This comment section is becoming a brilliant place of wisdom and useful tips for new players, please have a browse. And thanks to everyone for their lovely comments!
I'm just gonna say it, whenever you post tutorials about ship design I don't think and click on them. Doesn't matter that I have over 1400 hours, I still suck at building ships bigger than your gun boats. Thank you for the video BTW I'll be watching it a few more times just so it sticks on my smooth brain :D
In my experience I think a big factor of building a good looking and working ship is patience. building a large ship never be afraid of redesigning it and keep adding stuff. I have been working on a cruisers since March. Around 7500 blocks. Clocked in maybe a 100 hours on that build alone and there are still so many things I want to improve, add features etc. I might be a little bit autistic in wanting every angle of my ships to look perfect but expecting to build anything larger than a gun boat or anything in a day or a week is asking for a flying brick unless you are like super talented.
@jelledemaeyer7329 love the sound of that cruiser of yours anyone who has love for there ship's immediately has my respect. Also thanks for the advice I'll do my best to take it to heart. I hope you have fun designing your cruiser and may Clang bless your vessel with good fortune :D
@@cptccman5665 Yeah man, Rome wasnt build in a day as they say. Also what I like to do is put on a an Audiobook or listen to some dnd liveplays while I am building in creative. relaxes the brain 🧠 . In survival you might not have the time to do that but that is why we have printers and blueprints 😎
@@jelledemaeyer7329 I like to listen to Two Steps from Hell, Mountain Call is my favorite. But I also like to listen to ship breakdowns or The Sojourn. No matter what it is there is always something to help motivate you to unleash your need to create :D
I have some comments about interior. Don't build large open spaces unless you have to. It looks artificial, dull and empty. Don't underestimate well placed interior blocks and inset blocks, they can make or break your style points. Half bed or half door combined with interior corner can make space look more spacious and will give character to your crew quarters. And have some fun with lights. Using different shades, leaving some darker corners or having one or two flickering lights in a toilet corridor makes great atmosphere. SE is better if you not only using the ship, but also "feeling" the ship.
Like many other commenters below, I have 1000s of hours in SE, but one thing I needed to hear early on when I was starting out was ships need 4 things to fly: 1) control (cockpit, remote, control seat) 2) steering (gyro, optional if rover) 3) power (depends on thrust type, but for starters at least a battery in most cases) 4) thrust (or wheels, if rover) THEN spend 20 hours adding and subtracting other blocks and functions. :D For anything more complicated than "make it go", I sometimes use something I got from Morphologis' content. He's an architect and talks about programming -- a list of features/functions required and desired by the user. This can be as high level or nuts-and-bolts as you need it to be. e.g. Freighter ship program list might be: Required: - flight basics (the 4 things listed above) - cargo (measured in whatever way is useful, e.g. 3 large cargo blocks, loaded with ore) - MOAR THRUST!!!1! (enough to lift 3 large cargo blocks full of ore at 1.5g, meaning excess of .5g acceleration when lifting from the earthlike planet) - 1+ connectors located in standardized, easy locations to fit with the rest of the ships a player uses nice to have list: - AI blocks for automated operation, docking, transferring cargo - sorters - antenna - landing/docking blocks in addition to connectors - programmable blocks for scripts - lights (because I always forget these if I don't write them down) --- Or a more role-play focused ship program for a hypothetical intrasystem patrol corvette (more high level, doesn't explicitly list all blocks needed): - Expanse style vertical orientation; up thrust is primary (thrusters pointed down), no large thrusters in any other facing - two control blocks, one oriented forward and one oriented up (this allows easy use of the main thrust either as up for landing in gravity, or forward when in 0g flight) - 1 internal corridor using passage blocks running lengthwise from bow to stern, with all functional blocks except thrusters able to be accessed for repair internally in a pressurized environment - main large thrusters mounted in 3 nacelles visually semi-separated from main ship body - aft (bottom or down facing) and port air locks - bunk rooms for notional crew of 4 - starboard mounted asymmetric fixed railgun firing up - two custom turrets with gatlings for point defense - arbitrary target size of 2000 PCU (roughly scaled for a fair, competitive fight against Modular Encounters, which seems to assume an established player will have roughly 10K to 30K PCU for total combat capable ship strength) Whether specifying individual blocks or higher level functions/concepts, this programming helps me avoid losing sight of the point of a ship. With no specifications or limits, I tend to overbuild and add bloat/scope creep. Plus all my early ships ended up being "flying brick with drills", "flying brick with guns", etc. But with defined parameters or ranges, I can make my ships more distinct from each other.
