- Edited
First of all English isnt my main language so sorry for all the typos and the grammer mistakes.
At the star of this guide I will go through every single weapon and explain how do they work, how good they are and methods of using them.
- Lasers
The cheapest and smallest offensive weapon at the time of writing. With a range of 150 blocks, fire arc of over 180 degrees and all 3 of its back walls able to take a door. Its targetable, and pumping out 80 shots per minute, each doing a solid 400 damage, the question becomes; Why isn’t this the best weapon in the game?
Power!! They are thirsty! Its not the amount of actual juice they need, you could fit 6 of these puppies around a Generator keeping it red-lined permanently - if you were mental….
You’d need 2 crew per weapon (1 for controlling, 1 for powering), and if your thinking of having any distance between the power supply and weapons themselves the crew needed to keep the things powered goes up at an alarming rate. So the keep the power close, each gun chews its way through a battery in 4 shots, or 3 seconds.
.....It's the fact that it only stores 2 energy cells, in an ideal world you’d need to be dropping off a battery every 3 seconds!!!
Storage @ 2k will give a decent extension to these little buggers without breaking the bank.
A trio backed by storage,instead of being out of juice in 6 seconds, now keeps on “givin’ it to the man” for 21 seconds, enough time to really do some damage.
The obvious choice for the sub 200k crowd and when ‘en masse’ potentially devastating (with a rather mesmerizing wave effect that on its own has lost me games) the Small laser stands in very good stead.
- standard cannon
The standard cannon has pros and cons
pros: high dps (damage per second), doesnt use alot of ammo, doesnt use alot of energy, but can penetrate blocks.
cons: volatile, needs ammo to shoot, takes more space than the lazer.
The standard cannon has a shorter range than the large cannon and lower damage but needs much less ammo to shoot, In fact you can run 2 standard cannons on 1 ammo factory and they will keep shooting.
standard cannons can be used as the ships main dmg source but they are weak against shields. Standard cannons explode when destroyed.
- Large cannon
The large cannon is a lot like the standard cannon, needs ammo to shoot, but unlike the standard cannon, the large cannon needs a lot more ammo, one ammo factory per large cannon, the large cannon is a high damage - slow shooter type of weapon, while not shooting alot, every shoot will do high damage and can penetrate a few layers. The large cannon has a long range and will usually start shooting before the other weapons, but the large cannon shells are slow and will take some time to get to their taget. Large cannons explode when destroyed.
- Electro bolt
Electro bolt, or in short eb, is a fast shooting energy weapon with a high speed electro bolts called shots that drain energy from the part that has been hit. Eb are also able to go through shields and while doing so will drain their energy. But electro bolt needs alot of energy to operate and will run out of power pretty fast. Eb are useful against ion beams, shields, lazers, thrusters, pd and other eb. Eb are used as a support weapons for the main damage source, disabling the shields and draining energy where ever they hit. But they do very little damage therefor they are never used as a main weapon for a ship.
- Ion beams
The ion beam is a high damage beam that needs a ton of energy to run, usually when you use ion beams you should add some power storages behind them. Ion beams are the only weapons in the game that have no travel time, and that means if you aim at it, it takes damage instantaneously without a delay. Ion beams have a unique way to defend them by adding armor triangles in front of them like shown in the picture. this makes the ion beams much harder to attack while not disturb their damage, adding shields to this method is recommended.
- Missile launcher
Missile launchers or in short rockets have the highest dps of all weapons in the game but can be countered by point defense systems, this unique mechanic allows ships to shoot down rockets that have been fired. Rockets are also the most expensive weapons om the vanilla game, and need missile factories to shoot. Both the missile factory and the missile launcher explode when destroyed. Rockets are used mainly for kiters, ships that fly backwards while shooting at their enemy. this method is hated by the community for its lack of hard counter meathods.
And now after we have covered all the weapons, lets talk about basic building.
