Build largely Assymetrical ships where the center of your ships XYZ axis is open, so that the AI can't shoot you since it targets the mathmatical center of your ship.
If you wanna make cross ship passageways, use the hope tech or nova cross ship passageways. I found that is a good way to force a passage to make a loop and not have to rely on the companion way hab sections.
The ship builder mode greatly needs an ability to jump into the workspace with your character and be able to walk around the inside of your ship. Having to commit to changes without being able to see the inside of your ship is just really annoying.
Yes. And/or the ability to buy back after you confirm & test what you've done. I lost the “Frontier” module of my starter ship, not realizing I couldn't buy it back later. It's actually my favorite. Damn.
I'd love to see a 1x1 companion way that's 2 high, having stairs instead of a ladder for travelling between upper and lower decks. Ladders are too slow.
I agree. I have a pirate ship build where I climb 4 floors straight up to the bridge, crafting rooms on either side of the second floor and captains quarters on the 3rd. Power boost pack is needed to preserve my sanity lol you can catch the ladder mid air. But seriously, we need a fast climb even if it expands oxygen, or more options for stairs.
@@michealnelsonauthor sometimes I board an enemy ship and its zero G inside, you get to like thrust around with the boost pack, maybe that could be a toggle option in the ship menu lol disable the grav drive or whatever is making the artificial gravity on board. Would make traversing multilevel ships way easier at times
It seems like overall the emphasis on ship building was placed on exteriors. In my opinion the interior of the ship is way more important, and I’d love to see some changes that let you preview the interior of a ship before you build it.
@@zaboo4088 agreed. Another HUGE design flaw. Did you know that Deimos workshop has research lab in it? All other dont. No all "All-in-one" hubs has kitchen (galley).
I really hope they add an outpost edit system inside ships, so you can look at walls and edit them into doorways/ladders, so we can have as many or as little as we want.
You can enforce shiplayout with hopetech spines! It will always connect 2 hand with a doorway. You find them in polvo at the ship technician all th way down in the habs section. There are 2 variants. Nova galactic also has 1 variant, a cross sectional piece. These pieces enforce doorways
Yeah my #1 suggestion for future updates is to add toggle points for ladders and doors to customize where they are. Closely followed by a vertical 2x2 staircase hab and an elevator option.
@@gblackuser There is already a mod on nexus that allows you to change the tolerances in ship building so that parts can sit tighter next to each other or overlap a bit. Usually for like cowling and weapon mounts and stuff, so they can clip through each other. Or is that not what you meant?
@@dmoonmaster1653 I think they meant a piece you can slap on a potential connection point that will prevent that connection from being made. Basically the opposite of the idea mentioned in the video.
Just a side note about certain ship yards, where you find that you can't buy another weapon to match what you have, ie if you have one high teir cannon, but it won't dupe it and not in the list. You can force dupe the weapon, by simply duplicating the part of your ship that the wanted weapon is attached to, then move the new dupped weapon and delete the part thats left. It also works for scan jammers :)
Scan jammers have been proven by people on Reddit to NOT stack multiplicative. Multiple scan jammers were lowering their chance to evade contraband scans.
I noticed the same thing's when building ships. Overall shipbuilding works really well in Starfield with the exception of ladders and doors. From what I can tell what the game tries to do is put the ladder as close to your landing bay as it can get. You can kind of get things where you want to be by connecting modules in a specific order but its goes bananas sometimes anyway. Especially with the captains quarters modules. I'm not sure why but the game seems to love to stick ladders in the middle of the captains quarters no matter what order you connect the modules. One thing that would improve the ship building immensely would be the ability to manually toggle the connection points so that a door/ladder will either always or never spawn when another hab is connected via that specific point. This would allow the creation of things like looping corridors while preventing ladders and doors from spawning in unwanted places.
I believe Bethesda uses a graph reduction algorithm to determine where to place the doors. These algorithms by design use the minimum number of edges (doors in this case) to connect all of the nodes (the habs). They also never create loops. It is likely the doors are numbered and are evaluated in order which is why you see habs preferring certain door orientations as long as it allows the graph to be computed without cycles (loops) and allows all habs to be reacheable.
You can create loop with two way bridges (only hope tech (4-way too) and nova i think) its in habitation tab and its the only way I know to force door connexion outside of the algorithm.
This helped in my looped ship, but there was one more essential tip to get a full loop working for my specific layout. This may not work for your layout but you can try every combination of window closest to the connection point of where you want to force a door to spawn. This includes the skylight, windows on the floor or bottom, side windows, and any combination of those paired together. For example, in my layout I placed a window on the side and a window on the floor and that forced the door to spawn between habs.
What bugs me the most is that it would rather connect all 3 adjacent modules to my Captain's Quarters, rather than just having a single door to my Quarters and connecting the other rooms to each other. And my Quarters are one of the outboard-most modules on my ship.
I found when using the Cabot Bridge two-story cockpit (available at Nova only) that my ship refused to place a ladder to the upper levels, relying solely on the built in stairs within the bridge to give second level access, which I like because on the upper levels are my captains quarters, worshop, and armory which are mostly personal use. Also a general tip, I found using a flat docker and flipping it to be a bottom docker to be the best method for keeping it out of the way, not all dockers can be flipped be advised
I recently made a huge Class C ship and I am overwhelmed by how confusing the interior is lol. Hopefully they add a preview interior option in the future.
If you're building big cruiser-type ships, you really don't have a choice but to use companionways to organize the different decks; it's the only way to really avoid ship mazes.
The doors being a placeable object is a great idea! I've been messing with Habs and doors and ladders for hours myself to create a logical layout. Thanks for the video Also nova and hope have "catwalk" pieces that really force where entrance doors are to habs. It helped me force where I want doors
This mirrors my own conclusions after a lot of work last night; the only sure way to force doors and hatchways is to leave the system absolutely no other choice than to put the throughway where you want it. Spacers, the special crossways, and risers are all useful towards this. EDIT: Regarding your final commentary, other than ladders/doors, my biggest ship complaint is the size restriction on how big a ship you can build. The funny thing is ont the loading screen tips hints they originally planned to let you build non-landable, larger ships.