For mining ships specifically, I discovered something new this week. While sorters can only manually pull items at a fixed constant rate, if you deactivate the "drain all", that throughput can go massively up. This means you only need a single sorter to service your entire stone/ice ejector array, saving on PCU
wait what? if you don't "Drain all" then most of the time stone/ice is never moved to connector... the ejector doesn't exist anymore, is just the small connector which has the exact same requeriment than the normal connector and that's to have items in it's inventory to be able to throw them up so if you have to sort them through a sorter unless you "drain all" items will never go through. what i'm missing? there must be something i am not understanding about it's behaviour.
@JoachimVampire You use the "collect all" and "throw out all" on the connector. I just still call them ejectors when using them like this. I don't know why, but sorter throughput is way higher when they aren't using the "drain all" function. The connector will still pull out from the inventory on the other side of the sorter so long as items are whitelisted in that single sorter
A great overview of what everything does. The only thing I would add to that is that when you build a ship have a clear idea of what you want that ship to do. Give it specific metrics it needs to meet to be considered a success at that thing. It's all too easy to just keep adding parts until you have a frankenstein of a ship that is trying to do everything at once and failing. If you can measure how well a build is working out then you know what you need to work on. For example. When designing any sort of freight ship, come up with an amount of cargo you want it to be able to carry and the environments you want it to operate in. Think about if you will have any resource constraints that you need to keep in mind for its intended use so you don't make it too expensive. Eg: This cargo ship must be able to move one large cargo box full of ore between space and the earthlike planet without using uranium or platinum. That is something you can test. If you turn your ship into a crater on re entry then you have data for the next build. Same with any other build. Lots of people will chime in on warship builds that their super dreadnought will beat X design easily, but what a ship is designed to kill and in what environment, and for what cost matters. Keep design parameters in mind for everything you make and your builds will get much better. "Being pretty" is a perfectly valid design consideration. Just keep it in balance with "being able to do its job"
Hey Lunar I don't know the statistics, but i'd guess most of your viewers aren't newbies. I would like to see videos on different ship building techniques (bottom-up, back to front, outside first vs. inside first, your frame kinda method where you'll lay down like a wire frame of sorts, etc.) and their different results.
As someone with thousands of hours dating back to the implementation of turrets, here are some additional considerations: 1. The form of a ship is highly consequential. Wings, pods, and things break off when Klang comes knocking, or especially when your enemy wants them to. Try to build symmetrically about the center of mass along the primary navigational axis of the ship. If you can’t avoid protrusions, up-armor the connection. It’s also good to remember that ship debris can get caught in pockets and that edges will snag on objects. 2. Even through gyroscopes have increased durability, they are vital to emergency maneuvers and general navigation. Protect them and do not leave them exposed if you can. They have significant targeting priority so place them such that they will not draw enemy projectiles through neighboring ship systems and vital structural components. 3. Even more importantly than with gyroscopes; Cockpits are a priority target for enemy turrets and there should be more than just a windshield protecting them if you can manage it. This applies to all non-combat vessels that may encounter the enemy. 4. If you plan on using reactive armor (shielding plates spaced away from the hull), do not mount them to important blocks because damage absorbed by the plates could travel. 5. Line of sight for turrets is essential to their function. 6. A ship’s weight will determine maneuverability and therefore combat effectiveness in many facets. Slow and weak is a bad combination without ample jump capability. 7. Use decoy blocks to guide turret target priority away from vital systems. It will save your ship. 8. It isn’t always a good idea to have every type of thruster on a ship. In most cases, a vessel is often best when maximized for a specific environment. 9. Use navigational clearance lights. 10. Always have a medbay for respawning. 11. Diversify energy generation.
Also worth remembering gasses (hydrogen and oxygen) also don't flow backwards through sorters, so you cannot refuel your hydrogen ships if there's a sorter facing the wrong way.
