LordHavoc

I've been progressing closer to the middle and found that there is a subtle natural progression that you have to employ. Firstly, you grow your ship in size - you just have to in order to compete. As such, your crew grows, your power grows and the number of turrets you use grows. I started off with around 10-12 crew, and encoutered the turret switching problem annoyance people have noticed. But now, i'm running with a 45 crew. Have 6 combat and 6 unarmed turrets fully manned at all times - with crew to spare. And even now i'm looking to grow to double that. All I'm saying, stick with it and the problem solves itself as you evolve your gameplay.

I've observed that the money for Iron goes up the closer to the middle you go. So you can always scoop it up to sell

The link isn't appearing Edit: It's okay now

Once you get your hands on a few +30% efficient salvager (orange and above) then salvaging gets way better. I was lucky enough to geta 44% efficient (albiet iron) salvager that can only get iron/titanium - but the amount of resources per wreck is incredible.

This game is geared for more play time than design time. It has a lot to offer in terms of random events, missions, progression and exploration. The building part of the game isnt the centre peice unless you want it to be (i.e. creative mode). If you're doing a playthrough, you'll find you build your initial ship, play a bit, tweak it, play a bit more and probably tweak it a few more times. But you'll get to a point where you're happy with your ship for quite a while, until you start pushing closer to the middle and you find you need to upscale your ship. So, should you get this game? If you have a tiny bit of spare cash, time, enjoy action spaceship games and building...also exploring, shooting, trading. And you don't mind - the fact it's still in development Then it's definitly worth giving a try.

Hi all, After building a few recreations I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned - in the hopes to make everyones ship building easier. 1a] Draw out your plan on paper/art program freehand. Doodle it, thrash it out; get it out of your head and into a form you can see 1b] Then, get that design into a vector based art program that uses grid/snap (I use Inkscape personally because its free). With this, you can easily and quickly make 2d boxes and triangles and trace your design into something that will look similar ingame (You can see an example in my 'O'Neil' thread in this forum) 2] You can full adjust the scaling and grid sizes ingame on the left, use this to fine tune while you build. For ease of use, the grid size should be half the scale size. 3] Use the pallette to resize your whole ship: Say you make a ship that is a fighter size, and it's a good design but too small. Select all the ship and ctrl-c, then open the pallette and paste with ctrl-v. Then you can make a new ship, and using the pallette you can select the template and adjust the size before pasting. *Caution on the blocks you use though, make sure to take note of the template material selector. 4] Centre-of-block option speeds thing up: On the left, the dropdown that has "Local Grid" etc has an option for centre of block. When you have your shape already in place and you need to quickly fill it in, block placement using that option is much faster as you don't need to fiddle with alighment. 5] Design your game ships in creative mode and save the plan. Then in your main game use that plan to replace your current ship: This means you won't need to worry about getting attacked in your main game when you're changing ships. 6] Replacing the default block (no xml editing): Add a few blocks (of the size you want) to the front the starting block. Then turn off safe mode and delete the starting block. Exit build mode, and then re-enter and the centre will now be at the centre of mass of those new blocks. *Can be a bit tempramental, I think there is some kind of mass calculation. 7a] Spinal mount your main thruster: I've found that making the main thruster the centre point (and the starting point) to your ship is a good way of determining your needs for the rest of the ship. Build to the speed that you want your ship to go to, and then add power/crew/manouvering thrusters as needed. 7b] *Alternative* Build your crew requirements first: Work out how many turrets you want, and the build the crew to meet those requirements. Then add the other systems till you get a good balance. Edit: If you've got some good tips, add them to this thread and I'll try and collate them into this top post.

I just read a thread in general about people being attacked very often when they're in a system; interrupting building/buying sessions. We currently: Can build more ships - but they cost a lot in wages and time management Can buy fighters - afaik, you need to be at trinium level before hangers get unlocked So - Would it be possible to either mod (or does this belong in suggestions) a way of dropping small 'constructs' that don't require crew, and have turret slots. They could(should) have restrictions such as: -Manouvering thrusters, but no main thrusters - They should capture the location they're dropped at, and if they get moved...auto move back to the coords they were dropped at. Edit: AI timer to kick in after several seconds after being bumped/collision. To stop AI being silly and driving into a ship constantly. -Size is limited by a percentage of your ship size - say 10% (IOW, If you have a 1000 volume ship, you can only make a 100 volume construct) -Turret slots is based on construct size. Defaulting at 2 for the smallest but gaining more as you can make it bigger -Introduction of blocks at higher material levels to increase turrets (this is self-balanced by the size limitation mentioned above) -As a maintenance system, each mine should add to players powergrid usage. Nothing major, say .25GW for each one. This means big ships could have loads where small ships only have a handful The mine AI should shoot at any ship that is aggressive to player And they should have a bonus to range to make up for the fact that they're stationary - a flat 2km should be sufficient

Get up to shield level asap and you have a lot less issues with stuff breaking off. Before you get there, make sure you put turrets on large armour blocks reinforced with integrity fields.

Beautiful ship btw You should post that on creations ;)

I don't seem to have any trouble paying my crew. After a few fights with pirates and aliens, I salvage raw materials off their wrecks and that often yeilds more system upgrades and turrets. I sell a few of these and get thousands. I usually get rid of white system upgrades regardless of type. Turrets, i'll brutally sell anything that has 'overheats' on it.

This looks like a calamari cruiser

I'd like to suggest target nearest wreck (I didn't think an essay was needed for this suggestion :) )

Cheers! I hired some more staff and that's sorted it. Making aluminium now :D

I've just founded my first mine and I've noticed that it's slowly loosing health over time. I'm able to go into the build menu and repair it, but it's costing a fortune in materials. It's even got shield which aren't being touched. Can anyone answer why the health is dropping?

I thought i'd try out the object scanner for a bit, and i found an important object in the system. My scanner only had a 4km range so i flew around for a bit. Till I noticed a blip inside an asteroid So I dug into it a bit and an interact sign popped up to claim it. So I did Now check this: I can now found my own mine! Lets just say it's expensive, the cheapest being over 3.2 million credits. And I've purposely not shown you the menu inside due to spoilers, but the rock offers different products. Now I'm gonna farm a load of money and see what I can make :) Edit: I just found all this info in the guides section of this forum - AND go check it out, it has more on stations which people will probably look for info.

Nice, I also found the mining system to be a bit underpowered. 5k is nothing since asteroids could be like 20k away...and by the time you get to within 5k you can see them anyway Thanks for this

I needed a fleet of them! And some fighter class Homers as well

Behold the SS Homer

Not finished yet...but I can't wait to show :P

Do I sense a 'from the depths' fan here?

Ahh good, there's a faction that I want to patch up relations with; but couldn't because every time I went pirate hunting in their sector...some jammers would come and I'd be forced to blow the heck out of them. Now I can just run away and preserve the standing.

That's great work, good aesthetic and symmetry. Sensible functional form. I look forward to seeing your next creation

My shipyard is currently working on a super secret project! Woohoo Watch this space ;)

Here's the build process Before I even begin, i work out a 2d version using inkscape This the build starts with replacing the anchor block with the size that I want, (the default is 2x2x2) I usually use 0.5x0.5x0.5 for smaller ships, or 1x1x1 But sometimes i'll go 2x1x1 (this is important for x-mirroring - if you look closely in the middle picture, you'll see that i have the anchor block selected) I then bridge out, replicating the 2d version onto the game. Making the frame work to build from [pic1] Then using y-mirror I add depth around the edges Once the main shell is finished I can then add the details in after High res links One Two Three