I'm sure we'll be able to build massive ships in future updates which will have us take shuttles to the surface. I kind of made a quasi Captain's yacht on top of my ship already. It doesn't do anything, but it looks like it should. I hope we get to build carriers, or have fleets our followers can fly in.
I saw some success building larger Taiyo ships, because you can switch to a version of the hab with no side doorways when you want to block them. That way you have some control over where the route is placed. You can make a no-side-doors hab going forwards and backwards off the central storeroom. And you can put habs on each side that are only connected to the central storeroom. Also, I always do each floor layout branching out from the main storeroom ladderway. No loops. Only one ladder. It’s great.
4:28 This cannot be understated. I spent nearly *two days* experimenting with layouts before coming to this conclusion. I hope others don't experience needless frustration before figuring it out
I bet the devs represent the ship modules' connections as a tree data structure with the root being your first module, which is why you can't have loops; trees are inherently acyclic.
May have to do with NPC path routing. Without a beginning and end they may just loop continually or spin in circles at the junction between the beginning and end.
@PureNationalism13 I tried connecting walkways and manufacturer specific 'special' halls to difficult combinations of companionways and Habs. Still no loop. I'm more then certain there is no way to generate one.
I merged two parts by accident yesterday. Thought it looked funny, fixed it, and moved on. I never thought to use this glitch intentionally to improve the ship design, that's really clever
I've just started getting into making my own ships. Took me a while to find a preferred layout for my ladders but I settled on spacing them out so they only cross between a single floor each. This makes it faster to traverse by dropping through the hole in the floor to a lower level, Or running up to the ladder and double boosting to grapple up to a higher floor.
Maybe I am misunderstanding the loop problem, but I solve it by using the hope tech tunnel connectors that force a doorway into the hab they are connected too, maybe give that a try as it allowed me to make a single layer well laid out ship with everything I wanted and space in the sections for reactors grav and cargo too.
What I have done is to divide ship modules into two groups. The modules I want my character to actually access with any regularity (bridge, armory, workshop, captain's quarters for the bed, etc.) and everything else necessary to contain the crew berths and control stations. I make sure that those modules I care about are all on the mid level. Yes, obviously this seriously constrains the aesthetics of my build options. Very close to the bridge and contiguous to those other modules I care about, I will arrange for access to the docking bay to be just below and a full height docker to be just above. That will give me a single access point to leave and enter the ship very close to those areas I care about. Then I will put any other modules wherever they fit into the ship build, on the same level as those I care about, or above or below it, as necessary. How and where they access one another is up to the random idiocy Bethesda programmed into their build system. I have zero control over it sadly and I have utterly given up trying to make the interiors otherwise make any sense. Great job Bethesda.
I think the doors system wants to make sure every room is accessibly with MINIMUM doors (presumably to avoid having a hab compartment lose all internal detail because it's all doors or something) I agree though, the manually placable doors would be great, and I can definitely see that being modded in, possibly even before it's added properly with a DLC expansion
I use the nova & hopetech walkways to force routes to create a fast track through the ship. you could maybe use some of these tricks to hide them inside hull pieces
You can force a connection with a hallway hab module, that some manufacturers sell, like HopeTech Hab Cross Brace or Hab Spine (sold in Hopetown, Polvo planet, Valo system) or Nova Cross Passage (New Homestead, Titan, Sol), for example, if you have such two hallways connected to a habitation module, they will always force a connection to that hallway, and you can make that way a connection to something on two or more points where you want, possibly also creating a loop.
The placement of windows in the roof and floor can also change how ladders and doors are placed. Had a room that only had ladder access in spite of having a valid door options, but placing windows over the ladders caused the game to remove the ladders and switch to doors.
Something that doesn't make sense - in Starfield Outposts, you can select a part of a "hab" - one wall - and have choices if it's connected to another. You can make it a door, you can make it a wall, you can make it an opening (depending on what it's connected to). I am relatively sure different dev teams worked on each, but did they never have lunch together, or have to compete in a three legged race on corporate fun day or something so they'd interact?
I'd like to see a virtual path line in the builder so you can see a ghost line through all the modules and doorways/ladders. Imagine a thread passed through all the modules like beads on a necklace.
I'm getting the feeling they're doing a wavefunction collapse routine for the doorway and ladders; it's a well known software method for generating tiles, and can make it very difficult to figure out the formula, because the placement is dependent upon all the interactions of all connecting iles.
I would like a ship scrapyard, either one you build on an outpost or part of some place or faction where you get a permanent stash to hold ship modules when you disassemble a ship. It would be especially useful if you are a pirate that steals other ships, then fly them over to break them down and use the superior parts to upgrade your own ship for almost no cost, then sell all the other modules you don't need.
I would like to add that certain habs include large storage boxes. Hope Tech 3x1 engineering, Deimos armory and living quarters, Nova captain's quarters, Stroud computer core and 2x2 cargo hold. I use them for dumping my resources and extra ship parts which I am not planning on selling, but want them closer than my unlimited vault at the lodge. Keep in mind that the ship parts will not be useable to repair ship, so still keep some in your ship inventory. The Deimos armory also has the most gun racks, so it's nice to place the heaviest weapons on there then the rest in the storage box. I can go a few missions before having to go sell everything off.
I've been building all day :) Just made the smallest C class I could with just a 1x1 hab and the second biggest cockpit for all the 6 crew. I also managed to make a two storey ship with no ladders! only the staircase in the biggest cockpit.
I use the select the node you want to connect a ladder through, hit G to bring up the hab menu, and scroll through the habs you want from each manufacturer. Stroud and Demios have the same interior, but seem to place the ladder opposite ends for 2x1's. You will see where the hab wants to place the ladder, by where it tries to attach the hab. I have only tried this with 2x1 habs though.
We need to have hubs or adaptors of some sort that will do a stair case like in some of the pre made ships in the game. I can see this ship builder being great if we had the right tools added to increase our ability to make amazing ships and also I would very much like to see us able to dismantle ships we own or that we have captured and use the parts in another ship or just to be sold to the ship builder merchant as I keep seeing that we are just making the merchant richer with the amount of credit they have and no way of getting the money back.