just started watching vid so haven't finished yet but the most important thing i learned on how to make your ships look good is to not be afraid to add shapes and structures that serve no purpose
also for armor i generally build the frame out of heavy armor fill everything with light armor and then detail blocks like slopes and corner blocks of heavy armor
and if you have room in your large ship a second heavy armored bridge separate from the aesthetic one does wonders nothing worse than having an intact ship but the enemy had a lucky shot and destroyed your cockpit
The main things i think about are Thrusters, Function, Specialization, and Gravity. I will use my interplanetary mining vehicle as an example Thrusters: Think about the purpose of each thruster. Each thruster has a purpose it needs to fill. For instance, my mining ship's most important thrusters are needed for counteracting the weight of the Ore. Both in a Gravity well and when i need to stop the vehicle quickly to avoid crashing. For both reasons, i have 16 Large Hydrogen Thrusters pointed in one dirrection. I have minimal thrust in each lateral direction, as those thrusters are mostly meant for fine tuning. the last dirrection is in the up dirrection, and consists of 8 large Ion thrusters. I don't need upward thrust in atmosphere, and this doubles as my Forward Thrust in space. Function: IRL, ships are roughly designed in a way where 1/2 their mass/space is dedicated to the primary function of the ship, 1/4 is dedicated to crew support, and 1/4 is dedicated to propulsion. In block-based games, this is less required do to simplified game mechanics compared to IRL, but it can still be a good rule to follow for making ships look more realistic. In my mining ship, half my ship is dedicated to the Drill, refineries and H2/O2 generators, and Storage Containers & Tanks. The top end of the ship has a comfortible living quarters for up to 6 people, and the bottom 1/4 of my ship is the thruster packs. Specialization: Specialization is fun, but it's also useful. The more stuff you have on your ship, the more thrust you need to keep the ship mobile. (And IRL, the more Crew it would need to run it). Try to keep your ships related to their primary purpose. My mining ship's prupose is to dig ore out of the ground. While i have 2 refineries, they are set up with speed modules and Sorters to process only the stone in the way of the ore. I also have 16 H2/O2 generators because ice is weightless once it is a gas in the game. Likewise, each thruster is specifically chosen with a purpose, and is the minimum amount of thrusters needed to safely manuever the vehicle when it is fully loaded. Gravity: You can do some fun stuff with Gravity in Space Engineers. there is no "Up" in space, and by manipulating gravity, you can make many interesting ship designs, using otherwise dead-space or manipulating the perception on board your ship. You aren't limited to just one Gravity generator on a ship and you can alter their range and strengths. ALSO, please reduce the default field of your Gravity Generator. It will save you power and save those around you from the headache of docking with you.
Love the guides! Its so useful for the new players and even for me and my 2k hours. When it comes to ship design, I honestly struggle with creating MY OWN styles and not relying too heavily on preexisting styles (SW, HW, Halo, etc). Its one of the things I find myself a bit more jealous of when it comes to other builders.
Definitely some good tips! This is perfect timing because im about to do a creative session with my friend to teach him how to do ships. So this video is perfect. Thank you!
It helped me alot. I built an awesome fighter after watching this, as well as a light bettlecruiser. I now also know how to find the perfect size of ships. Before watching this, I could only build these little 3×3×... ships, looking like tubes. (Im talking about ships in s-mode)
You forgot gravity and the weight shift drive, as these can be built in vanilla game easily. Gravity drive can even work without scripts. I love this. Thank you so much... Does not matter how much time you have on the game. structured information is always welcome. I rarely use atmo thrusters and did not know the needed space on top as well :)
Your videos are very helpful especially for both beginners as well as those with more hours in the game like me who still have to be hand-held to build large grid ships. Your tutorials are the missing manual for Space Engineers!
I think you should’ve spent some time talking about power sources. Reactors can be very hard to find fuel for, and you should probably have a backup generator to supplement battery power. Solar is pretty hassle free, but it’s also big and fragile. Wind doesn’t work on ships. I am partial to having a hydrogen engine backup generator. While carrying hydrogen tanks comes with some risk, it’s way better than being stranded.
Alternatively to the risk thing, carry more of them in separated blocks around the conveyor network near or outside of the outer hull and then: _"Congratulations_ Hydrogen Tanks, you are now Explosive Reactive Armor in addition to being fuel tanks!" results may vary depending on the Engineer's design choices but the explosions will still be pretty
@ yeah, but they don’t actually produce much power. They are good for recharging a ship while you are away, but it’s very hard to run a ship on solar alone.
Honestly, I'd be so down for a guide mini series on interior/exterior design. I tend to retrofit existing ships or go function over form so learning the mindset to make things look nice as well would be great
This video was fantastic! Ship design is something i struggle alot with. Could you do a video talking about different classes or ships, their purposes and things to consider when building them??
This video right here is just an outstanding collection of information. I especially like the weapon descriptions as I am getting ready to decide of I like the current weapons load out of a ship I am trying called 'Glaaki Interplanetary Cruiser'. I will rewatch this video paying particular attention to the weapons info and see if I want to switch any of the Artillary and Cannons out, etc.
