Believe me, speed is fun! And to the best of my abilities, I've designed ships for your desired specs as close as possible. I'll post them in the SA thread. My only major feedback for your design is the 1x2 small hull usage. It turns out that two 1x1s have more HP and are lighter than one 1x2. And when we're designing a fast ship with the intention of squeezing every ton and newton of performance, for me the advantage offered by the two 1x1s is a no-brainer, and probably one of the easier design changes for performance you can make. Pedantically, if you hyper-optimized every part, you'd save 9 tons and get 5 kph. The only reason it's worth mentioning, is that direction change and acceleration is key to the Audacity's success in not exploding. And that hair's worth of distance covered to avoid damage might be worth it.
Taken this on board and thanks for the info. The obfustication of a lot data in this game can be very frustrating. I've already recorded and uploaded my my ship design video but I'll check these out before we get into the flagship and brawler designs. Thanks again for uploading these.
Nice ship! Btw, if you interested you might call it "Derzkyii" which means "audacious" in russian. "Audacity" wold be derzost' but, no one would call a ship like that.
You are the Bob Ross of Highfleet ship design, and I gotta say I have been using your design videos as a kind of entry point into feeling out the design system for my own ships. I've actually been using this design for a while now as my go-to interceptor and have found that, so long as I keep my wits about me, it can punch surprisingly far above its own weight class, since I can zip into the perfect vantage point to snipe in between the armor of most medium ships and pick them apart like an ant disassembling a scorpion. The main, and honestly only, issue I've had with them is, unsurprisingly, the prox ammo. I made slight adjustments to mine, mostly by removing the escape pods. Honestly I found that where they are, they get lost anyway, as a glancing blow from above will strip the Audacity's hull away like a ham in a deli-slicer, so when the ship is going down those pods are usually already blown off. As a way to solve this, I actually just replaced those 1x1 hull bits on the top with reinforced hull, just in that one spot, and it's really hard to notice the difference in combat maneuverability, since you are still blacking out the pilot constantly, but you can shrug off a few more prox fuse hits, and even tank a few direct hits for when you get sloppy and not lose all the components loaded in there. Another issue I ran into later on in the campaign was the up-time. Because you spend so much time avoiding damage and having to boost around the battle, I almost ran out of fuel more than a few times. I ended up replacing the center fire suppression system with another fuel tank to try and buy more time in combat, but even with that I ended up mostly sending them into combat in pairs, so I can tag-team the first one out when it runs out of fuel. By the time this was happening frequently though, I was already a decent chunk of the way up the map, and they were punching WAY above their weight class and taking on things I had never intended for them to be able to take on. At that point, the weakest part of the design is my heart trying to deal with the those white-knuckle clutch fights. Even against gladiators it's somewhat reliable, since it's so dang fast, I can practically teleport under it and chew out its soft belly.
This is great advice and touches on my own concerns with the design. Rather than fixing it before we launch though I want to do 'in theatre' refits that reflect on my experiences, something to talk about in the AAR as well! My plan is not to be perfect at building ships, I don't have the patience or the skill to fully map and math out builds but at least give people a starting point to get over how overwhelming ship building is. I am glad that has worked in this case! Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it - they mean a lot to me.
I really enjoy the way you lay out all the parts you have in mind before you begin building your chassis to give you an idea of how you need to build to accommodate them all. I’ll be applying this method in my own builds going forward
It really helps me design my ships. Before I did it this way I would constantly have to rebuild the ship over and over as I had to accommodate another generator or more crew.
I've been playing with the shipbuilder a lot after passing the campaign a few times I've come to prefer the AK-100 to the D-80 Molot in almost all situations. The 100mm AP is worse but having double shots EATS through hull like crazy once you've made a space in the armor, way better than the 130mm. Changing to the D-80 is actually a downgrade in the majority of situations. Love flares too. You almost never run out. Star pattern is nice but not necessary, two flares pointing out horizontally is sufficient for me. One note on garrisons, the size of the city circle on the map determines the population *and* size of garrison you will face. Judicious picking of targets and fully fueling more often to allow skipping difficult cities can keep your light ships relevant longer.
Great point about garrisons reflecting the size of the city! This is a crucial mechanic I constantly overlook! I think the D80 has its place on a ship that can either mass them or guarantee repeat shots to the same hull section/weak point but the AK100 really has great dakka.
No thanks, i prefer guns that shoot straight. It definitely has its benefits but to say that d80 is downgrade is like publicly admitting that you cant aim.
