Every ship design is inherently different. What one person likes in their ships, another person may not. That being said however, there are certain key points that every ship needs in order to well. The below guide focuses more on those key points with certain opinions sprinkled in here and there. This is meant to be a beginner's guide, and as such I won't be going into much detail about the higher end modules.
Many times throughout the guide I will be referring to the RV766 design below. It is a general purpose example, neither specialized as a tank or a glass cannon. You may have to adjust certain aspects to fit your needs.
 Movement and Auxiliary Modules |
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Auxiliary modules is the third tab on your ship design. Until you get into the higher levels, your only concern here is going to be engines - and until you get really high up, your only choice is the Super Transmission Engine which provides 1 move and takes up 25 spaces. There are a few hull types out there which include move on their hulls already - be on the look out for these!
There is a lot of argument as to how much movement is appropriate. However, everyone universally agrees that anything less than 4 total movement is a waste. Your ships will take far too long to get to the fight and may not remain in weapons range. The amount of movement you need really depends on your weapon type. The further your weapons reach, the less you need. If you are using missiles, you have the furthest reach (aside from ship-based, which nobody uses) and therefore enemy ships will likely have to come into your range, rather than you chasing them into theirs. If you're using ballistics, you have the least range and require much more movement to continue to chase down fleets and get into range. Experiment with your weapon type and move to find the right mix for you. For directional weapons, I've personally found that 4 movement seems to do the trick.
The other modules serve much more specific purposes and usually only allow you to afix one of each type. Luckily in the game, you are able to view the other modules before obtaining them by browing through your Ship Designer. The first module you will encounter is the Agility Booster. Agility reduces damage taken - although nobody knows how (it is assumed that it interacts with your commander's dodge attribute). Frigates have far more agility than battleships - with cruisers nestled in between. So, if you are going to have a battleship for a tank, the Agility Booster is a must. In the example above, I have one attached. There is no way to check the agility of your ship design without finalizing it and looking in the Ship Factory itself - the right side of the image above. Steering can only be viewed in combat, when your ships are firing, hover your mouse over the weapons in the top portion of the screen, it will give you a percentage hit rate - your steering power.
Modules such as the Infrared Scanner increase agility and steering (increases attack damage), others only affect steering, these are more specialized for all purpose or glass cannon type designs.
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Shields and Defensive Modules |
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I decided to call this section Shields and Defensive modules for the simple reason that shields ARE your defenses. If you're focusing on anyting other than shields, you're in trouble... and if you're focusing on the wrong types of shields, you may also be in trouble.
In the example above you'll notice that I have 2 Detonator shields (Explosive), 1 Space Time shield (Magnetic), 2 Heat Diffusion shields (Heat), and 1 Particle Stun shield (Kinetic). These dampener shields should be the basis of your shields - why? Because these shields lessen the damage your actual shields receive and with enough of them, may negate ALL damage received. So why do I have 2 of some and 1 of another... To answer that we need to talk about hull types. In the above, I hovered over the RV766 to reveal the hull type, Regen armor, and that this type already lessens Kinetic and Magnetic weapons. Because of this inherent dampening, I decided to use my space more effectively to dampen the damage types I am more vulnerable to.
Dampener shields are your primary defense, but Shield Boosters do help (I have two in the example). These add 300 base shields to your ship, and increase the effects of the dampeners by 3. These should not be the basis of your shields though, because while you'll have high shields, they will take more damage and in the end be LESS effective.
Structure modules are a different beast altogether - I personally stay away from them aside from one, the Gravity Maintenance Facility. For a relatively small amount of space you can increase your ship's hull by 1000, defense by 1, and stability by 50%. What is stability? Once again, nobody really knows for sure. This is the only hull module I personally use however, because once your shields are gone and your worried about your hull modules, you're already taking damage and losing ships.
The Air Defense modules can be useful in instances, but for the most part in PvP, the only one worth mentioning is the Missile Interception Cabin. This is primarily due to the fact that almost nobody uses ship-based weapons. With enough shield dampeners, Missile Interception may still be unnecessary, but the 65% chance that missiles will be shot down before hitting you is a nice perk. It is unclear whether adding more than one of these is any help however - because it's clear that 130% of missiles are NOT shot down...
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Weapons |
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The important thing you should know about weapons is that you should only have ONE type of weapon on any ship - and ideally only one type in any fleet formation. Why? Let's say you have a ship with 2 ballistics and 2 missiles. If your fleet is set to Min Range, only the ballistics will fire and the missiles are wasted space. If your fleet is set to Max Range, the opposite will happen. In no scenario will both types fire at the same time during a round. The other reason is that your Tech Tree - the page you're researching in your Technology Center, will not be advanced in either ballistics or missiles - it will likely be mediocre in both... further adding to the detriment of your ship design.
There are two preferred ways to afix weapons to your ship. You can either do all one type, one level - as I have above. Or, you can do 4 level-3 and 3 level-2. Often times the main reason for doing this is to maximize the weapons in the limited space you have on a hull, however it does not always maximize the damage your ships can deal. An added benefit of the 3-2 option is that often times your ships will end up only firing the 3's one round, and the 2's the next, cutting down on your cooldown time.
Cooldown times are rounds where your ship will sit idley taking damage. For Directional weapons, your ships will sit around taking damage one round, then fire, then sit, then fire. Missiles have 3 cooldown rounds, and Ballistics have none. In addition to the 3-2 build option, another way to cancel this effect is to have a high Speed attribute on your commander.
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Tech Tree |
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While not necessarily part of the ship design process itself, I felt it was important enough to include here. You should be focused on one tree at a time. If you're going to work on ballistics, do that until it's nearly maxed out. Every weapon type has some sort of scatter/splash damage that should be harnessed before moving on to another type. Likewise, every weapon type has some sort of research to reduce the amount of space the weapon takes up in a hull design - this can greatly add to the performance of your ships by allowing you to add another one or two weapons.
Until you've maxed out a specific weapons tech, you should only be working with the Logistics, Your Weapon, and Ship Defense trees.
At this time, the 'Adds 1 movement to all ships' research under the Planetary Defense tree only affects your ships while in YOUR home space while under attack. It will not carry over into instances, league, or attacking others.
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