I just finished my C class ship build .... love how it turned out ... looks like a black space Lamborghini ... really like the ship building mechanic in this game which i really missed in no man's sky.
Myabe in the future we have a way to design like a flowmap between habs. Like with arrows, pointing how to connect them. I also wanted to loop my habs and it isn't possible. I wanted to have a ladder at both ends of a hab with a 1x1, but one just didn't had a door to loop on the second floor
Stack companion ways on top each other. That made one tall ladder for each level of my ship all the way to my bridge and captain’s quarters. That seems to be the best layout I’ve found for multi levels.
Thanks for the merging tips, they're great for getting a better aesthetic! Personally I'd much rather see almost any other content rather than outpost building.
I agree 100%, the game NEEDs a way of specifying where a door or ladder will be generated, like some other games way back had a mechanic where you place the room and then you have a door that you need to place before the room is finished, the door is stuck to the cursor until it's placed in either of the predifined locations around the room. in my playtime, ive noted that the habs can only have doors in certain locations and it also depends on the hab type, maybe even manufacturer. Further testing required, or a mod. It's annoying having two ladders in the same hab going to the same hab below it - yeah that did happen to me once already loool :D - But hey, "it just works", rough translation: "It just about works".
The Habs hard points are exactly where the doors would go. It would make sense that after we attach a hab we could then choose which attached part becomes the door. It seems like a simple solution but I'm no game coder
The one thing they need to get rid of is the game storing the misc contents of previously deleted modules. I had 2000+ foam cups after I built my first ship (testing all the structural variations). Obviously now I save before I start designing
Having deck 1 and 2 isolated from each other aside from the Cabot bridge with an acceptable door placement on deck 2 is hard enough to predict. Remove the stroud exterior storerooms, and the entire equation just goes out of wack. Large class-c Ebon Hawk layout with 6 infirmary/workshop/armory with 20+ passenger space: impressive. Having an interior that’s not a maze: priceless.
Haven't tested it but companion ways seem to be and should be the hab that gets prioritized for pathing and ladders. If I had more time to play with it I'd check this out
If you have a piece not attached and aren't sure which it is try double clicking a piece. It'll select all contiguous parts. You can move those as one, and figure out what the issue is.
A much easier way they could gave done the hab linking is if the anchor point itself always puts a door, but you can select an anchor point and press a button to set it to be "closed", (it changes do a different color) which means anything snapped to it will not form a door.
They should have made it where you can specify the exact doorway locations you want. Total control over the general floorplan. I wouldn't mind having a clutter of variants of parts just to make absolute certain that doors are where I want them to be. Hell, I'd love it even more if we were allowed to do it the same way Subnautica does it with the large room and partitions.
@@RoadRunner217 yeah. At first I had a 3x1 mid placed over my reactor and there was a ladder placed leading straight to it. Replaced it with the same size hab but a bottom and the hole leading to the void was gone.
The thing that gets me is why can't the already existing wall editing system that exists in the outpost builder just not be applied to the ship so you can create whatever doorways and ladders you want where ever you want them to be. Most of the work has already been done. Just need to translate it to the ships modules.
Seeing as how fallout 4 also had innovative building mechanics for a Bethesda game and it also got multiple expansion packs that added more workshop items (including elevators), I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few expansions for starfield that do the same
Saw crimsons video yesterday. Nice of you to give credits to smaller channels! Although your description link didn't work for me to get to his channel. Good vid man!
Things this game desperately needs: Informational overlays, such as an interior view (Even if just untextured cuboids rendered on top of the piece, it would prevent a lot of time wasted rebuilding the ship) an advanced building mode that lets you override doors and such
Building off of a specific hook *does* seem to give preference to a connection being put there, as I have used it to great effect in some layouts. But it can absolutely be overruled by things like habs which are coded to want a door somewhere else.
TotalXclipse: "don't make a hole in your ship." Meanwhile some random dude: "if you make a ship that IS a giant hole in the middle, they cant even hit you!"
@@TotalXclipse this is because the aim is centered on the middle of your ship... so if the middle of your ship is a giant hole all their shots and missiles will miss cus there is nothing to hit in the middle.
The obly thing I can think of, is the system generates connection points based of assest loading efficiency. I had one ship layout that had a bug where when I was at tge bottom of a ladder that went all the way up 3 levels the shadows made everything dark. After flipping where a 2x2 and 2x1 were it moved the ladder so it only went up one level and the bug stopped.
Such a great help for my building thanks heaps 👍👍. Agreed door/hatch placement would be awesome as someone who spends ALOT of my time in the Ship Builder. Depending on my credits LOL 😂😂🤣🤣🤟🤟
The seemingly random way it decides where to place doors and ladders really needs to be addressed. It seriously holds you back from making a ship that feels like something that could plausibly be real.
Using the 1x1 storage or companionway habs don't guarantee three ladder will centrally be there. I built a ship recently that did this using diamos and stroud eckland parts and got a VERY strange layout.
Companion ways really changed up how I make my ships for the better. I ignored them at first and ladders would be everywhere. Now I just put a stack of companion ways and no more ladders! The doors are a bit of a pain though. Got three rooms attached to a companion way and it only makes doors to the two on the side, have to walk through my workshop to get to the control room and then my bridge. Would love the workshop to stay a side room and have a straight line from the ladder through ops to the bridge but can't get it to work without removing the side rooms.
I hope I can describe this properly but you can also merge pieces together by placing the piece you want on a level above where it needs to go and then copying it attaching it copying it attaching it it will automatically go down a level each time and it will allow you to place it then you can delete the ones that you don't need and you'll have the piece you want merged where you want it
I've gotten a few layout loops to happen by using the hab connector parts. It seems to be because the game forces them to always have a connection. Hope and NG have them. Also something I've noticed, companionways seem to get priority for doors and ladders when the game plots how to connect habs.
