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 Welcome to the guide here in this guide I will be showing you my general tactics for shipbuilding. with subjects such as the way, I like to armor or other effective armor strategies, or the number of missile factories and other ammo factories that are needed for their respective weapons.

Armor

you often would wish that armor was lighter and cheaper right? well, I have a tactic that doesn't heavily affect the strength of the said armor, if you happen to have a large amount of armor in a specific blob you could add triangle pieces on the inside here is my example used in one of my designs

as you can see I have a large amount of armor in the front (this ship is a PLOW for mines and minefields (basically a minesweeper)) But you can also see the triangles on the front armor that lighten the armor but sacrifice not a whole lot of strength.

inner design

For ships, the inner design (the construction of corridors reactors and factories) can be the complete victory of the ship or completely prevent the weapons from firing

good design:

as you can see the ship has a center area somewhat separated from the rest of the ship with some conveyors to speed up the crew around it allowing fast reload and transportation of recourses and weapons.

Bad design:

In this design, you see many don'ts the filler corridors the very few crew quarters and the clumped reactors these cause massive vulnerabilities and the fact that there are so few factories makes it so the weapons can not reload at nearly the best speed.

(to see the inside download the ships sorry I can't get the interior view)

Sheilding

With the energy shield, you should not put them on the front because if the shield goes down they would be completely vulnerable, if possible you should put the shields behind one to two layers of armor
you should also with the shields not put a reactor directly behind them you should have a reactor for 2 shields behind some internal armor to prevent the reactor from getting hit.

General Safety

1. you should put reactors behind internal armor
2. the ship should at every point have easy access to a fire extinguisher
3. try to have a reasonable amount of shielding but not too much because this could cause too many reactors to be in the ship forcing clumping
4. NO REACTOR CLUMPING
5. Keep in mind the weight of the armor because you could have too much weight for your thrusters to handle
6. Keep your ships separated into organized groups in your ship selection screen

Weapons and their factories

Standard cannon

This cannon has a 1:3 ratio of factories to cannons the cannons are small and relatively effective but be careful of overcrowding and their relatively low damage against shields you should couple them with electro bolters so they can get thru the shields

Large cannon

The large cannon is a 1:1 ratio for large cannons to factories they are a much higher damage weapon than the standard cannon at a larger area that they take up they have good penetration damage and should be coupled with electro bolters to get thru shields

Electro bolter

an anti shielding weapon that is meant to drain the power from enemy systems it can deal very little physical damage but can go thru shields and drain them of power quickly, they are great when coupled with other weapons to drain shields.

Heavy Laser

this laser deals much higher damage then the simple laser it also has a much larger area that it takes up and slower shots
it is best used as the main weapon on small to medium craft and can be switched to a faster firing mode it is best coupled with an electro bolter

Small Laser (simple laser)

This laser is the most common weapon in most ships it deals low-ish damage to physical parts and medium damage to shields, it can be used as a browning weapon to constantly overwhelm the enemy point defense

Ion Beam

the ion beam deals constant damage and is a good weapon to slowly gut an enemy it does poorly against shield so it should be in groups of three or grouped with an electro bolter to be the most effective I often use it in conjunction with the railgun

Missile launcher

one of the most spammed weapons it was most affected in the 0.14.5 update it was given the ability to have mines loaded, a nuke loaded, a high explosive missile loaded, or an emp missile loaded these weapons are a 1:2 factory to weapon ratio they are good at general damage and often hit the sides of enemy ships but they are hard countered by flak and the point defense system

RailGun

a weapon that can penetrate almost all enemy defense systems and is able to be increased power by using the accelerators this weapon has the most damage potential of any wepaon in the game it can have the accelerators between the launcher and the contro, section to increase the railguns overall damege but they are incredibly vulnerable and need all the protection they can get.