Played like 1 maybe 2 hrs of Highfleet and watched like 10 hrs of videos out of which I think 9 are from you, lol. You have such a great style and are so educational despite covering very high level things. Keep it up, you rock
Just an idea for the flagship rebuild, keep the basic aesthetics of the Sevastapol. Then you can say it was originally intended to be a Sevastapol class cruiser but rebuilt into a carrier. Given what your carriers did the the strike groups in the previous playthrough and how expensive even a victory with a battle featuring the Sevastapol can be you can even say it's doctrinal shift in the Romani fleet. They are phasing out the large gun armed ships in favour of lighter, faster direct combatants that are better able to bring their guns to bear and are better able to avoid damage. Big capital ships are being converted to offer support at range and command and control.
So I’ve started building carriers in double-decker format because not only does it protect your planes, but you can double your deck space. The main weakness is that you have to have a sort of spire to build the decks off of, but you can concentrate all your armor there instead of the rest of the ship.
Oh heck I've been mentioned and I didn't even do anything, life is accomplished! I'm glad hear you use 'ablative' armor I was gonna discuss the benefits of it to ya last time. I'm not, but 95% sure in a Nuke incident the 'ablative' will absorb the long range burn damage past the center of Nuke detonation. Also hold the flare button down, you can fire them in bursts I'm pretty sure it gives a greater heat signature to pull away Zeniths. I would suggest Palash on this ship as it will save you from stray round you don't need many just one left and right. Also little fact about the 180mm SARMAT, when using AP round the cannons fire fast enough for its second round to slip past Palash and impact.
I've had great success making mini gladiators that are fully armored with 320km/h speed due to the large fixed engine model. They do cost 30k but being fully armored with 4 ak-100s and 1.1km range I find them very useful. Fitting something like that in as a back up front line ship would definitely be prudent if things go poorly as you move north.
I use fire control systems as "armor" to protect vulnerable systems on these unarmored builds. Also, even on these really light intercept builds, I find that adding a third gun and going for a single ak-725 is super helpful with a pair of ak-100s. You just hold down right click, letting the 50mm slowly spit out a stream of shots, and as soon as one is going about where you want, you follow it with the 100mm. They seem to have similar speeds, but it just helps you KNOW your shots are going to land.
Thanks a lot for the video! I started Highfleet recently, and while I love the game I feel a bit overwhelmed by ship design and have problems with aiming. Seeing how you handle both issues was very helpful.
Additionally, I would recommend considering designing "prefab" ships with 2 weapons to take into campaign with open engine and weapon slots to be filled with looted components as you go along.
@@Phrosphor using variants of the Super cheap ships from Reddit - I start campaign with 2x "Thunder" class ships that will eventually have 4x Molots as armamment and various tiny ELINT / Radar vessels for scouting. The "Thunder Light" starts with 2x AK-100.
Just be aware these ships were built for version 1.14 of the game and the construction rules have changed a little since then. The basics still apply though.
The one thing I'm not fond of on this design is the gun placement. When it comes to offensive weaponry, I tend to like guns that are directly adjacent, and in a two-gun setup, directly above/below each other to reduce shot spread for the critical shots up/down into an enemy's weak spots. Having both guns on the center axis makes the aiming more "natural" for shots directly above and below the vessel. For defensive guns, sure, scatter them around to maximize spread to catch enemy missles and aircraft... but if you've got the bigger, slower firing guns, you want every shot to land and land more naturally. Accuracy is huge with the big guns, and a lot of your game is built on exploiting known weakspots on the enemy ships. You might be handicapping yourself by having them to the left and right of the cockpit.
This is really interesting as I really struggle with vertically stacked weapons, it's like my brain just can't grasp their location relative to my center of mass at all. Totally agree on defensive weapons though: Coverage, coverage coverage.
I really love your design process. I recently got the game and have been struggling to keep my larger craft focused. Definitely going to try out that you're doing here :3
Made a big ship outfitted with nothing but 20 57mm's on each side and 10 on the front and rear. It ended up costing 200k, but the thing shreds e v e r y t h i n g. I tested it thoroughly and it could easily wipe the floor with multiple "Large" class ships. Frame rate suffers a little, though.
It's great to see you explain your design process before you start building. Will try laying out the modules I need before starting hull work, my first ship designs are lacking focus. Also a question: Have you considered an 'all or nothing' armor scheme for your large ships? That is, building a compact core around the bridge, crew, autoloaders, etc. which is heavily armored, while leaving the rest of the ship unarmored or lightly armored.
