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Professional guide! (Abandoned for now)
Wiki's general Ship Design or Ship Design Theory
i dont really get it like is there somehow away to open the guide?
CATMASTER no, they will add text later
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kieffer5101 oh ok thanks
Oneye changed the title to Professional guide! (Not recommended for noobs).
Um hello guys, I have a doctorate in Cosmoteer Ship Design Theory so uh I don't mean to flex on ya but, just sayin'. Yal noobs needa go'n get you sum educations cause you can't even build a functional ship ovr' yonder.
octo Lol I guess I will wait and see what they have to say
im wondering,when will you do it?
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Oneye Power (and crew) mangement
Compartmentalize heavily (IMO), meaning no more than 1 reactor per compartment. But don't use copy-paste modules, that's will always be sub-optimal compared to a purpose-built compartment.
Test out each of your compartments with autofire, and make sure that you're not wasting anything. Every reactor should run out of power, every factory should be empty/nearly empty, and every crewman should be busy. There are exceptions of course, but generally you should aim for 100% power/ammo/crew usage.
Oneye Cost management
I like to cut lots and lots of corners. Most battles are won in the first 30 seconds, so prioritize burst value over sustained value. You don't need enough power to keep your weapons running all the time, or to keep your shields up indefinitely, or to keep your engines firing 100% of the time. Make sure to test all your compartments as well, so you can trim out any excess crew. Efficiency is key to keeping cost down.
Of course, sometimes you absolutely don't want to cut corners. Ion beams should have 100% uptime. Shields covered by lots of armor need a full reactor, or at least 1/2 of a reactor. Engines on a kiter cannot afford to lose power. But generally, cutting a few corners will help you get more value out of your money.
Oneye Meta counters
I'd have to know what the meta is to answer this one! Generally the key to a good ship is to make it strongest against the meta, but flexible enough that it can fight other ship types too.
Oneye Piloting
Practice, practice, practice - get a feel for your ship. Know what each type of command does and when it's most useful. Set hotkeys, and focus fire. Use autofire to get crew moving, and use hold fire to avoid wasting stored ammo on wreckage. Have a battle plan for every fight you get into, but don't be afraid to adjust it on the fly.
Oneye Swarm building
No idea! I never use more than 1 ship. But the most effective swarm designs I see are usually either ion swarmers or cannon clingers.
Oneye Ion and EB usage
Ions are the backbone of your ship. Their job is to survive after all your other weapons are dead and to keep putting out consistent damage. Most of the time, ions are best used as a central weapon, hidden behind layers of armor, with a shield or 2 to block poke damage. Ions are generally weak vs shields because they can't focus fire, but if you have 3 or 4 of them in the center of your ship they can deal effective damage through shields without support. Ions are probably the best kiting weapon currently; if you use them for this make sure you have plenty of shields and PD.
EB are the super-powered shotgun of space battles. If you're fighting at close range, get electrobolts, unless you're 100% sure the enemy won't have shields. Protect them well, because EB get more and more valuable as the fight drags on and enemy shields get time to regen. Laser+EB and cannon+EB are the two most classic combinations. Ion+EB usually doesn't work that well, because EB need to be exposed, completely nullifying the ion's biggest advantage. But if you can protect both ions+EB well, it makes for a powerful combination. Railguns+EB suffer from the same issue as ions+EB, as well as the huge range discrepancy. Missiles+EB are just plain bad 99% of the time.
Oneye Shield placement
Personally, I use shields a lot less than most other designers. IMO shields should only be used when you have no other way to cover something, not as a primary defense (because they'll get ripped to pieces by electrobolts). Often I see ships from new-ish players that surround their entire sides and rear with shields - this is very bad. IMO armor is almost always better than shields as long as it's not impeding your own weapon fire.
Use shields where armor won't fit, where you can juice lots of value out of regen (e.g. covering armor), or when you're planning to kite outside of enemy EB range. Otherwise, armor is usually a better choice.
Oneye Creative design
Don't get discouraged too easily! If you're trying something new, you will fail. A lot. But just because your first iteration is bad doesn't mean the entire concept is. Figure out the good parts and the bad parts of your new design - use the good parts, scrap the bad parts.
If you're struggling to think of something new in the first place, look at whatever the meta is. Then think "what's the exact opposite of the meta" and go from there.
The first question whether to use shield or armor is not about protection it's about speed. Do you want the ship to be a heavy slow tank or a fast hunter-killer/Kite? And yes shields are no longer as good as before electrobolts. Structures used to be a cheap (budget) alternative to armor. Now that most any shots penetrate them they also don't matter as much.
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Slightly updated the Ship Design Theory page on the wiki using all currently available wiki resources. However most data is still pre-fire, pre-missile, pre-EB, pre-railgun data. These are not outdated or wrong, however, the ones for missiles and EB had been changed so many times they are probably not accurate anymore.
Edit: It would be nice if a lot of ships of various types are submitted in order to improve the data. Preferable well-build top class ships in the 500k and no more than 1 million cost class.
The Rules
Each player has a budget for selecting ships and a limit on how many ships they may select. Combining ships with explosive blocks to expand the ship limit is allowed, at the cost of explosive blocks.
At the beginning of the game, each player's ships are spawned in formation on the field according to the game settings for teams and starting distance. The formation is consistent depending on how many ships were selected and in what order. Depending on game settings, ships may start either completely full of energy and ammo with crew at their stations or empty with all crew in their quarters.
The legal play area is much wider than starting positions, but a "Ring of Death" circle represents the "in-bounds" portion of the field. Starting positions are always inside the ring. Depending on game settings, the radius of the ring may shrink over the course of the game. Any ship parts outside the ring will take damage over time. The damage increases as parts are further from the edge of the ring.
The game always ends when only one team has control rooms. Game settings may add additional win conditions:
- If the Ring of Death is not shrinking and a time limit is set, the team with the highest ratio of remaining control room-connected ship value relative to their starting value wins when the time expires.
- A threshold of destruction may be set, eliminating any team that sinks below that threshold of control room-connected ship value relative to their starting value.
A draw is possible under some conditions, including the time limit being reached with teams having taken an equal amount of damage or no damage.
Players may forfeit at any time, instantly self-destructing all of their control rooms.
Given these rules, Cosmoteer can be outlined as a game about destroying your opponent's control rooms before they can destroy yours. This is usually achieved by weapon hits, fire damage, destroying adjacent volatiles such as reactors, chasing or pushing ships outside the ring, or eliminating thrusters and leaving ships stranded outside the ring.