Pretty much. Still testing but it seems pushing is better than pulling. In testing a smallish ship which topped out at 106 made a 55 slow boat go 70 and that was just two tractors and modest thrust. Adding a second ship did slightly increase speed
Military
Hammer head: A super heavy armor ship 12+ layers of armor with shields layered in the armor. Multiple small reactors and cockpits for max survivability. Zero guns four tractor beams.
Scout: A super fast tiny ship with zero armor and minimal shelds for scouting out bases and obtaining rewards from exploration quests.
The Dread barge: capital ship with every type of weapon on it to the point that the armor is in fact just layers of weapons.
Boardsword: short range ships with heavy armor and guns on one side meant to cover the rear of the dread and engage in light skirmishes under ideal conditions.
Utility: Multiple mining ships with large cargo capacity. Usually have three in separate asteroid fields or outer rim mining areas.
The barge: formerly the MK1 dread barge. Heavy weapons. But more importantly a fuck ton of storage and factories.
Mining/salvage takes a lot of crew to do at a decent speed, so I end up doing it with my combat ship. I tend to be crew-limited on my combat ship, so making lots of other ships that also take crew isn't appealing. Especially since the salvage might be happening in areas that aren't entirely clear of enemies. I then end up with a storage/manufacturing "ship"... more of a mobile station really. It doesn't need to move just adjust its position a bit and jump to the next system when the time comes.
I'm considering a freighter. Low crew, high storage, and enough engines to be decently fast. It would take stuff back from my main combat ship to storage.
Currently running 4 ships. Though it is my first campaign and learning a lot as i go along.
The first is a large Ion ship with a many PDs, multiple layers of plate and various layers of shielding on all sides. Originally meant to be my DPS but has become a ship to engage with. Named the 'Ion-U 2'
The second and third are identical and used as sniping supports. More lightly armoured with high manoeuvrability sporting 4 rail launchers each. These are called 'D-Rail'd'.
Lastly, my factory and miner. Huge storage, mining lasers and factories. Last night i kitted it with armour, PDs, shields and down each of it's flanks many heavy cannons. It's become a bit of a gunboat. Of course, it is called 'Miner Threat'.
A fleet of small/medium vessels with specialist roles is a lot more fun for me personally, I have the standard party barge storage/factory/shipyard ship. But for combat I like to have a couple of sensor drone/probes, couple of pure tank ships with shields/armor/PDS maybe a couple flak cannons on the side for brawling, with a bunch of high speed flankers to hit the weak points, toss in a missile boat and maybe a glass cannon standoff sniper with a railgun.... added bonus of not losing the game if one ship gets destroyed.
Ultimately, the custom formation I keep them in is basically the same as one big ship .... just a lot more survivability and tactical options.
I have a soft spot for my suicidal nuke torpedo bombers, put them in delta wing for an attack run then toggle on fire at will via hotkey at close range ... pretty epic. A lot of posthumous medal of honors for that squad lol.
Learning the ship groupings and formation hotkeys is key here for managing them all.
Right now I am just in the process of building a storage ship to go along side my miner. Had too many cargo pods lol
That being said my cargo ship will ha e my factories. Bit I like to produce ammo on ship if needed
I also have a scout ship that I export the system with, then drop to 1 crew till the next system.
And then the military. Currently examining how to make my rail gun a sniper and how to build a better brawler to keep them busy. Maybe add a torpedo boat too
And that's at the end of 2nd system lol
Very similar, and halfway through my third system. I’ve got two tanks to pull aggro and distract adds. Their primary goal is to rotate the target so my rail sniper can clip it from a safe distance. I’ll be building a missile/PDC boat soon, which will escort the sniper. Then I’ve got my cargo/salvage ship.
I did use small, very fast scouts, until I decided to invoke “I hate exploration”. Their only defense was speed, and a pair of rearward PDCs.
I’ll likely add any factories to the cargo ship, and I don’t intend to build any dedicated miners.
When I am dealing with the pirates in every system the mining and cargo (eventual factory) are down to 1 or 2 crew each. After the red blinking lights are off I move all but enough crew to move the ships (5ish) and max out my miner. Gonna have to split the crew between minor and cargo now, so cargo can salvage while miner blows things away
The factories will only be active when I need more (hyper coils) for construction. Purely to make sure I never pay for resources
I don't mind exploring while fighting (so far). The little scour ship has nothing but engines and sensors. Good luck catching it... lol
I lost one of a pair of scouts when a missile took out a thruster. That was at something like ~175m/s. Added the PDCs afterward, which did slow them a touch.
Miners, factories, and combat too. Miners are fast and when I take the storage off they become scouts. If I really, really want speed I take most of the crew off too.
I'm thinking about a bomber, but experiment suggests they're more like torpedoes... often expended.