I have never looked at this kind of design before but I think it bears a look. One thing to watch out for is that power can't travel through armour so there will need to be redundant generators on both sides of this setup.
my only changes i would think about would be to swap out the 3 side pieces holding the missles and the top pieces with reinforced hull for extra survivability at the cost of a little speed and range
Just started a new game with two of these with two tankers to increase their range and they're usually both off on separate courses taking cities for me, screening for the main force. So far they've performed great in combat, but they are definitely glass cannons, getting hit even a few times will cripple it's combat ability. Fuel is definitely a problem, especially if one gets hit in combat. And blacking out your pilot every thrust isn't really ideal. But so far it's doing the job.
Sounds exactly like how intended it to work, that's so cool that you wanted to try them out. I'm really concerned with fuel consumption as well and I think I need to find room for a couple more fuel tanks. Do you have a bigger tougher ship for dealing with strike fleets and fleet hqs?
@@Phrosphor I have a personal build called a knight (essentially a lighter, faster gladiator with a machine gun for missile defense) and a longbow that I got from one of the Tarkans. Other than the servastapol itself of course. Nothing that's going to solo a strong strike group at the moment but I just started a new campaign. My plan is to push the main force up one way and have a smaller audacity + tanker group taking territory ahead of them, grabbing the free Tarkan ships at a faster rate. This is mostly a test campaign at the moment, to see how far I can get. I don't have much experience with heavier ships, even in vanilla (never got that far in campaign).
I have one I call the maverick. It's a lightning but I've removed the landing gear and escape pods added room for 4 missiles, 4 flare launchers, and 4 APS systems for 360 anti-shelling, still has 2 guns, I like to change them. Sometimes use double molots, sometimes I use a vempel and a molot. Just depends, I like the smaller guns to "jab" for me and then when my shots are on target I hit the bigger guns. Aside from the cost, it's spec for spec the same as the lightning but with a combat rating of 15.
I'm a little bit concerned that with no 2x2 blocks touching the upper engines, they could fall off long before an engine is actually destroyed, especially in the case of fire. Just something to keep an eye on.
Mostly? It mounts flares. The Lightning really occupies it's niche very nicely. I would say the Audacity has a safer bridge and a more 'meta' construction in the use of 1x1 blocks and corner pieces but that is really all. You can't shave a lot off of the ship. It's one of the best Vanilla designs.
@@Phrosphor Thanks for the explanation. I initially felt stupid to continue the use of the Lightning after seeing this build but I didn't see the point why because for me too the Lightning works perfectly fine. But on the same page I do understand your wish to tighten all the screws before taking off into the dark lands of hard mode.
Hey P. I was trying to build this ship but my game refuses to let me rotate the pieces 90 degrees - only 180. May I bum the seria file off you by any chance? Big please and thank you. Also, your videos have been hugely helpful to get into and understand this game - thank you for that too!
Not sure what is happening there but sadly I lost the .seria for this ship when I reverted the game back to 1.1.5 for my current campaign :(. It should let you rotate using the mousewheel, is it maybe a sensitivity issue?
What happened to the escape pods between here and start of campaign, or the point where you move the missiles up and in? 🤔 Edit: I vaguely remember they got shot off and never replaced in the first couple episodes, does that sound right?
I think so, I move them in sometime early in the campaign. I also have a 'refits' video from right at the start of the campaign where I made some changes to all the ships before we launched.
Better use second lowest caliber (80mm) for mid-small ships. Absolutely universal tool. Destroys ships, rockets, and great against cruising missiles. Quite acceptable DPS. 5x80мм is rage, you counter 90% of cruising missiles with ease, and rip off all small-mid ships.
Hey guys. What are the controls for the build pieces? I can only turn the pieces 180, not 90 and also no mirror function that I can find. This makes it almost impossible to build, let alone come up with something symmetrical. Help super appreciated, thank you.
Strange that two people had the same issue at the same time, I just use mousewheel to rotate, it could be a sensitivity problem? Did you manage to solve it?
@@Phrosphor No. I've tried different mice, mouse settings, no luck. One mouse has a sensitivity button build in, the other is a research mouse where you can disconnect the wheel and it free wheels. Still no. Shipbuilding is perhaps not game breaking, but I can only turn radio dials in twos. Meaning 2,4,6,8 instead of 1,2,3,4. As you can imagine, it breaks the mini game and one loses tactical awareness re transports, strike etc. Sucks, really...
i am late to this game but it was on offer and got amazing reviews, so really picking it up. Following your hard mode campaign and loving it. Copied this ship design but my speed is nothing like yours? has the later patches changed something? i have been over it three times and can not see where i am going wrong.