While some habs allow for loops this way, I have literally built the same ship two times except for different hab variations and in one I have a loop, but in the other one I don't.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that manufactures make some difference in door placement. Deimos and Stroud have the same layouts inside so they will have the same door placement when you add them to another hab. HopeTech and Taiyo have the same layout, so the same with them. Nova is a mix and match between the previous two sets so, dice roll on that one. Knowing this allowed me to build a ship with three levels, a full circle on the bottom floor, and only one ladder using every single hab type in the game (mess halls are the trickiest).
The only way to force door/ladder placement is to use the Hope and Nova hab-less corridors. Both have a side-to-side, Hope also has a front and back and I think also a vertical one?
You can loop the habs together but not through using companionways or clever placement. You pretty much need to use the Hopetech/ Nova horizontal walkway modules and the Hopetech fore/aft spine modules. If you are consistent and respect the systems need for chirality, it will usually work. Other than that ive found if i go through most of the companies modules just trying them out, then i can get a layout with one central fore/aft walk through the entire ship and have one central ladder linking all the vertical levels. For the central ladder way to work is far simpler than expected and ive had it work in every ship design ive impemented to date. Although i have spent entire days working on nothing but one ship and acquiring the money for it.
you can force doors and make loops by using vertical and horizontal walkway pieces. i think one is called the hab spine and the other is like walkway or hallway or something. each of them only connect across 1 axis with a node at each end and always forces a door at those nodes.
A year later and I’m still struggling with this which is why I’m just now coming across this video. It seems like the only way to guarantee you can get from one hab to another is having the companionway habs in between them, which feels silly but at least it’s a solution for now.
So i have noticed that the order you connect things can change where the ladder is. I've also noticed that I can force stop a ladder placement by putting a roof port hole over the spot a ladder is at. Unfortunately it can make it weird when you have one random port hole on a ship or if you want weapon placement to be ergonomic.
Oh shit, it's TotalXclipse. I looove your Satisfactory building guides. Glad you are taking a crack at Starfield. Do you take any requests? I'd love to see the battlestar galactica. If not, all is well. My major complaint about Starfield is how random some of the ladders and doors can be. It feels like you can either have an aesthetically pleasing looking ship or an interior that's symmetrical and logical but not both.
We need the ability during ship building mode to enter and walk around our ships, coupled with a similar edit mode to when you enter outpost build mode while inside habs, doorways become highlighted and you have an edit tool to add or remove doors. We need this on our ships to add or remove doors and ladders
Not ship building, but if you want something from your ship and you're near a vendor, you can sell and rebuy it to put it in your inventory from your ship😊 Edit this tip is for personal items stored on your ship, lije guns etc. not ship parts
@jookm use the buy back option it's the same as how much you sold it for. You just can't back out of the menu. Just like if you have a stolen item, sell it and buy it back, it clears the red 😉
I just tried selling and re-buying my ship which has some rare parts that I want to have available to use on other ships, but once I re-buy it back, I have the rare part on the ship, but I do not have that rare part in my inventory when I attempt to add it on another ship in my fleet.
when creation kit is released, im sure more options for corridors etc. will be available from modders, if bethesda doesn't do it first, if they do it at all. not to mention hopefully bethesda adds a system that allows us to choose where doors/ladders are togglable or not.
What other advanced tips would you recommend when it comes to ship building in Starfield?
the link to crimson flyboys channel dosnt work. "page not found"
@@private1177 it does for me
Build largely Assymetrical ships where the center of your ships XYZ axis is open, so that the AI can't shoot you since it targets the mathmatical center of your ship.
If you wanna make cross ship passageways, use the hope tech or nova cross ship passageways. I found that is a good way to force a passage to make a loop and not have to rely on the companion way hab sections.
@@masagmarodyea those are so good, I use then to force door connections, it makes the design bigger but its worth it to have doors where you want.
The ship builder mode greatly needs an ability to jump into the workspace with your character and be able to walk around the inside of your ship. Having to commit to changes without being able to see the inside of your ship is just really annoying.
Yes. And/or the ability to buy back after you confirm & test what you've done. I lost the “Frontier” module of my starter ship, not realizing I couldn't buy it back later. It's actually my favorite. Damn.
Bro...
@@michealnelsonauthor There... there's an undo button friend :X
@@lohcantfail undo doesn´t work after confirm and test. cause you have to exit the builder.
alt+f4 certainly does :X
@@rikamasyume8921
I'd love to see a 1x1 companion way that's 2 high, having stairs instead of a ladder for travelling between upper and lower decks. Ladders are too slow.
That is why I used the Cabot cockpit even though there are better models because it has stairs. I can't stand the ladders.
That’s actually a great idea
I agree. I have a pirate ship build where I climb 4 floors straight up to the bridge, crafting rooms on either side of the second floor and captains quarters on the 3rd. Power boost pack is needed to preserve my sanity lol you can catch the ladder mid air.
But seriously, we need a fast climb even if it expands oxygen, or more options for stairs.
This. It’s space. I could totally see floating thru a central open space… in space. Should be a thing.
@@michealnelsonauthor sometimes I board an enemy ship and its zero G inside, you get to like thrust around with the boost pack, maybe that could be a toggle option in the ship menu lol disable the grav drive or whatever is making the artificial gravity on board. Would make traversing multilevel ships way easier at times
Great work with figuring out the door placement! Totally wish they had a way to manually place them like you showed. I'm sure that'll be a mod
It seems like overall the emphasis on ship building was placed on exteriors. In my opinion the interior of the ship is way more important, and I’d love to see some changes that let you preview the interior of a ship before you build it.
modding will fix most things... i hope
@@zaboo4088 agreed. Another HUGE design flaw.
Did you know that Deimos workshop has research lab in it? All other dont.
No all "All-in-one" hubs has kitchen (galley).
@@onik7000deimos all in one berth does indeed have a galley, but, depending on door placement, sometimes it disappears, which is annoying :/
@@onik7000 I have the stroud ecklund (sp?) workshop piece and it too has a research lab.
I really hope they add an outpost edit system inside ships, so you can look at walls and edit them into doorways/ladders, so we can have as many or as little as we want.
