil in shields. The top speed is somewhere around 1.5km/s, and I've succeeded in boosting it to 6km/s (though that's just asking for trouble in something this size :P). Really, the thing that makes me happiest though is the 40K continuous DPS it has in ~5.5km lasers (which have auto targeting), and 50K+ burst in 11.5km Railguns (every 10 seconds). I've yet to find an enemy that takes longer than 5-10seconds to shred, and picking off the smaller ones with the railguns while the lasers kill anything that comes close is really satisfying. Still not totally happy with the aesthetics though... the bridge just looks off somehow :(.

How do you go about making your own designs? Is there a specific way to do it, and is there a limit on how large you can make them/what pieces can be used?

As far as Small ships vs Large ships goes, good piloting and making use of terrain in sectors can do a lot to allow a smaller craft to counter large opponents. On one occasion yesterday I was running a search for the last set of components I needed to build a set of horrendously OP laser turrets I found in a factory (~4K DPS with ~4km range) for low cost. As such I'd shifted down from my 8mil volume craft into my little Scouting Corvette that clocks in at ~350K and has a much larger jump radius and top speed. Since it's for scouting it comes with an Exotic Hyperspace Booster, Xsotan artefact for more guns and a Shield Booster to make sure it survives long enough to jump out of a few hostile sectors, so it's not exactly harmless. I had fitted it out with a set of 5 factory built Xanion Railguns with a stupid max range (11.62km) and a pair of Lightning guns with a good bonus vs shields and ~8km of range. After around an hour of hunting for these items I stumbled into a previously uncharted sector controlled by a faction I had aggravated (If they are a proper faction they shouldn't call themselves pirates!) and decided that I was gonna take a break from shopping and see how much damage I could manage to do against their cruisers to relieve my frustrations :P. Given 10 minutes, the nearby asteroid field and a lot of kiting and I had killed off the pair of 0.25mil health/0.25mil shield ships without taking damage. In PvP I'd assume that this would be a lot harder, but a group of coordinated players with small fast ships, quickly recharging shields and a good long range or burst fire weapon loadout could probably do this to a lone larger ship that cannot manoeuvre as easily through obstacles or accelerate clear so easily.

Is it possible to set repair fighters up so that they will target their mothership? Cause that would be an exceptionally useful feature if it were possible. Even a small hangar full would be good in the case of you clipping an asteroid (which I have been doing more than usual since I greatly increased the scale of my ship (1.5mil - 7.5mil) or taking a small amount of battle damage.