Did the stats really change so much? Built a similar ship, slightly different arrangement but in essence same parts. Yet I only get up to 500 top speed.
I might be dumb, but why not have the missiles on the inside next to the upper engines? They are less exposed and can still fire up? I could be wrong here but that looks like a much better place, you have space hull and then an engine taking fire first, only the top is exposed to direct fire to the missiles, which is less then on the sides. If you can't mount them there then I guess nevermind. lol
They can 100% be mounted there. My fear is something detonating them and that cooking off the fuel and ammo inside the ship. On the outside they can't do as much damage.
@@Phrosphor Ah that is fair, they just seem like they would be better protected and less likely to explode if inner mounted.. Could you add a bit of hull above them for added protection or would that block line of sight/fire?
Heck. It seems 1.15 did another number on shipbuilding. At 11:39 you're at 1202 km/h while I'm at 620 km/h. O.0 Also massively short on power with the entire setup. No wonder all the guides/shipbuilding techniques were giving me none of the results. x'D Those are some huge differences.
Did they change something in the game? Because when I build exactly the same ship it has about 300 kmh less cruise speed and other stats that are lower than when you published this video.
Not sure if you are referring to the 57mm or the MK-1-180 here but both are good weapons in the right situation. The 180 is probably the hardest to use but the one advantage it has is the high alpha and 2 ammo requirement compared to the larger turrets.
finally a actually lighting replacement and not the fatboi you had last time. but is flare necessary for a ship this fast? because you can evade those missiles pretty easy even with no after burn in this build.
Flares have two great roles here: 1. Take mental pressure off of dodging. If a missile takes a flare I don't need to move as much so I don't need to worry about wandering into fire from a secondary target 2. Saves fuel! If I don't need to dodge I can extend my combat time.
I have built and rebuilt this design about 10 times now. Every time I add spaced hull or reinforced hull I lose too much maneuverability. For me, personally, if the ship gets too slow to react, I can't keep it alive. So it's a comprimise I have had to accept.
@@Phrosphor Try taking a look at adding reinforced frame just around the outer side of the missiles, and one square higher, similar to the last picture of the Navarin D-30S in my guide. It does a good job of helping to keep the missile alive, but it pulls double duty by also protecting the engines.
1.14 makes all hull pieces, whether it is the regular yellow hull or the reinforced hull, at the very least 50% more heavy. There are some pieces that got doubled in weight.
Believe me, speed is fun! And to the best of my abilities, I've designed ships for your desired specs as close as possible. I'll post them in the SA thread.
My only major feedback for your design is the 1x2 small hull usage. It turns out that two 1x1s have more HP and are lighter than one 1x2. And when we're designing a fast ship with the intention of squeezing every ton and newton of performance, for me the advantage offered by the two 1x1s is a no-brainer, and probably one of the easier design changes for performance you can make.
Pedantically, if you hyper-optimized every part, you'd save 9 tons and get 5 kph. The only reason it's worth mentioning, is that direction change and acceleration is key to the Audacity's success in not exploding. And that hair's worth of distance covered to avoid damage might be worth it.
Posted all the ship design proposals in the thread.
Taken this on board and thanks for the info. The obfustication of a lot data in this game can be very frustrating. I've already recorded and uploaded my my ship design video but I'll check these out before we get into the flagship and brawler designs.
Thanks again for uploading these.
What is this SA thread and where one can find it.
@@KenrickDargoth I'm going to go over these designs in my next video :)
@@KenrickDargoth I also wanna know! Any luck??
Nice ship! Btw, if you interested you might call it "Derzkyii" which means "audacious" in russian. "Audacity" wold be derzost' but, no one would call a ship like that.
Thats an awesome suggestion!