You can enforce shiplayout with hopetech spines! It will always connect 2 hand with a doorway. You find them in polvo at the ship technician all th way down in the habs section. There are 2 variants. Nova galactic also has 1 variant, a cross sectional piece. These pieces enforce doorways
but can you build loops with them?
But then you get a huge ship which it claims exceeds the length / width limits
@@6ch6ris6Yes, you can.
But then you have to make your ship so much heavier and it limits what you can put adjacent.
yes, you can@@6ch6ris6
Classic Bethesda experience: you are utterly at the mercy of mechanics that are never explained and are beyond comprehension.
Yeah my #1 suggestion for future updates is to add toggle points for ladders and doors to customize where they are. Closely followed by a vertical 2x2 staircase hab and an elevator option.
yeah. Horizontal 2x1 habs would be nice too
I can almost guarantee that one of the first mods made once the CK is released will be some sort of "blocker" with no collision.
@@gblackuser There is already a mod on nexus that allows you to change the tolerances in ship building so that parts can sit tighter next to each other or overlap a bit. Usually for like cowling and weapon mounts and stuff, so they can clip through each other.
Or is that not what you meant?
@@dmoonmaster1653 I think they meant a piece you can slap on a potential connection point that will prevent that connection from being made. Basically the opposite of the idea mentioned in the video.
100% agreed. having it random frustrates me in ways that makes me long for the days of fallout 4 settlement building
Just a side note about certain ship yards, where you find that you can't buy another weapon to match what you have, ie if you have one high teir cannon, but it won't dupe it and not in the list. You can force dupe the weapon, by simply duplicating the part of your ship that the wanted weapon is attached to, then move the new dupped weapon and delete the part thats left. It also works for scan jammers :)
Scan jammers have been proven by people on Reddit to NOT stack multiplicative. Multiple scan jammers were lowering their chance to evade contraband scans.
@@irontaoist2665 so one scan jammer is the most effective? i gotta remove a couple of mine then. free up some slots on my ship
@@irontaoist2665 Cheers for the heads up :) I have 2x 50% jammers and during a scan my chance is around 86%. but will keep that in mind.
@@DJLKM1I had a single 50% and was sitting at 89% hope that helps
@@DixiesKnight Yeah i had two 10% just now and my chance was sat at a fat zero lool :D
I noticed the same thing's when building ships. Overall shipbuilding works really well in Starfield with the exception of ladders and doors. From what I can tell what the game tries to do is put the ladder as close to your landing bay as it can get. You can kind of get things where you want to be by connecting modules in a specific order but its goes bananas sometimes anyway. Especially with the captains quarters modules. I'm not sure why but the game seems to love to stick ladders in the middle of the captains quarters no matter what order you connect the modules. One thing that would improve the ship building immensely would be the ability to manually toggle the connection points so that a door/ladder will either always or never spawn when another hab is connected via that specific point. This would allow the creation of things like looping corridors while preventing ladders and doors from spawning in unwanted places.
I believe Bethesda uses a graph reduction algorithm to determine where to place the doors. These algorithms by design use the minimum number of edges (doors in this case) to connect all of the nodes (the habs). They also never create loops.
It is likely the doors are numbered and are evaluated in order which is why you see habs preferring certain door orientations as long as it allows the graph to be computed without cycles (loops) and allows all habs to be reacheable.
It turns my damn ship into a maze, it's so annoying and tedious. I hate it right now
You can create loop with two way bridges (only hope tech (4-way too) and nova i think) its in habitation tab and its the only way I know to force door connexion outside of the algorithm.
This helped in my looped ship, but there was one more essential tip to get a full loop working for my specific layout. This may not work for your layout but you can try every combination of window closest to the connection point of where you want to force a door to spawn. This includes the skylight, windows on the floor or bottom, side windows, and any combination of those paired together. For example, in my layout I placed a window on the side and a window on the floor and that forced the door to spawn between habs.
What bugs me the most is that it would rather connect all 3 adjacent modules to my Captain's Quarters, rather than just having a single door to my Quarters and connecting the other rooms to each other.
And my Quarters are one of the outboard-most modules on my ship.
I found when using the Cabot Bridge two-story cockpit (available at Nova only) that my ship refused to place a ladder to the upper levels, relying solely on the built in stairs within the bridge to give second level access, which I like because on the upper levels are my captains quarters, worshop, and armory which are mostly personal use. Also a general tip, I found using a flat docker and flipping it to be a bottom docker to be the best method for keeping it out of the way, not all dockers can be flipped be advised
I recently made a huge Class C ship and I am overwhelmed by how confusing the interior is lol. Hopefully they add a preview interior option in the future.
If you're building big cruiser-type ships, you really don't have a choice but to use companionways to organize the different decks; it's the only way to really avoid ship mazes.
Hahaha, wouldn't count on it. It's Bethesda, so they are going to let modders do that, for free.
The doors being a placeable object is a great idea! I've been messing with Habs and doors and ladders for hours myself to create a logical layout. Thanks for the video
Also nova and hope have "catwalk" pieces that really force where entrance doors are to habs. It helped me force where I want doors
Nice video, I’d like to mention that portholes are in fact functional, adding windows to key points in your habs is pretty awesome
It's weird though that we can out portholes in places that clearly are not walkable like on the sides of reactors.
This mirrors my own conclusions after a lot of work last night; the only sure way to force doors and hatchways is to leave the system absolutely no other choice than to put the throughway where you want it.
Spacers, the special crossways, and risers are all useful towards this.
EDIT: Regarding your final commentary, other than ladders/doors, my biggest ship complaint is the size restriction on how big a ship you can build. The funny thing is ont the loading screen tips hints they originally planned to let you build non-landable, larger ships.
I'm sure we'll be able to build massive ships in future updates which will have us take shuttles to the surface. I kind of made a quasi Captain's yacht on top of my ship already. It doesn't do anything, but it looks like it should. I hope we get to build carriers, or have fleets our followers can fly in.
I saw some success building larger Taiyo ships, because you can switch to a version of the hab with no side doorways when you want to block them. That way you have some control over where the route is placed. You can make a no-side-doors hab going forwards and backwards off the central storeroom. And you can put habs on each side that are only connected to the central storeroom.