Also when designing ships, it’s much easier and more efficient (if you’re trying to be aware of pcu) to specialize. Your designated warships don’t need production facilities, drills, or enclosed hangars. Trying to include too many features will likely blow up your original vision and the end result will be a hulking mass of pcu.
One thing that deserves mention - PCU costs! In singleplayer these are mostly irrelevant, but on servers and especially Keen's servers they do matter once you hit "endgame" level builds. Nothing sucks quite like not being able to finish a ship because you ran out of budget.
last time I checked, gold or uranium ingots are the heaviest per volume items in the game and are great for testing if you have enough thrust. I think steel plates are the heaviest for components.
Nice explainer. I was *hoping* this was going to be more along the lines of strategy for ship building - like some builders will create the interior spaces, then a layer of conveyors, gyros, reactors etc, then they'll armor it. Can you explore different ship design/build methodologies next time?
I feel like I am getting good at ship design. I always build around internal systems and thruster placement. You know you have a really good ship design if its a full functioning jump capable mother ship with decent fire power, can land on Pertam and cost under 10,000 PCU. Watch those conveyor lines and doors, they add up super fast
I know it’s a big ask, but I want to see the design process put into making a carrier, I feel like I make my carriers far too big compared to what they SHOULD be like. ;-; I know you have an entire breakdown series on each individual class of ship, but I would actually like to see the building process and/or mindset.
I have over 20,000 hours in this game. I've mastered everything, from vanilla to modded to ship building, scripts, player made weapons. Here is my advice for ships Idk man, just build what's fun or something
When it comes to interior, what is the best use for the Willis Ducts? Part of me thinks using a system of them to decompress hangar bays is a good idea, but I have rarely seen them used.
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation of guns in the game.There are so many weapons and turrets and I didn´t know which are good against what or how to use them - the game explains nothing about them.
The first thing I ask is, "what is this ship for?" It's purpose will determine what it needs to have. Trying to make a ship that does everything well is a good way to make it mediocre at everything.
I do have a ship that I like your opinion on there is a couple of ships that I have built but this one is one that I've been having a lot of difficulties with as far as screen tearing goes and I'm trying to figure out what's going on with it but also if there's anything that I can do to improve the ship. I'm trying to go with kind of a heavy industry / mine hauler it holds and hauls both of my minors as well as smaller craft as well.
2:42 what is this ship shown here? i know you can find a destroyed version as a planetary encounter but gave up on fixing it after i accidentally blew half of it up and couldn't find a blueprint for it
I'd prob'ly go full hybrid, atmos for planets, ions for space, & 1 or 2 big hydros just for getting into space. My ship would B a mid size freighter that can punch above its weight class in a pinch.
Great video! And I have a question… Ive been playing around with Keen’s factorum warship and really liked the interior, but felt it lacked a couple things like airlocks and and some other rooms etc. So I built my own version from scratch, implementing these as I went. But now, i need to do the exterior and i suck at exterior. It looks like a box, and s terrible misformed one at that😂 How can I get the exterior somewhat decent? Honestly even considering getting help to do it
If you’re not fussed about windows, I build a shell around my ships that doesn’t necessarily match the interior. Completely aesthetic, and then you can use the void spaces between to pipe conveyors for any turrets or docking ports you might want to
Depends on what you want for acceleration or lift capacity. If you really struggle, I would suggest going into creative and just making a brick with your desired weight and estimated thruster need. Test it out and add or remove thrusters until you get the desired performance
My brother has a huge dreadnought in sandbox and im trying to figure out how to beat it. He also uses the shield mod, and a custom weaponry mod that has categories like kinetic, laser, explosive, piercing, etc. He is slow but has very good weapon range and coverage 🤔
With somewhere near 2000 hours on SE I only have about 5 hours on survival, so to me Form us function, most of my ships are modded and very un-survival friendly
This comment section is becoming a brilliant place of wisdom and useful tips for new players, please have a browse. And thanks to everyone for their lovely comments!
I'm just gonna say it, whenever you post tutorials about ship design I don't think and click on them. Doesn't matter that I have over 1400 hours, I still suck at building ships bigger than your gun boats. Thank you for the video BTW I'll be watching it a few more times just so it sticks on my smooth brain :D
In my experience I think a big factor of building a good looking and working ship is patience. building a large ship never be afraid of redesigning it and keep adding stuff. I have been working on a cruisers since March. Around 7500 blocks. Clocked in maybe a 100 hours on that build alone and there are still so many things I want to improve, add features etc. I might be a little bit autistic in wanting every angle of my ships to look perfect but expecting to build anything larger than a gun boat or anything in a day or a week is asking for a flying brick unless you are like super talented.