You are the Bob Ross of Highfleet ship design, and I gotta say I have been using your design videos as a kind of entry point into feeling out the design system for my own ships. I've actually been using this design for a while now as my go-to interceptor and have found that, so long as I keep my wits about me, it can punch surprisingly far above its own weight class, since I can zip into the perfect vantage point to snipe in between the armor of most medium ships and pick them apart like an ant disassembling a scorpion. The main, and honestly only, issue I've had with them is, unsurprisingly, the prox ammo. I made slight adjustments to mine, mostly by removing the escape pods. Honestly I found that where they are, they get lost anyway, as a glancing blow from above will strip the Audacity's hull away like a ham in a deli-slicer, so when the ship is going down those pods are usually already blown off. As a way to solve this, I actually just replaced those 1x1 hull bits on the top with reinforced hull, just in that one spot, and it's really hard to notice the difference in combat maneuverability, since you are still blacking out the pilot constantly, but you can shrug off a few more prox fuse hits, and even tank a few direct hits for when you get sloppy and not lose all the components loaded in there.
Another issue I ran into later on in the campaign was the up-time. Because you spend so much time avoiding damage and having to boost around the battle, I almost ran out of fuel more than a few times. I ended up replacing the center fire suppression system with another fuel tank to try and buy more time in combat, but even with that I ended up mostly sending them into combat in pairs, so I can tag-team the first one out when it runs out of fuel. By the time this was happening frequently though, I was already a decent chunk of the way up the map, and they were punching WAY above their weight class and taking on things I had never intended for them to be able to take on. At that point, the weakest part of the design is my heart trying to deal with the those white-knuckle clutch fights. Even against gladiators it's somewhat reliable, since it's so dang fast, I can practically teleport under it and chew out its soft belly.
This is great advice and touches on my own concerns with the design. Rather than fixing it before we launch though I want to do 'in theatre' refits that reflect on my experiences, something to talk about in the AAR as well!
My plan is not to be perfect at building ships, I don't have the patience or the skill to fully map and math out builds but at least give people a starting point to get over how overwhelming ship building is. I am glad that has worked in this case!
Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it - they mean a lot to me.
I really enjoy the way you lay out all the parts you have in mind before you begin building your chassis to give you an idea of how you need to build to accommodate them all. I’ll be applying this method in my own builds going forward
It really helps me design my ships. Before I did it this way I would constantly have to rebuild the ship over and over as I had to accommodate another generator or more crew.
I've been playing with the shipbuilder a lot after passing the campaign a few times I've come to prefer the AK-100 to the D-80 Molot in almost all situations. The 100mm AP is worse but having double shots EATS through hull like crazy once you've made a space in the armor, way better than the 130mm. Changing to the D-80 is actually a downgrade in the majority of situations.
Love flares too. You almost never run out. Star pattern is nice but not necessary, two flares pointing out horizontally is sufficient for me.
One note on garrisons, the size of the city circle on the map determines the population *and* size of garrison you will face. Judicious picking of targets and fully fueling more often to allow skipping difficult cities can keep your light ships relevant longer.
Great point about garrisons reflecting the size of the city! This is a crucial mechanic I constantly overlook! I think the D80 has its place on a ship that can either mass them or guarantee repeat shots to the same hull section/weak point but the AK100 really has great dakka.
No thanks, i prefer guns that shoot straight. It definitely has its benefits but to say that d80 is downgrade is like publicly admitting that you cant aim.
Played like 1 maybe 2 hrs of Highfleet and watched like 10 hrs of videos out of which I think 9 are from you, lol. You have such a great style and are so educational despite covering very high level things. Keep it up, you rock
Sounds like me with a lot of games! I am glad you are enjoying the videos. Thanks for the kind words, it means a hell of a lot!
Dude it looks competent. It just has to be flown very well. Good luck pilot.
No pressure right?
Just an idea for the flagship rebuild, keep the basic aesthetics of the Sevastapol. Then you can say it was originally intended to be a Sevastapol class cruiser but rebuilt into a carrier.
Given what your carriers did the the strike groups in the previous playthrough and how expensive even a victory with a battle featuring the Sevastapol can be you can even say it's doctrinal shift in the Romani fleet. They are phasing out the large gun armed ships in favour of lighter, faster direct combatants that are better able to bring their guns to bear and are better able to avoid damage. Big capital ships are being converted to offer support at range and command and control.
I really like the Sev's 'bridge' tower and want to try and incorporate that if possible! I like the lore reasoning here as well!
This reminded me of wacky early experimental carriers in interwar period
So I’ve started building carriers in double-decker format because not only does it protect your planes, but you can double your deck space. The main weakness is that you have to have a sort of spire to build the decks off of, but you can concentrate all your armor there instead of the rest of the ship.
Oh heck I've been mentioned and I didn't even do anything, life is accomplished!