Also, I always do each floor layout branching out from the main storeroom ladderway. No loops. Only one ladder. It’s great.
4:28 This cannot be understated. I spent nearly *two days* experimenting with layouts before coming to this conclusion.
I hope others don't experience needless frustration before figuring it out
I bet the devs represent the ship modules' connections as a tree data structure with the root being your first module, which is why you can't have loops; trees are inherently acyclic.
May have to do with NPC path routing. Without a beginning and end they may just loop continually or spin in circles at the junction between the beginning and end.
What about the walkway module??
@PureNationalism13 I tried connecting walkways and manufacturer specific 'special' halls to difficult combinations of companionways and Habs. Still no loop. I'm more then certain there is no way to generate one.
I merged two parts by accident yesterday. Thought it looked funny, fixed it, and moved on. I never thought to use this glitch intentionally to improve the ship design, that's really clever
A little highlighted inner skeleton of the habs, that told us where the ladders and doors will be; would be very helpful in the base game.
I've just started getting into making my own ships. Took me a while to find a preferred layout for my ladders but I settled on spacing them out so they only cross between a single floor each. This makes it faster to traverse by dropping through the hole in the floor to a lower level, Or running up to the ladder and double boosting to grapple up to a higher floor.
I wish Bethesda would allow us to customize the doors and ladder placement, also, allow us to maybe put elevators in the side like you put port holes
Maybe I am misunderstanding the loop problem, but I solve it by using the hope tech tunnel connectors that force a doorway into the hab they are connected too, maybe give that a try as it allowed me to make a single layer well laid out ship with everything I wanted and space in the sections for reactors grav and cargo too.
This is the way.
@@-aleeke-2526this is the way
What I have done is to divide ship modules into two groups. The modules I want my character to actually access with any regularity (bridge, armory, workshop, captain's quarters for the bed, etc.) and everything else necessary to contain the crew berths and control stations. I make sure that those modules I care about are all on the mid level. Yes, obviously this seriously constrains the aesthetics of my build options. Very close to the bridge and contiguous to those other modules I care about, I will arrange for access to the docking bay to be just below and a full height docker to be just above. That will give me a single access point to leave and enter the ship very close to those areas I care about.
Then I will put any other modules wherever they fit into the ship build, on the same level as those I care about, or above or below it, as necessary. How and where they access one another is up to the random idiocy Bethesda programmed into their build system. I have zero control over it sadly and I have utterly given up trying to make the interiors otherwise make any sense. Great job Bethesda.
I think the doors system wants to make sure every room is accessibly with MINIMUM doors (presumably to avoid having a hab compartment lose all internal detail because it's all doors or something) I agree though, the manually placable doors would be great, and I can definitely see that being modded in, possibly even before it's added properly with a DLC expansion
I use the nova & hopetech walkways to force routes to create a fast track through the ship. you could maybe use some of these tricks to hide them inside hull pieces
Sadly they don't always create loops, depending on the habs that are used.
This is EXACTLY what i was looking for tonight.
You can force a connection with a hallway hab module, that some manufacturers sell, like HopeTech Hab Cross Brace or Hab Spine (sold in Hopetown, Polvo planet, Valo system) or Nova Cross Passage (New Homestead, Titan, Sol), for example, if you have such two hallways connected to a habitation module, they will always force a connection to that hallway, and you can make that way a connection to something on two or more points where you want, possibly also creating a loop.
There's really no reason those shouldn't be basic structural components available to every brand. Like a porthole.
The placement of windows in the roof and floor can also change how ladders and doors are placed. Had a room that only had ladder access in spite of having a valid door options, but placing windows over the ladders caused the game to remove the ladders and switch to doors.
I am saddened by your work and ever so grateful that you saved me from having to go through it myself. I liked and subscribed.
Something that doesn't make sense - in Starfield Outposts, you can select a part of a "hab" - one wall - and have choices if it's connected to another. You can make it a door, you can make it a wall, you can make it an opening (depending on what it's connected to). I am relatively sure different dev teams worked on each, but did they never have lunch together, or have to compete in a three legged race on corporate fun day or something so they'd interact?
I'd like to see a virtual path line in the builder so you can see a ghost line through all the modules and doorways/ladders. Imagine a thread passed through all the modules like beads on a necklace.
I'm getting the feeling they're doing a wavefunction collapse routine for the doorway and ladders; it's a well known software method for generating tiles, and can make it very difficult to figure out the formula, because the placement is dependent upon all the interactions of all connecting iles.
I like the idea of a outpost guide with your level of detail you put into your videos
I would like a ship scrapyard, either one you build on an outpost or part of some place or faction where you get a permanent stash to hold ship modules when you disassemble a ship. It would be especially useful if you are a pirate that steals other ships, then fly them over to break them down and use the superior parts to upgrade your own ship for almost no cost, then sell all the other modules you don't need.
I would like to add that certain habs include large storage boxes. Hope Tech 3x1 engineering, Deimos armory and living quarters, Nova captain's quarters, Stroud computer core and 2x2 cargo hold. I use them for dumping my resources and extra ship parts which I am not planning on selling, but want them closer than my unlimited vault at the lodge. Keep in mind that the ship parts will not be useable to repair ship, so still keep some in your ship inventory. The Deimos armory also has the most gun racks, so it's nice to place the heaviest weapons on there then the rest in the storage box. I can go a few missions before having to go sell everything off.
I've been building all day :) Just made the smallest C class I could with just a 1x1 hab and the second biggest cockpit for all the 6 crew. I also managed to make a two storey ship with no ladders! only the staircase in the biggest cockpit.
Which cockpit is that?
@@Vico7787 Demios Ares for small ship. Nova Cabot for two storey.
I use the select the node you want to connect a ladder through, hit G to bring up the hab menu, and scroll through the habs you want from each manufacturer. Stroud and Demios have the same interior, but seem to place the ladder opposite ends for 2x1's. You will see where the hab wants to place the ladder, by where it tries to attach the hab. I have only tried this with 2x1 habs though.
Companion ways and spines are the best way in my experiance.