@jelledemaeyer7329 love the sound of that cruiser of yours anyone who has love for there ship's immediately has my respect. Also thanks for the advice I'll do my best to take it to heart. I hope you have fun designing your cruiser and may Clang bless your vessel with good fortune :D
@@cptccman5665
Yeah man, Rome wasnt build in a day as they say. Also what I like to do is put on a an Audiobook or listen to some dnd liveplays while I am building in creative. relaxes the brain 🧠 . In survival you might not have the time to do that but that is why we have printers and blueprints 😎
@@jelledemaeyer7329 I like to listen to Two Steps from Hell, Mountain Call is my favorite. But I also like to listen to ship breakdowns or The Sojourn. No matter what it is there is always something to help motivate you to unleash your need to create :D
@@jelledemaeyer7329oh dude we’re for sure a bit on the spectrum if we even have interest in space engineers 😅
I have some comments about interior. Don't build large open spaces unless you have to. It looks artificial, dull and empty. Don't underestimate well placed interior blocks and inset blocks, they can make or break your style points. Half bed or half door combined with interior corner can make space look more spacious and will give character to your crew quarters. And have some fun with lights. Using different shades, leaving some darker corners or having one or two flickering lights in a toilet corridor makes great atmosphere. SE is better if you not only using the ship, but also "feeling" the ship.
Believe in the heart of the ship.
Part of the crew, part of the ship 😂. Just kidding i like that comment 👍
Like many other commenters below, I have 1000s of hours in SE, but one thing I needed to hear early on when I was starting out was ships need 4 things to fly:
1) control (cockpit, remote, control seat)
2) steering (gyro, optional if rover)
3) power (depends on thrust type, but for starters at least a battery in most cases)
4) thrust (or wheels, if rover)
THEN spend 20 hours adding and subtracting other blocks and functions. :D
For anything more complicated than "make it go", I sometimes use something I got from Morphologis' content. He's an architect and talks about programming -- a list of features/functions required and desired by the user. This can be as high level or nuts-and-bolts as you need it to be.
e.g. Freighter ship program list might be:
Required:
- flight basics (the 4 things listed above)
- cargo (measured in whatever way is useful, e.g. 3 large cargo blocks, loaded with ore)
- MOAR THRUST!!!1! (enough to lift 3 large cargo blocks full of ore at 1.5g, meaning excess of .5g acceleration when lifting from the earthlike planet)
- 1+ connectors located in standardized, easy locations to fit with the rest of the ships a player uses
nice to have list:
- AI blocks for automated operation, docking, transferring cargo
- sorters
- antenna
- landing/docking blocks in addition to connectors
- programmable blocks for scripts
- lights (because I always forget these if I don't write them down)
---
Or a more role-play focused ship program for a hypothetical intrasystem patrol corvette (more high level, doesn't explicitly list all blocks needed):
- Expanse style vertical orientation; up thrust is primary (thrusters pointed down), no large thrusters in any other facing
- two control blocks, one oriented forward and one oriented up (this allows easy use of the main thrust either as up for landing in gravity, or forward when in 0g flight)
- 1 internal corridor using passage blocks running lengthwise from bow to stern, with all functional blocks except thrusters able to be accessed for repair internally in a pressurized environment
- main large thrusters mounted in 3 nacelles visually semi-separated from main ship body
- aft (bottom or down facing) and port air locks
- bunk rooms for notional crew of 4
- starboard mounted asymmetric fixed railgun firing up
- two custom turrets with gatlings for point defense
- arbitrary target size of 2000 PCU (roughly scaled for a fair, competitive fight against Modular Encounters, which seems to assume an established player will have roughly 10K to 30K PCU for total combat capable ship strength)
Whether specifying individual blocks or higher level functions/concepts, this programming helps me avoid losing sight of the point of a ship. With no specifications or limits, I tend to overbuild and add bloat/scope creep.
Plus all my early ships ended up being "flying brick with drills", "flying brick with guns", etc. But with defined parameters or ranges, I can make my ships more distinct from each other.