I'm glad hear you use 'ablative' armor I was gonna discuss the benefits of it to ya last time. I'm not, but 95% sure in a Nuke incident the 'ablative' will absorb the long range burn damage past the center of Nuke detonation.
Also hold the flare button down, you can fire them in bursts I'm pretty sure it gives a greater heat signature to pull away Zeniths.
I would suggest Palash on this ship as it will save you from stray round you don't need many just one left and right.
Also little fact about the 180mm SARMAT, when using AP round the cannons fire fast enough for its second round to slip past Palash and impact.
I'm still very keen to get a look at these ships! I'm in the Highfleet Discord if that helps?
I've had great success making mini gladiators that are fully armored with 320km/h speed due to the large fixed engine model. They do cost 30k but being fully armored with 4 ak-100s and 1.1km range I find them very useful. Fitting something like that in as a back up front line ship would definitely be prudent if things go poorly as you move north.
This is the exactly the plan!
Good delivery & information. Really well-constructed video. Thumbs up!
Glad it was helpful!
I'm glad you made that adjustment to the leg angle at the end. I think that will avoid potential unnecessary damage. :)
I use fire control systems as "armor" to protect vulnerable systems on these unarmored builds. Also, even on these really light intercept builds, I find that adding a third gun and going for a single ak-725 is super helpful with a pair of ak-100s. You just hold down right click, letting the 50mm slowly spit out a stream of shots, and as soon as one is going about where you want, you follow it with the 100mm. They seem to have similar speeds, but it just helps you KNOW your shots are going to land.
I love that the "guns" selection menu uses the D-80 Mollot as it's thumbnail, as we all know it is a god and should be worshipped as such.
It's a Very good weapon.
Thanks a lot for the video! I started Highfleet recently, and while I love the game I feel a bit overwhelmed by ship design and have problems with aiming. Seeing how you handle both issues was very helpful.
Really happy to hear that you found this useful!
Additionally, I would recommend considering designing "prefab" ships with 2 weapons to take into campaign with open engine and weapon slots to be filled with looted components as you go along.
This is a good idea, budget depending I will try and sneak this in.
@@Phrosphor using variants of the Super cheap ships from Reddit - I start campaign with 2x "Thunder" class ships that will eventually have 4x Molots as armamment and various tiny ELINT / Radar vessels for scouting. The "Thunder Light" starts with 2x AK-100.
Didn't realize this rundown existed before, I think I may re-start the series now I know more about the ships
Just be aware these ships were built for version 1.14 of the game and the construction rules have changed a little since then. The basics still apply though.
The one thing I'm not fond of on this design is the gun placement. When it comes to offensive weaponry, I tend to like guns that are directly adjacent, and in a two-gun setup, directly above/below each other to reduce shot spread for the critical shots up/down into an enemy's weak spots. Having both guns on the center axis makes the aiming more "natural" for shots directly above and below the vessel.
For defensive guns, sure, scatter them around to maximize spread to catch enemy missles and aircraft... but if you've got the bigger, slower firing guns, you want every shot to land and land more naturally. Accuracy is huge with the big guns, and a lot of your game is built on exploiting known weakspots on the enemy ships. You might be handicapping yourself by having them to the left and right of the cockpit.
This is really interesting as I really struggle with vertically stacked weapons, it's like my brain just can't grasp their location relative to my center of mass at all.
Totally agree on defensive weapons though: Coverage, coverage coverage.
I really love your design process. I recently got the game and have been struggling to keep my larger craft focused. Definitely going to try out that you're doing here :3
Feature creep kills ships. It's best to have a clear defined role and goal before starting and to stick to it tightly.
Made a big ship outfitted with nothing but 20 57mm's on each side and 10 on the front and rear. It ended up costing 200k, but the thing shreds e v e r y t h i n g. I tested it thoroughly and it could easily wipe the floor with multiple "Large" class ships. Frame rate suffers a little, though.
That is a lot of firepower!
It's great to see you explain your design process before you start building. Will try laying out the modules I need before starting hull work, my first ship designs are lacking focus.
Also a question: Have you considered an 'all or nothing' armor scheme for your large ships? That is, building a compact core around the bridge, crew, autoloaders, etc. which is heavily armored, while leaving the rest of the ship unarmored or lightly armored.
I have never looked at this kind of design before but I think it bears a look. One thing to watch out for is that power can't travel through armour so there will need to be redundant generators on both sides of this setup.
my only changes i would think about would be to swap out the 3 side pieces holding the missles and the top pieces with reinforced hull for extra survivability at the cost of a little speed and range
Reinforced hull is SO HEAVY now that I am loathe to add more but I will give this an investigate.
