Cosmoteer Ultimate Ship Design and Part Guide!

Oneye

CursedPh4nt0m I would get rid of the farthest side modules and pd. Then just add good armor there and you should be fine, you have flak for missile defense anyway.

Guy

Could you more explicitly mention not using crew or armor as space-fillers? It's one thing on aesthetic builds, but I've been noticing a lot of people inflating their ship costs by 50-100% just with useless crew.

Also related: compensating for crap internal layouts with armies of crew.

Oneye

Updated for 14.7.

Fort_Master_Gustav

Oneye On the Nuke bomber part Ultralight is written wrong...

Also a particular suggestion by on CR placement, I usually place CRs on a place that, if the enemy actually ever gets to it, I'm dead anyways, and it's beneficial for some reasons:

It is considered that, a good strat to defeat a ship is usually targeting a ship's "weak angles", or be it, places that you'll do the most damage if you hit, they usually are places that have multiple reactors in sequence, split parts of the ship, or damage CRs, by placing the CRs on places that, if the enemy ever even gets to you're already dead, you're effectively eliminating potential "Weak angles", these places include:

-Middle of the thrusters for walls (do not that I usually built Ultralights, a good analogy would be a flying flamethrower surrounded in C4, it can kill a lot but if it gets hit it's kaput)
-Middle of the railguns for Railgun Barges (If the enemy gets there it means you lost your railguns, thus you're already dead)
-Extreme ends of the arms on V ships (killing both extremes means that you likely heavily damaged the center as well, or be it, just killed all the modules composing the V ship)
-Middle/back of Missile Barges (If an enemy flanked you it's likely they'll go for the CRs anyways, so placing them on the front only makes them more easy to be sniped by railguns)
-With the Ions on Ion Rammers (Usually these designs are particularly explosive around that part, and if that part is ever destroyed you're already dead)

Doing this, the enemy can't go for your CR, as "targeting" your CR will be as good as targeting anywhere else, making your ship overall stronger.

newageofpower

Oneye could you do a section on Hitboxes? I mean, Cannons/Large Cannons seem pretty obvious, but "where the hitbox starts" is not quite as clear for the other weapons.

Rougechicken

Oneye add that you can actually fire rail guns through a single layer of armor it’s a interesting thing that could be useful if you have some cash to spend on protecting the rail gun
I’m not kidding it’s very cool

Oneye

Rougechicken Me and some others were researching that a while back, but we found that it makes the rail shots too weak for the little extra protection it gives.

Rougechicken

Oneye not sure if this counts as a necropost but I managed to use the rail gun to launch the ship from side to side may be useful for dodging shots?

Ps if this counts as a necropost just tell me and I’ll delete it

P.s.s I’ve also noticed a lack of stacking shields together in the guide I’ve found it very helpfull and can be used to beat ships over ten times it’s cost with layered shielding as I call it

Oneye

newageofpower Good idea, I'll add that.

DanielTheMooCow

how many PD per reactor ?

Oneye

DanielTheMooCow 4 directly connected if you need constant firing, flak is better for missile defense though, so PD is mostly for the rears of ships where you don't need to worry about its power consumption.

Northerner

Hmmm, nice guide but you didn't talk about nukes in your weapons section (but you did about mines oddly enough) or nuke flingers. (the current and most disgusting meta) but otherwise great guide! Hopefully this helps the people struggling with competitive ship designs!

Oneye

Northerner Oof, didn't see that, will add nukes to the weapons section. Also nuke flingers are going to be gone next update (mostly, they will still get 2x nuke range), but I'll add them anyway.

Oneye

Ok, updated with the spinner and MSF ship type and added nukes to the weapon section. also made a "balance news" section.

Oneye

Also added a part about thrusters in the design basics section, and 4 "challenge cards" with ships for players to test their skills against. I would love some feedback on the challenge cards though, are they too hard? too easy? what should I change about them if anything?

kieffer5101

Oneye might want an example of the more popular ships in the ship type section, if you do this i can contribute some ship files

CursedPh4nt0m

Oneye I'd like to see some (more) lines about door placement. I've had many new players in the Building Academy make absolutely unnecessary door placement mistakes (not connecting ammo factories to cannons/shields to reactors, ...), that could've been avoided by some guiding words.

Also feel like the ratios should be redone, the HE missile launcher/factory ratio seemingly dropped to 1:1 for constant fireing, LCs could need more than one factory by now, and some other stuff has changed too.

Oneye

kieffer5101 Yeah, I should probably have a triangle or diagonal of some kind in there, many of the other ship types require player control to be effective though.

kieffer5101

Oneye i mean just as an general example

kieffer5101

not necessarily as a challenge

Astrum

kieffer5101 Yeah, I think examples of each ship type would be nice.

Oneye

Astrum Ok, I'll add them once/if Nord, oem, and Duke agree to let me use their ships as examples in some sections.

Oneye

CursedPh4nt0m The ratio for missiles has not changed, and 1 missile factory actually produces more than enough needed for 2 launchers. Cannon ratios are just what 90% of people use, as they are the most cost efficient, but yet they do not fire forever.