We need to have hubs or adaptors of some sort that will do a stair case like in some of the pre made ships in the game. I can see this ship builder being great if we had the right tools added to increase our ability to make amazing ships and also I would very much like to see us able to dismantle ships we own or that we have captured and use the parts in another ship or just to be sold to the ship builder merchant as I keep seeing that we are just making the merchant richer with the amount of credit they have and no way of getting the money back.
I just finished my C class ship build .... love how it turned out ... looks like a black space Lamborghini ... really like the ship building mechanic in this game which i really missed in no man's sky.
Myabe in the future we have a way to design like a flowmap between habs. Like with arrows, pointing how to connect them. I also wanted to loop my habs and it isn't possible. I wanted to have a ladder at both ends of a hab with a 1x1, but one just didn't had a door to loop on the second floor
Stack companion ways on top each other. That made one tall ladder for each level of my ship all the way to my bridge and captain’s quarters. That seems to be the best layout I’ve found for multi levels.
unfortunately climbing 3-4 ladders (in line) is tedious. Kinda wish the animation was sped up. Maybe a mod will handle that
@@seussiii I just jet boost up to the floor I want v
Already a mod on Nexus to sped up the climbing animation.
Thanks for the merging tips, they're great for getting a better aesthetic! Personally I'd much rather see almost any other content rather than outpost building.
I agree 100%, the game NEEDs a way of specifying where a door or ladder will be generated, like some other games way back had a mechanic where you place the room and then you have a door that you need to place before the room is finished, the door is stuck to the cursor until it's placed in either of the predifined locations around the room. in my playtime, ive noted that the habs can only have doors in certain locations and it also depends on the hab type, maybe even manufacturer. Further testing required, or a mod. It's annoying having two ladders in the same hab going to the same hab below it - yeah that did happen to me once already loool :D - But hey, "it just works", rough translation: "It just about works".
You CAN create a loop, but you need to use hopetech parts. The crossbridges force connections
Ship elevators would alleviate the tedium of ladders. Additionally, they should add the ability for habs to loop on them selves.
The Habs hard points are exactly where the doors would go.
It would make sense that after we attach a hab we could then choose which attached part becomes the door.
It seems like a simple solution but I'm no game coder
The one thing they need to get rid of is the game storing the misc contents of previously deleted modules. I had 2000+ foam cups after I built my first ship (testing all the structural variations). Obviously now I save before I start designing
The only way to do a loop is to use two HopeTech corridors in the middle. This will force doorways at either end of each corridor.
Having deck 1 and 2 isolated from each other aside from the Cabot bridge with an acceptable door placement on deck 2 is hard enough to predict. Remove the stroud exterior storerooms, and the entire equation just goes out of wack. Large class-c Ebon Hawk layout with 6 infirmary/workshop/armory with 20+ passenger space: impressive. Having an interior that’s not a maze: priceless.
Haven't tested it but companion ways seem to be and should be the hab that gets prioritized for pathing and ladders. If I had more time to play with it I'd check this out
I'm a new subscriber. Thanks for having me in the family 😎 I love your content bro very helpful
If you have a piece not attached and aren't sure which it is try double clicking a piece. It'll select all contiguous parts. You can move those as one, and figure out what the issue is.
Looping - you might try using the HopeTech part - it's basically a tunnel and I believe it will force a passageway where ever you put it.
A much easier way they could gave done the hab linking is if the anchor point itself always puts a door, but you can select an anchor point and press a button to set it to be "closed", (it changes do a different color) which means anything snapped to it will not form a door.
Really great video, I hope you do more.
They should have made it where you can specify the exact doorway locations you want. Total control over the general floorplan. I wouldn't mind having a clutter of variants of parts just to make absolute certain that doors are where I want them to be. Hell, I'd love it even more if we were allowed to do it the same way Subnautica does it with the large room and partitions.
I found using hab bottoms on the mid and top levels help with ladders not being placed there.
Are you referring to the taiyo habs?
@@RoadRunner217 yeah. At first I had a 3x1 mid placed over my reactor and there was a ladder placed leading straight to it. Replaced it with the same size hab but a bottom and the hole leading to the void was gone.
The thing that gets me is why can't the already existing wall editing system that exists in the outpost builder just not be applied to the ship so you can create whatever doorways and ladders you want where ever you want them to be. Most of the work has already been done. Just need to translate it to the ships modules.
It'll probably never happen without a mod, but I'd love for lifts to be a thing in ship building, especially for large ships.
Seeing as how fallout 4 also had innovative building mechanics for a Bethesda game and it also got multiple expansion packs that added more workshop items (including elevators), I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few expansions for starfield that do the same
Saw crimsons video yesterday. Nice of you to give credits to smaller channels! Although your description link didn't work for me to get to his channel. Good vid man!
Hmm, I'll check the link and make sure it's fixed
awesome video man, im still trying to learn how to line up the doors to the next habs also.
Things this game desperately needs:
Informational overlays, such as an interior view (Even if just untextured cuboids rendered on top of the piece, it would prevent a lot of time wasted rebuilding the ship)
an advanced building mode that lets you override doors and such
Building off of a specific hook *does* seem to give preference to a connection being put there, as I have used it to great effect in some layouts. But it can absolutely be overruled by things like habs which are coded to want a door somewhere else.
TotalXclipse: "don't make a hole in your ship."
Meanwhile some random dude: "if you make a ship that IS a giant hole in the middle, they cant even hit you!"
beat me to it.
🤣
@@TotalXclipse this is because the aim is centered on the middle of your ship... so if the middle of your ship is a giant hole all their shots and missiles will miss cus there is nothing to hit in the middle.
They really need a version of the storeroom/compaionway that is a staircase.
Love the merge function! Thanks! My ship looks so much better with all the equipment and half the weapons hidden.
For the ladder problem use the cockpit you get from nova calactic. I never can remember the name if it. Only way to remove ladders completely
The obly thing I can think of, is the system generates connection points based of assest loading efficiency. I had one ship layout that had a bug where when I was at tge bottom of a ladder that went all the way up 3 levels the shadows made everything dark. After flipping where a 2x2 and 2x1 were it moved the ladder so it only went up one level and the bug stopped.