Just started a new game with two of these with two tankers to increase their range and they're usually both off on separate courses taking cities for me, screening for the main force. So far they've performed great in combat, but they are definitely glass cannons, getting hit even a few times will cripple it's combat ability. Fuel is definitely a problem, especially if one gets hit in combat. And blacking out your pilot every thrust isn't really ideal. But so far it's doing the job.
Sounds exactly like how intended it to work, that's so cool that you wanted to try them out. I'm really concerned with fuel consumption as well and I think I need to find room for a couple more fuel tanks. Do you have a bigger tougher ship for dealing with strike fleets and fleet hqs?
@@Phrosphor I have a personal build called a knight (essentially a lighter, faster gladiator with a machine gun for missile defense) and a longbow that I got from one of the Tarkans. Other than the servastapol itself of course. Nothing that's going to solo a strong strike group at the moment but I just started a new campaign. My plan is to push the main force up one way and have a smaller audacity + tanker group taking territory ahead of them, grabbing the free Tarkan ships at a faster rate. This is mostly a test campaign at the moment, to see how far I can get. I don't have much experience with heavier ships, even in vanilla (never got that far in campaign).
I have one I call the maverick. It's a lightning but I've removed the landing gear and escape pods added room for 4 missiles, 4 flare launchers, and 4 APS systems for 360 anti-shelling, still has 2 guns, I like to change them. Sometimes use double molots, sometimes I use a vempel and a molot. Just depends, I like the smaller guns to "jab" for me and then when my shots are on target I hit the bigger guns. Aside from the cost, it's spec for spec the same as the lightning but with a combat rating of 15.
Sounds like a beast!
Just found your channel, awesome content big guy!
Thank you very much
Ended up with basically the same old Lightning xD Lightnings with added flares and missiles basically carried me through the whole campaign
I guess it's a great example of 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'
I'm a little bit concerned that with no 2x2 blocks touching the upper engines, they could fall off long before an engine is actually destroyed, especially in the case of fire. Just something to keep an eye on.
Good spot, I am changing my plans for these videos a little bit to go over community proposed builds and then maybe doing some refactoring as well.
I'm really interested to learn what this new design does better than the old Lightning.
Mostly? It mounts flares. The Lightning really occupies it's niche very nicely. I would say the Audacity has a safer bridge and a more 'meta' construction in the use of 1x1 blocks and corner pieces but that is really all. You can't shave a lot off of the ship. It's one of the best Vanilla designs.
@@Phrosphor Thanks for the explanation. I initially felt stupid to continue the use of the Lightning after seeing this build but I didn't see the point why because for me too the Lightning works perfectly fine. But on the same page I do understand your wish to tighten all the screws before taking off into the dark lands of hard mode.
THIS IS HELPING ME SO MUCH!!! SUBBED.
my dude you just built a lightning
Pretty much, just a better version of it, that was the plan.
Hey P. I was trying to build this ship but my game refuses to let me rotate the pieces 90 degrees - only 180.
May I bum the seria file off you by any chance? Big please and thank you. Also, your videos have been hugely helpful to get into and understand this game - thank you for that too!
Not sure what is happening there but sadly I lost the .seria for this ship when I reverted the game back to 1.1.5 for my current campaign :(. It should let you rotate using the mousewheel, is it maybe a sensitivity issue?
What happened to the escape pods between here and start of campaign, or the point where you move the missiles up and in? 🤔
Edit: I vaguely remember they got shot off and never replaced in the first couple episodes, does that sound right?
I think so, I move them in sometime early in the campaign. I also have a 'refits' video from right at the start of the campaign where I made some changes to all the ships before we launched.
Better use second lowest caliber (80mm) for mid-small ships. Absolutely universal tool. Destroys ships, rockets, and great against cruising missiles. Quite acceptable DPS. 5x80мм is rage, you counter 90% of cruising missiles with ease, and rip off all small-mid ships.
Hey guys. What are the controls for the build pieces? I can only turn the pieces 180, not 90 and also no mirror function that I can find. This makes it
almost impossible to build, let alone come up with something symmetrical. Help super appreciated, thank you.
Strange that two people had the same issue at the same time, I just use mousewheel to rotate, it could be a sensitivity problem? Did you manage to solve it?