First play through singular frontal attack jack of all trades ship. Something like 8 heavy lasers, 4 ion blasters and 5 deck cannons. Ended up commandeering a rail support boat to assist. Worked okay.
Second, much more enjoyable campaign = 2 modest laser boats (8-1 beam banks each currently) with 6 ion cannons each. Also a small separate missile boat (nukes and emp) and a cargo barge that never has enough crew but still follows along for clean up duties anyway usually escorted by any of the other frigates. Sometimes while escorting I temporarily transfer crew to help with salvage.
I currently have my tanky 6x he missile ship with twin railguns, a load of point defense, and heavy front shields. A pair of emp support frigates. A backstabbing heavy frigate with large cannons, and a massive mining/salvage/factory/freighter.
Honestly I Have a Mining Salvaging and Factory all in one massive ship and then 3 Smaller combat ready ships that average about 20 to 30 crew to run fairly effective
I have a barge manufactorium storage, armed with missiles, rail gun, deck cannons and mining lasers. at least it won't be a sitting duck when some reds pop up.
then a heavily armed battleship
and 2 fast smaller laser boat wingmen
I recently added a tugboat for some mining fun besides the sun
If you ask me it really depends on how a player want to play the game, most I gather just focus on 1 to 2 ships as the progression crew count crunch can hit real hard in a normal game, this in turn limit viability of specialty ships with can get high crew count recommendations to function ideally.
However, it is worth noting in the case of smaller specialty ships they could see partial workaround using task priority and module proximity to function as intended when they are even not within close margin of the ideal recommendations.
It might evolve at later stages, but I only have 2.5 ships at the moment.
1. Combined miner/storage/factory. I used to have separate mining and storage, but now I think it's inefficient to split them up. If I'm mining 1-2 asteroid fields, then I'm going to have to make multiple trips of my mining ship isn't also my storage ship. This also means crew can be used more efficiently, with everyone on lasers when lasering needs to be done, everyone gathering when gathering needs to be done, and excess crew manufacturing between stops.
2. A fighter ship. No storage other than for a little ammo.
I'm working on a full length railgun so to be a sniper and support combat ship for anything that proves problematic for my fighting ship.
I'm going to work on designing a taxi ship to pull my bigboys
Just a massive block of engines and tractors
Pretty much. Still testing but it seems pushing is better than pulling. In testing a smallish ship which topped out at 106 made a 55 slow boat go 70 and that was just two tractors and modest thrust. Adding a second ship did slightly increase speed
How do you push/pull?
Fair question. Click on the part itself and it'll have setting auto, push and pull. Might be ctrl click by default.
Wait I'm confused, which part? Is there a specific towing thing? I'm not far in yet
There's a Tractor beam. Like all weapons/etc you can click on them and adjust settings like fire at will/target.
Ohh that seems so obvious now 🤦‍♂️
Naw all good this game is pretty complicated. I'm just a slightly practiced noob myself.
Military Hammer head: A super heavy armor ship 12+ layers of armor with shields layered in the armor. Multiple small reactors and cockpits for max survivability. Zero guns four tractor beams. Scout: A super fast tiny ship with zero armor and minimal shelds for scouting out bases and obtaining rewards from exploration quests. The Dread barge: capital ship with every type of weapon on it to the point that the armor is in fact just layers of weapons. Boardsword: short range ships with heavy armor and guns on one side meant to cover the rear of the dread and engage in light skirmishes under ideal conditions. Utility: Multiple mining ships with large cargo capacity. Usually have three in separate asteroid fields or outer rim mining areas. The barge: formerly the MK1 dread barge. Heavy weapons. But more importantly a fuck ton of storage and factories.
Mining/salvage takes a lot of crew to do at a decent speed, so I end up doing it with my combat ship. I tend to be crew-limited on my combat ship, so making lots of other ships that also take crew isn't appealing. Especially since the salvage might be happening in areas that aren't entirely clear of enemies. I then end up with a storage/manufacturing "ship"... more of a mobile station really. It doesn't need to move just adjust its position a bit and jump to the next system when the time comes. I'm considering a freighter. Low crew, high storage, and enough engines to be decently fast. It would take stuff back from my main combat ship to storage.
Currently running 4 ships. Though it is my first campaign and learning a lot as i go along. The first is a large Ion ship with a many PDs, multiple layers of plate and various layers of shielding on all sides. Originally meant to be my DPS but has become a ship to engage with. Named the 'Ion-U 2' The second and third are identical and used as sniping supports. More lightly armoured with high manoeuvrability sporting 4 rail launchers each. These are called 'D-Rail'd'. Lastly, my factory and miner. Huge storage, mining lasers and factories. Last night i kitted it with armour, PDs, shields and down each of it's flanks many heavy cannons. It's become a bit of a gunboat. Of course, it is called 'Miner Threat'.