Such a great help for my building thanks heaps 👍👍. Agreed door/hatch placement would be awesome as someone who spends ALOT of my time in the Ship Builder. Depending on my credits LOL 😂😂🤣🤣🤟🤟
The seemingly random way it decides where to place doors and ladders really needs to be addressed. It seriously holds you back from making a ship that feels like something that could plausibly be real.
Using the 1x1 storage or companionway habs don't guarantee three ladder will centrally be there. I built a ship recently that did this using diamos and stroud eckland parts and got a VERY strange layout.
Thanks for the video.
Companion ways really changed up how I make my ships for the better. I ignored them at first and ladders would be everywhere. Now I just put a stack of companion ways and no more ladders! The doors are a bit of a pain though. Got three rooms attached to a companion way and it only makes doors to the two on the side, have to walk through my workshop to get to the control room and then my bridge. Would love the workshop to stay a side room and have a straight line from the ladder through ops to the bridge but can't get it to work without removing the side rooms.
I hope I can describe this properly but you can also merge pieces together by placing the piece you want on a level above where it needs to go and then copying it attaching it copying it attaching it it will automatically go down a level each time and it will allow you to place it then you can delete the ones that you don't need and you'll have the piece you want merged where you want it
I've been using the HopeTech tunnels to manipulate ladder layouts.
no loops, multi layer to avoid too many touching connection points which might result in failing to create doorways, got it. thanks. :)
I've gotten a few layout loops to happen by using the hab connector parts. It seems to be because the game forces them to always have a connection. Hope and NG have them.
Also something I've noticed, companionways seem to get priority for doors and ladders when the game plots how to connect habs.
While some habs allow for loops this way, I have literally built the same ship two times except for different hab variations and in one I have a loop, but in the other one I don't.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that manufactures make some difference in door placement. Deimos and Stroud have the same layouts inside so they will have the same door placement when you add them to another hab. HopeTech and Taiyo have the same layout, so the same with them. Nova is a mix and match between the previous two sets so, dice roll on that one. Knowing this allowed me to build a ship with three levels, a full circle on the bottom floor, and only one ladder using every single hab type in the game (mess halls are the trickiest).
The only way to force door/ladder placement is to use the Hope and Nova hab-less corridors. Both have a side-to-side, Hope also has a front and back and I think also a vertical one?
You can create a loop by using hope spine Habs. The connections on the spine will always have a door from what I have seen
You can loop the habs together but not through using companionways or clever placement. You pretty much need to use the Hopetech/ Nova horizontal walkway modules and the Hopetech fore/aft spine modules.
If you are consistent and respect the systems need for chirality, it will usually work.
Other than that ive found if i go through most of the companies modules just trying them out, then i can get a layout with one central fore/aft walk through the entire ship and have one central ladder linking all the vertical levels.
For the central ladder way to work is far simpler than expected and ive had it work in every ship design ive impemented to date. Although i have spent entire days working on nothing but one ship and acquiring the money for it.
Maybe someone has had this idea already, but what if you allowed players to set passage points to on/off or open/closed with a mod?
Loops are possible, as well as no ladders/doors, but you have to use specific parts, ie Cabot c4 bridge, hope/nova cross habs, and hope spines.
you can force doors and make loops by using vertical and horizontal walkway pieces. i think one is called the hab spine and the other is like walkway or hallway or something. each of them only connect across 1 axis with a node at each end and always forces a door at those nodes.
I cover this in my most recent Starfield video ;)
"It just works"
Todd did not lie.
Did you try the passageways from hopetech?
cant wait for modders to improve some of the weird stuff with ship building
A year later and I’m still struggling with this which is why I’m just now coming across this video. It seems like the only way to guarantee you can get from one hab to another is having the companionway habs in between them, which feels silly but at least it’s a solution for now.
Merge those ship pieces! Woooo
So i have noticed that the order you connect things can change where the ladder is. I've also noticed that I can force stop a ladder placement by putting a roof port hole over the spot a ladder is at. Unfortunately it can make it weird when you have one random port hole on a ship or if you want weapon placement to be ergonomic.
Can you use the “halls” to make loops?
love the thumbnail lmfao
Oh shit, it's TotalXclipse. I looove your Satisfactory building guides. Glad you are taking a crack at Starfield. Do you take any requests? I'd love to see the battlestar galactica. If not, all is well. My major complaint about Starfield is how random some of the ladders and doors can be. It feels like you can either have an aesthetically pleasing looking ship or an interior that's symmetrical and logical but not both.
Hey! Glad you're enjoying the content funnily enough, the first ship I wanted to build was the pegasus, but we need a larger ships mod for it first.
a lot of builds I've noticed overuse HABs to get a particular shape which is what I find to be the core issue behind ladders being placed awkwardly.
Fun fact you can make loops you have to use HopeTech hab spines and cross braces between each hab also no windows can break it
We need the ability during ship building mode to enter and walk around our ships, coupled with a similar edit mode to when you enter outpost build mode while inside habs, doorways become highlighted and you have an edit tool to add or remove doors. We need this on our ships to add or remove doors and ladders
Not ship building, but if you want something from your ship and you're near a vendor, you can sell and rebuy it to put it in your inventory from your ship😊
Edit this tip is for personal items stored on your ship, lije guns etc. not ship parts
Good tip, as long as you don't mind losing some credits in the process since you sell for less than you buy.
You mean, to keep (and later use) the unique parts of the ship you posses, but don't have those special parts when you want to create a new ship?
@jookm use the buy back option it's the same as how much you sold it for. You just can't back out of the menu.
Just like if you have a stolen item, sell it and buy it back, it clears the red 😉
I just tried selling and re-buying my ship which has some rare parts that I want to have available to use on other ships, but once I re-buy it back, I have the rare part on the ship, but I do not have that rare part in my inventory when I attempt to add it on another ship in my fleet.
@@Leonard-lu4er each ship is separate
when creation kit is released, im sure more options for corridors etc. will be available from modders, if bethesda doesn't do it first, if they do it at all. not to mention hopefully bethesda adds a system that allows us to choose where doors/ladders are togglable or not.