EnochTheRed

So I have been passive in this forum but been looking at many designs and tried a few of my own - no where as well put together as many here - but did mine to test out concepts of the actual shape of the ship affecting play. Specifically combat and weapon firing arcs. Just to open up, i have found that the long "needle" shape of ships that are generated by the game are quite effective in this sense. Other than the relatively thin aspect of the ship itself, a turret slightly raised off the needle will have a very large available firing arc and therefore require the ship to do minimum pivoting/turning for all turrets to hit a target. But if we look at the much more appealing player created ships, the bulk and facets of some of these ships make some very sub-optimal weapons platforms... Dont get me wrong, I really do want these wonderful designs, but what are the best practices to ensure maximum weapon on target capability. In short I believe the following... 1.. Either design (and then fly) for stand off combat where you have a large-ish blunt face on the ship that holds all fwd facing turrets AND acts as a shield wall in nose forward strategy. This of course only works when you can keep most of your enemies in one direction as the front face will then limit the turrets from firing on many other arcs. 2.. Incorporate several principles that bring max weapons on target. -- Arched spine, where the front is lets say say 45 deg and the spine then curves back. this can be on both top and/or bottom -- relatively thin body side to side. knowing that the lovely big-but of the ship will ultimately create blinds spots. depending on the size of the ship and the scale of the weapons it will mount, the max thickness of the face of the spine should be enough to accommodate the size of the turret. -- these first two practices can be turned on its side so that the narrow/tall become flat/wide. -- weapons placed on the spine only... avoid on the side. spine mounted weapons will have full front facing capability, strong side to side and even up/down capability and fire will only be limited to where the body of the ship is. If mounted on the side of this fictitious ship they will NEVER fire to the other side of the ship. -- Bulky ship bodies are less good At the end of the day I am sure there are creative ways to modify this body of thoughts, but the same principle holds true...if you limit the number of turrets that can fire on target other than forward, you are that % less capable. This is even more true as you progress, getting into heavier ships that turn slower AND facing multiple ships that flank all around you. Thoughts.. other successful strategies? In the end my objective is to find the best "shape" of the ship to then incorporate into pleasing designs. Cheers.

This worked.. thank you good sir!!!

Scytales and others... sorry for noob question, I am trying to add these to an existing ship... I have the xml in "ships" folder, call it up - copy to clipboard, as you have suggested, but it will not show up when I close out the window.... Just goes back to the block before I opened the saved ships xml window. Can you give a little more detail on what i need to do to add these glorious things to existing ships? Thanks!