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So as I played through the normal modes of the game, I began to wonder what the biggest, meanest, most deadly ships you can make are. Naturally they also have to be quite tough and hard to take out. As I played through, I gradually built up from what I would call frigates to true behemoths.

If y'all are interested, here are some of mine, literally in order from least complex (and expensive) to most. This was basically the order I built them in. My rough rule of thumb was that when I had accumulated roughly twice the cash that my current ship was worth, I'd do a complete redesign.

For a little while I found a design I liked and that could complete most Elite-level regions pretty well, and made a fleet of them, with some minor modifications to each. The Albatross class of ships:

Regular
image https://i.imgur.com/5Ao9Sat.png

Frigate
image https://i.imgur.com/jWzJ03h.png

Flagship
image https://i.imgur.com/ReiH7o3.png
After I found even a fleet of them were too flimsy for anything more challenging, I started branching out into behemoths. I noticed that engines on the outer hull were often one of the easy weak points in armored ships, so... I did away with those, right quick!

The Deathclaw
image https://i.imgur.com/PsQ0F9L.png

From this, it became a bit of an arms race with the Elite-level ships. I'd be OK for a while, making minor modifications to my design, and then... I'd get ripped apart. OK, no worries, reload a previous save file, build up some cash a little more safely, and redesign. Bit of a novelty stage here with the Pacman 🙂
image https://i.imgur.com/nU6PT0y.png

Quickly enough, it became 'let's see just how big I can make a ship, keep it somewhat manoeuverable, and deadly as all hell'. This goal gave me the Tartarus:
image https://i.imgur.com/K5sH1oC.png
That soon fell prey to that Crescent Doom ship with all its missile bays, and I needed to redesign yet again.

I have yet to lose a single battle, or indeed suffer more than ~$25k in damage from a battle, and that was from a very disadvantaged position (enemy snuck up on me while I was finishing off another one, and got some good hits into my missile bays). That's why manoeuverability is important, kids! A quick turn and some serious firepower, and we're back in business. I give ye the Eldrazi.
image https://i.imgur.com/2SdKehL.png
This is approaching the biggest ship you can make -- the wingspan is literally the entire building area's width, and the length is not far off, either. Granted, a lot of the rear and side is very thick armor, but then again we don't have shields on those sides. This could be a little more compact if I was willing to weaken the rear by placing engines externally, but this works so well I don't want to ruin it! This one will set you back almost $2.5 million. #worthit

No, really; you can make that 2.5million back in half an hour and have two of these monstrosities.

These ships are all also available in the Community Ships collection under the Tallow folder.

Let me know what you think! Any suggestions and critique are more than welcome. I'd love to see some of your impressive behemoth ships, too!

    I have the following ship with which I was originally aiming to just create a more interesting design (most of my bounty mode ships ended up resembling cannon walls) but it has turned out to be pretty powerful.
    image https://i.imgur.com/xtYYjfy.png
    It's roughly 3M credits with a lot of the cost going to fast reload missile launchers.

    I noticed that your ships mostly use missiles as an alpha strike but can't maintain sustained missile fire. Do you think this is cost effective?

    Probably the most deadly ship would be something like thisGrimoire of Infinity

    Equalizer It's not cost effective, no. I've had quite a bit of trouble actually figuring out how to get a configuration that will be able to sustain continuous or semi-continuous missile fire.

    I have some ideas I need to toy with, but do you have any pointers that I might start out with to try to improve that particular function?

        tallow Well for sustained missile fire,

        • Each launcher need's its own factory (which does increase the cost a lot).
        • The factory and launcher need to be really close together; at more than 2 tiles apart fire rate seems to quickly drop. Side by side is of course most efficient but that reduces space available to put launchers.
        • Each launcher then needs a lot of crew (roughly 14, 2 to man launcher and 12 carrying missile parts).
        • Last (and hardest to do) some way to prevent crew from wandering off to a different missile factory if the closest one runs out of missile parts (or going off to do some other task). Normally requires segmenting the ship into modules that crew can't travel between.

        In general keeping crew doing what you want them to do is a bit of an issue at the moment so designing a ship as a bunch of modules that the crew can't leave is some what common for big ships.

        For example see the first post in the following thread,
        https://forum.cosmoteer.net/d/1230-tegs-big-modular-boxes-unbeatable-challenge

          Roger that!

          Try this one on for size.
          image https://i.imgur.com/6PTVXaF.png

          As you say, the one-factory-per-launcher is a good way to go. I try to keep my pathways relatively unobstructed, but segmenting might be something I have to look at. As you can see, a large part of the crew complement is mostly sitting around doing nothing and might end up being a waste of money. I've started to separate out some of the functions into more discrete units and I think I can safely segment off some areas of the ship from here. Bit of experimentation is next.

          Even without that, this design manages near-constant missile barrages, which... well, makes a hell of a difference. The Drakon Sword and that other stock enemy that's a W shape with six lasers and triple shielding almost beat the other design (keyword: almost) but with this I can keep my damages to a minimum, and even with their anti-missile defences enough missiles get through to really tear through their structure and give me the upper hand.

          Many thanks! I'll keep building. 😃

            Equalizer ...this reminds me I should update the Black Manta ships, they have sustained missile fire, but due to changes in missile velocity and aiming they blow up near the missile-bays now (...I´m aware of what I gotta change I was just too lazy up to this Point...) 😛

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