@@Phrosphor No. I've tried different mice, mouse settings, no luck. One mouse has a sensitivity button build in, the other is a research mouse where you can disconnect the wheel and it free wheels. Still no. Shipbuilding is perhaps not game breaking, but I can only turn radio dials in twos. Meaning 2,4,6,8 instead of 1,2,3,4. As you can imagine, it breaks the mini game and one loses tactical awareness re transports, strike etc. Sucks, really...
Does increasing the amount of ammo loaders effect reload time at all?
Sadly it doesn't, it would be an interesting mechanic if it did.
i am late to this game but it was on offer and got amazing reviews, so really picking it up.
Following your hard mode campaign and loving it.
Copied this ship design but my speed is nothing like yours? has the later patches changed something? i have been over it three times and can not see where i am going wrong.
Yes, unfortunately the latest version had made everything a lot heavier :(
@@Phrosphor ah thanks that explains why the ship is way slower.
I am looking forward to my first play through utilizing some of your builds.
@@Phrosphor Are the builds still usable/valid in the new patches?
Did the stats really change so much? Built a similar ship, slightly different arrangement but in essence same parts. Yet I only get up to 500 top speed.
Yeah they have changed significantly, armour is much much heavier now sadly
I might be dumb, but why not have the missiles on the inside next to the upper engines? They are less exposed and can still fire up? I could be wrong here but that looks like a much better place, you have space hull and then an engine taking fire first, only the top is exposed to direct fire to the missiles, which is less then on the sides. If you can't mount them there then I guess nevermind. lol
They can 100% be mounted there. My fear is something detonating them and that cooking off the fuel and ammo inside the ship. On the outside they can't do as much damage.
@@Phrosphor Ah that is fair, they just seem like they would be better protected and less likely to explode if inner mounted.. Could you add a bit of hull above them for added protection or would that block line of sight/fire?
Heck. It seems 1.15 did another number on shipbuilding. At 11:39 you're at 1202 km/h while I'm at 620 km/h. O.0 Also massively short on power with the entire setup.
No wonder all the guides/shipbuilding techniques were giving me none of the results. x'D Those are some huge differences.
Yeah 1.15 totally changed the ship building rules. I would make this Shipp totally different now. It's been interesting having to adjust mid campaign!
Did they change something in the game? Because when I build exactly the same ship it has about 300 kmh less cruise speed and other stats that are lower than when you published this video.
Yes unfortunately they did, you will need to roll your version of the game back to version 1.14 to get this ship to still work.
@@Phrosphor aah I see, well thanks for letting me know!
3:00 why do i feel like you’re giving that gun a positive opinion when its actually negative
Not sure if you are referring to the 57mm or the MK-1-180 here but both are good weapons in the right situation. The 180 is probably the hardest to use but the one advantage it has is the high alpha and 2 ammo requirement compared to the larger turrets.
@@Phrosphor the 57mm
finally a actually lighting replacement and not the fatboi you had last time. but is flare necessary for a ship this fast? because you can evade those missiles pretty easy even with no after burn in this build.
Flares have two great roles here:
1. Take mental pressure off of dodging. If a missile takes a flare I don't need to move as much so I don't need to worry about wandering into fire from a secondary target
2. Saves fuel! If I don't need to dodge I can extend my combat time.
Why no spaced reinforced hull protection? I have been fairly successful with Lightnings with an added hull cage in 1.13
I have built and rebuilt this design about 10 times now. Every time I add spaced hull or reinforced hull I lose too much maneuverability. For me, personally, if the ship gets too slow to react, I can't keep it alive. So it's a comprimise I have had to accept.
@@Phrosphor Try taking a look at adding reinforced frame just around the outer side of the missiles, and one square higher, similar to the last picture of the Navarin D-30S in my guide. It does a good job of helping to keep the missile alive, but it pulls double duty by also protecting the engines.
1.14 makes all hull pieces, whether it is the regular yellow hull or the reinforced hull, at the very least 50% more heavy. There are some pieces that got doubled in weight.
damn no link to the build :(
Sadly it is outdated now anyway. 1.15 has kind of killed the build. I will need to do some updated ship designs and share the files for them.
👏🙂
Thank you! This ship is still going strong in my hard mode campaign, despite being made for a different version of the game!
@@Phrosphor it does look like a good ship.
I hope you show more ships you like and build styles/techniques you like.
keep up the great work
i guess your ship got nerfed cuz it sucks now
Yeah it was designed for version 1.14 and 1.16 changed a LOT of things.