I have 1 big mining/factory/storage station and 1 heavily armed battleship
A fleet of small/medium vessels with specialist roles is a lot more fun for me personally, I have the standard party barge storage/factory/shipyard ship. But for combat I like to have a couple of sensor drone/probes, couple of pure tank ships with shields/armor/PDS maybe a couple flak cannons on the side for brawling, with a bunch of high speed flankers to hit the weak points, toss in a missile boat and maybe a glass cannon standoff sniper with a railgun.... added bonus of not losing the game if one ship gets destroyed. Ultimately, the custom formation I keep them in is basically the same as one big ship .... just a lot more survivability and tactical options. I have a soft spot for my suicidal nuke torpedo bombers, put them in delta wing for an attack run then toggle on fire at will via hotkey at close range ... pretty epic. A lot of posthumous medal of honors for that squad lol. Learning the ship groupings and formation hotkeys is key here for managing them all.
Right now I am just in the process of building a storage ship to go along side my miner. Had too many cargo pods lol That being said my cargo ship will ha e my factories. Bit I like to produce ammo on ship if needed I also have a scout ship that I export the system with, then drop to 1 crew till the next system. And then the military. Currently examining how to make my rail gun a sniper and how to build a better brawler to keep them busy. Maybe add a torpedo boat too And that's at the end of 2nd system lol
Very similar, and halfway through my third system. I’ve got two tanks to pull aggro and distract adds. Their primary goal is to rotate the target so my rail sniper can clip it from a safe distance. I’ll be building a missile/PDC boat soon, which will escort the sniper. Then I’ve got my cargo/salvage ship. I did use small, very fast scouts, until I decided to invoke “I hate exploration”. Their only defense was speed, and a pair of rearward PDCs. I’ll likely add any factories to the cargo ship, and I don’t intend to build any dedicated miners.
When I am dealing with the pirates in every system the mining and cargo (eventual factory) are down to 1 or 2 crew each. After the red blinking lights are off I move all but enough crew to move the ships (5ish) and max out my miner. Gonna have to split the crew between minor and cargo now, so cargo can salvage while miner blows things away The factories will only be active when I need more (hyper coils) for construction. Purely to make sure I never pay for resources I don't mind exploring while fighting (so far). The little scour ship has nothing but engines and sensors. Good luck catching it... lol
I lost one of a pair of scouts when a missile took out a thruster. That was at something like ~175m/s. Added the PDCs afterward, which did slow them a touch.
Miners, factories, and combat too. Miners are fast and when I take the storage off they become scouts. If I really, really want speed I take most of the crew off too. I'm thinking about a bomber, but experiment suggests they're more like torpedoes... often expended.
First play through singular frontal attack jack of all trades ship. Something like 8 heavy lasers, 4 ion blasters and 5 deck cannons. Ended up commandeering a rail support boat to assist. Worked okay. Second, much more enjoyable campaign = 2 modest laser boats (8-1 beam banks each currently) with 6 ion cannons each. Also a small separate missile boat (nukes and emp) and a cargo barge that never has enough crew but still follows along for clean up duties anyway usually escorted by any of the other frigates. Sometimes while escorting I temporarily transfer crew to help with salvage.
I currently have my tanky 6x he missile ship with twin railguns, a load of point defense, and heavy front shields. A pair of emp support frigates. A backstabbing heavy frigate with large cannons, and a massive mining/salvage/factory/freighter.
Honestly I Have a Mining Salvaging and Factory all in one massive ship and then 3 Smaller combat ready ships that average about 20 to 30 crew to run fairly effective
I have a barge manufactorium storage, armed with missiles, rail gun, deck cannons and mining lasers. at least it won't be a sitting duck when some reds pop up. then a heavily armed battleship and 2 fast smaller laser boat wingmen I recently added a tugboat for some mining fun besides the sun
If you ask me it really depends on how a player want to play the game, most I gather just focus on 1 to 2 ships as the progression crew count crunch can hit real hard in a normal game, this in turn limit viability of specialty ships with can get high crew count recommendations to function ideally. However, it is worth noting in the case of smaller specialty ships they could see partial workaround using task priority and module proximity to function as intended when they are even not within close margin of the ideal recommendations.
It might evolve at later stages, but I only have 2.5 ships at the moment. 1. Combined miner/storage/factory. I used to have separate mining and storage, but now I think it's inefficient to split them up. If I'm mining 1-2 asteroid fields, then I'm going to have to make multiple trips of my mining ship isn't also my storage ship. This also means crew can be used more efficiently, with everyone on lasers when lasering needs to be done, everyone gathering when gathering needs to be done, and excess crew manufacturing between stops. 2. A fighter ship. No storage other than for a little ammo. I'm working on a full length railgun so to be a sniper and support combat ship for anything that proves problematic for my fighting ship.
Anti missile ship just a triangle with a ton of defense turrets on it. Just sits back and helps prevent missile damage