For mining ships specifically, I discovered something new this week. While sorters can only manually pull items at a fixed constant rate, if you deactivate the "drain all", that throughput can go massively up. This means you only need a single sorter to service your entire stone/ice ejector array, saving on PCU
wait what? if you don't "Drain all" then most of the time stone/ice is never moved to connector... the ejector doesn't exist anymore, is just the small connector which has the exact same requeriment than the normal connector and that's to have items in it's inventory to be able to throw them up so if you have to sort them through a sorter unless you "drain all" items will never go through. what i'm missing? there must be something i am not understanding about it's behaviour.
@JoachimVampire You use the "collect all" and "throw out all" on the connector. I just still call them ejectors when using them like this. I don't know why, but sorter throughput is way higher when they aren't using the "drain all" function. The connector will still pull out from the inventory on the other side of the sorter so long as items are whitelisted in that single sorter
A great overview of what everything does.
The only thing I would add to that is that when you build a ship have a clear idea of what you want that ship to do. Give it specific metrics it needs to meet to be considered a success at that thing. It's all too easy to just keep adding parts until you have a frankenstein of a ship that is trying to do everything at once and failing. If you can measure how well a build is working out then you know what you need to work on.
For example. When designing any sort of freight ship, come up with an amount of cargo you want it to be able to carry and the environments you want it to operate in. Think about if you will have any resource constraints that you need to keep in mind for its intended use so you don't make it too expensive.
Eg: This cargo ship must be able to move one large cargo box full of ore between space and the earthlike planet without using uranium or platinum.
That is something you can test. If you turn your ship into a crater on re entry then you have data for the next build.
Same with any other build. Lots of people will chime in on warship builds that their super dreadnought will beat X design easily, but what a ship is designed to kill and in what environment, and for what cost matters.
Keep design parameters in mind for everything you make and your builds will get much better. "Being pretty" is a perfectly valid design consideration. Just keep it in balance with "being able to do its job"
Hey Lunar I don't know the statistics, but i'd guess most of your viewers aren't newbies. I would like to see videos on different ship building techniques (bottom-up, back to front, outside first vs. inside first, your frame kinda method where you'll lay down like a wire frame of sorts, etc.) and their different results.
As someone with thousands of hours dating back to the implementation of turrets, here are some additional considerations:
1. The form of a ship is highly consequential. Wings, pods, and things break off when Klang comes knocking, or especially when your enemy wants them to. Try to build symmetrically about the center of mass along the primary navigational axis of the ship. If you can’t avoid protrusions, up-armor the connection. It’s also good to remember that ship debris can get caught in pockets and that edges will snag on objects.
2. Even through gyroscopes have increased durability, they are vital to emergency maneuvers and general navigation. Protect them and do not leave them exposed if you can. They have significant targeting priority so place them such that they will not draw enemy projectiles through neighboring ship systems and vital structural components.
3. Even more importantly than with gyroscopes; Cockpits are a priority target for enemy turrets and there should be more than just a windshield protecting them if you can manage it. This applies to all non-combat vessels that may encounter the enemy.
4. If you plan on using reactive armor (shielding plates spaced away from the hull), do not mount them to important blocks because damage absorbed by the plates could travel.
5. Line of sight for turrets is essential to their function.
6. A ship’s weight will determine maneuverability and therefore combat effectiveness in many facets. Slow and weak is a bad combination without ample jump capability.
7. Use decoy blocks to guide turret target priority away from vital systems. It will save your ship.
8. It isn’t always a good idea to have every type of thruster on a ship. In most cases, a vessel is often best when maximized for a specific environment.
9. Use navigational clearance lights.
10. Always have a medbay for respawning.
11. Diversify energy generation.
It's always good to go over ship design. Please do go in depth with as much as you can.
Also worth remembering gasses (hydrogen and oxygen) also don't flow backwards through sorters, so you cannot refuel your hydrogen ships if there's a sorter facing the wrong way.
just started watching vid so haven't finished yet but the most important thing i learned on how to make your ships look good is to not be afraid to add shapes and structures that serve no purpose
also for armor i generally build the frame out of heavy armor fill everything with light armor and then detail blocks like slopes and corner blocks of heavy armor
and if you have room in your large ship a second heavy armored bridge separate from the aesthetic one does wonders nothing worse than having an intact ship but the enemy had a lucky shot and destroyed your cockpit
8 random pipes.
Keep shining! Your work is outstanding!