First rule for building ships is reactor placement, reactors explode when destroyed much like rockets and cannons, unlike those, the reactor's explosions have a bigger radius. When putting reactors in your ship, there are two main things to keep in mind, first, dont put them close to each otherin order to avoid chain reactions. Second, how far they are from where the energy needs to be, the crew takes time walking from a place to another bringing energy and u want to minimize that travel time by putting reactors closer to where the energy needs to go, careful though because you might put them too close to the outter hull of the ship where they can get hit by the enemy weapons and explode. Also something i see alot of people doing is bringing the energy bar beyond the green line, this will make your ship cost more and be more explosive for no reason at all, it is way better to have the bar in between the red line and the green line.
Next up, defense parts
- Shields
They can block dmg and are the most over powerd block in the game, not to say they are unfair but because the game is balanced around having them, not having them in your ship makes it underpreform any other ship of the same price that has shields, when using shields keep in mind you will need a lot of energy so dont just spam them. I like adding power storages behind the shields for more energy coverage.
- Armor
It has x4 times the hp of the normal corridor and cannons can not penetrate it. use armor as much as you can in your ships to block damage from spreading and to face tank some shots. I like to add armor around reactors, factories and command rooms.
- Fire exinguishers and doors
These two are very important and no ship is complete with out them. Doors are the only way for crew to go into weapons, shields, thursters, control rooms and pd, but having too many doors will place your ship at a risk! Beacuse fire can only spread through doors, a common method to avoid this is to have modules in your ship and to not connect them with doors (modules are self sustaining parts including in them: crew, fire extinguishers and reactors).
Fire extinguishers or as most people call them fe are the only way to put out a fire. When the fires start the crew will run to the closest fe and take it with them to the fire. Therefore u should put the fe close to places you dont want to be on fire so the crew will take less time to bring them (putting them by control rooms, reactors and factories is recommeded). Fe can only be accessed from one side, so 3 sides are unaccessable so be careful when placing them and make sure u didnt block anything important.
- Point defense
Point defense or also known as pd can shoot down missiles while in space. Pd are very important for every ship because missiles are a very commonly used weapon. The only problem that comes to my mind right now when using pd is that you must place them in the outer layer of the ship, and that means you cant place armor where you had placed the pd, this can make your ship more vulnerable to non missile type weapons.
Now lets talk about thrusters, storages and crew rooms
- Thrusters
Thrusters are the most efficient way to move your ship and there are two main methods to place them.The first one is placing them at the outer layer of the ship. This method makes the thrusters more vulnerable to enemy attacks but will have an easier time turning the ship. The second method to placing thrusters is to place them inside the ship this will make the thrusters much harder to hit but it might have a harder time turning the ship (depends on the location) and this method takes up much more space then method 1.
In the current meta thrusters are the most important part to have on your ship, moility and utility are better than fire power most of the time so dont be affraid to give up on some weapons to put more thrusters on your ship. always try to put thrusters facing all sides otherwise your ship will be very hard to control and very slow.
- Storage
There are 2 kind of storages:
Ammo storage and Missile storage are one kind an should not be used! They are the most underpowerd block in the game (while writing this).
The kind of storage u should use is energy storage unlike ammo and missiles storages this block is one of the most useful blocks in game. this block allows you to use the fast energy consuming parts more reliably (such as ion beams and shields) for example i would recommend placing 1-3 energy storage to the side of every shield and/or ion beam and placing 1 energy storage for every 3-4 big thrusters.
Crew
I dont have much to say about the crew part except for, place them close to where u want the crew to be most active at but always keep a path for the crew to walk through, beacuse crew walk slowly when passing each other or through modules.
Unique parts
Unique parts are structure blocks and sensors. Structure blocks can be use to reduce the cost of the ship if used to connect parts. Sensors are used to extend the detection range farther the ships default range.
When i will have some time i am going to add:
- building tips
- how to pilot your ship
- paint tricks
- rail guns
- engine rooms
- special tips and tricks
Big thanks to puddlejumper6999 for helping me with the English. And to orb for helping with the guide.