The main things i think about are Thrusters, Function, Specialization, and Gravity. I will use my interplanetary mining vehicle as an example
Thrusters:
Think about the purpose of each thruster. Each thruster has a purpose it needs to fill. For instance, my mining ship's most important thrusters are needed for counteracting the weight of the Ore. Both in a Gravity well and when i need to stop the vehicle quickly to avoid crashing. For both reasons, i have 16 Large Hydrogen Thrusters pointed in one dirrection. I have minimal thrust in each lateral direction, as those thrusters are mostly meant for fine tuning. the last dirrection is in the up dirrection, and consists of 8 large Ion thrusters. I don't need upward thrust in atmosphere, and this doubles as my Forward Thrust in space.
Function:
IRL, ships are roughly designed in a way where 1/2 their mass/space is dedicated to the primary function of the ship, 1/4 is dedicated to crew support, and 1/4 is dedicated to propulsion. In block-based games, this is less required do to simplified game mechanics compared to IRL, but it can still be a good rule to follow for making ships look more realistic. In my mining ship, half my ship is dedicated to the Drill, refineries and H2/O2 generators, and Storage Containers & Tanks. The top end of the ship has a comfortible living quarters for up to 6 people, and the bottom 1/4 of my ship is the thruster packs.
Specialization:
Specialization is fun, but it's also useful. The more stuff you have on your ship, the more thrust you need to keep the ship mobile. (And IRL, the more Crew it would need to run it). Try to keep your ships related to their primary purpose. My mining ship's prupose is to dig ore out of the ground. While i have 2 refineries, they are set up with speed modules and Sorters to process only the stone in the way of the ore. I also have 16 H2/O2 generators because ice is weightless once it is a gas in the game. Likewise, each thruster is specifically chosen with a purpose, and is the minimum amount of thrusters needed to safely manuever the vehicle when it is fully loaded.
Gravity:
You can do some fun stuff with Gravity in Space Engineers. there is no "Up" in space, and by manipulating gravity, you can make many interesting ship designs, using otherwise dead-space or manipulating the perception on board your ship. You aren't limited to just one Gravity generator on a ship and you can alter their range and strengths. ALSO, please reduce the default field of your Gravity Generator. It will save you power and save those around you from the headache of docking with you.
How much does your ship weigh?
Love the guides! Its so useful for the new players and even for me and my 2k hours. When it comes to ship design, I honestly struggle with creating MY OWN styles and not relying too heavily on preexisting styles (SW, HW, Halo, etc). Its one of the things I find myself a bit more jealous of when it comes to other builders.
We all have a creative niche.
All my ships end up looking like boats, semi-trucks, or locomotives. Or a mix of the three.
Definitely some good tips!
This is perfect timing because im about to do a creative session with my friend to teach him how to do ships.
So this video is perfect.
Thank you!
Welp, this is actually helpful. It would be awesome to later go over in more detail over each topic
It helped me alot. I built an awesome fighter after watching this, as well as a light bettlecruiser. I now also know how to find the perfect size of ships. Before watching this, I could only build these little 3×3×... ships, looking like tubes. (Im talking about ships in s-mode)
You forgot gravity and the weight shift drive, as these can be built in vanilla game easily. Gravity drive can even work without scripts.
I love this. Thank you so much... Does not matter how much time you have on the game. structured information is always welcome. I rarely use atmo thrusters and did not know the needed space on top as well :)
I'm not covering them in the basic guide. Might touch on them in the future or a more advanced guide
@@LunarKolony Looking forward to seeing them all :)
Your videos are very helpful especially for both beginners as well as those with more hours in the game like me who still have to be hand-held to build large grid ships. Your tutorials are the missing manual for Space Engineers!
Thank you for everything you do these years.
Many thanks.
Thank you for this great vid, very complete and inspiring
Boy I sure love having 2300+ hours and STILL managing to learn new things from these videos. I might in fact be a little stupid.
I think you should’ve spent some time talking about power sources. Reactors can be very hard to find fuel for, and you should probably have a backup generator to supplement battery power. Solar is pretty hassle free, but it’s also big and fragile. Wind doesn’t work on ships. I am partial to having a hydrogen engine backup generator. While carrying hydrogen tanks comes with some risk, it’s way better than being stranded.
Alternatively to the risk thing, carry more of them in separated blocks around the conveyor network near or outside of the outer hull and then:
_"Congratulations_ Hydrogen Tanks, you are now Explosive Reactive Armor in addition to being fuel tanks!"
results may vary depending on the Engineer's design choices but the explosions will still be pretty
Solar power looks amazing when you pull it off, and combined with oxygen farms they are soo comvenient on multiplayer servers.
@ yeah, but they don’t actually produce much power. They are good for recharging a ship while you are away, but it’s very hard to run a ship on solar alone.
Great video! love the format and intro was very pleasing
I have two and a half thousand hours in the game. Do you think this video will be useful to me? Absolutely yes. Great job👍
This was an awesome video! Can’t wait for some more entries :)))
Honestly, I'd be so down for a guide mini series on interior/exterior design. I tend to retrofit existing ships or go function over form so learning the mindset to make things look nice as well would be great
This video was fantastic! Ship design is something i struggle alot with. Could you do a video talking about different classes or ships, their purposes and things to consider when building them??
This video right here is just an outstanding collection of information. I especially like the weapon descriptions as I am getting ready to decide of I like the current weapons load out of a ship I am trying called 'Glaaki Interplanetary Cruiser'. I will rewatch this video paying particular attention to the weapons info and see if I want to switch any of the Artillary and Cannons out, etc.
Yooo this is what I needed! Just trying to get back into SE again
Great video. Enjoyed watching it :)
Also when designing ships, it’s much easier and more efficient (if you’re trying to be aware of pcu) to specialize. Your designated warships don’t need production facilities, drills, or enclosed hangars. Trying to include too many features will likely blow up your original vision and the end result will be a hulking mass of pcu.
This is fantastic. Adding some chapter bookmarks would make it even fantastic-er. XD
Oh i needed this thank you a ton
One thing that deserves mention - PCU costs! In singleplayer these are mostly irrelevant, but on servers and especially Keen's servers they do matter once you hit "endgame" level builds. Nothing sucks quite like not being able to finish a ship because you ran out of budget.
last time I checked, gold or uranium ingots are the heaviest per volume items in the game and are great for testing if you have enough thrust.
I think steel plates are the heaviest for components.
Fantastic video as always
Nice explainer. I was *hoping* this was going to be more along the lines of strategy for ship building - like some builders will create the interior spaces, then a layer of conveyors, gyros, reactors etc, then they'll armor it. Can you explore different ship design/build methodologies next time?
Great Ideas!
thank you, i can finally stop copying your designs and try to make my own
Well put 2gether. Easy 2 understand.
I feel like I am getting good at ship design. I always build around internal systems and thruster placement. You know you have a really good ship design if its a full functioning jump capable mother ship with decent fire power, can land on Pertam and cost under 10,000 PCU. Watch those conveyor lines and doors, they add up super fast
I know it’s a big ask, but I want to see the design process put into making a carrier, I feel like I make my carriers far too big compared to what they SHOULD be like. ;-;
I know you have an entire breakdown series on each individual class of ship, but I would actually like to see the building process and/or mindset.
STOP THUS NOW YOU MAKEING ME LOVE IT
I LOVE BUILD GUIDES!!!!
FINALLY
You were waiting??
Yes because we are so bad so anything like this help us
@@darkachont1288 True
I have over 20,000 hours in this game. I've mastered everything, from vanilla to modded to ship building, scripts, player made weapons. Here is my advice for ships
Idk man, just build what's fun or something
since when did atmos need a block of space above the intake?
I would love to see the handbook as a physical guide I can buy
When it comes to interior, what is the best use for the Willis Ducts? Part of me thinks using a system of them to decompress hangar bays is a good idea, but I have rarely seen them used.
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation of guns in the game.There are so many weapons and turrets and I didn´t know which are good against what or how to use them - the game explains nothing about them.
The first thing I ask is, "what is this ship for?" It's purpose will determine what it needs to have. Trying to make a ship that does everything well is a good way to make it mediocre at everything.
This was very cool
I do have a ship that I like your opinion on there is a couple of ships that I have built but this one is one that I've been having a lot of difficulties with as far as screen tearing goes and I'm trying to figure out what's going on with it but also if there's anything that I can do to improve the ship. I'm trying to go with kind of a heavy industry / mine hauler it holds and hauls both of my minors as well as smaller craft as well.
A second part with practical examples would be nice, I'm tired of making space shoe boxes.
A good guide.
Do the atmo thrusters really need a block of spacing near the intake ? I've never built one into my ships
You basically can’t attach them by that end blockwise
2:42 what is this ship shown here? i know you can find a destroyed version as a planetary encounter but gave up on fixing it after i accidentally blew half of it up and couldn't find a blueprint for it
thanks for the video! was wondering how can I find the ship shown at 2:32, thanks
That’s the pendragon on the keen official workshop
@@LunarKolony thank you!
I'd prob'ly go full hybrid, atmos for planets, ions for space, & 1 or 2 big hydros just for getting into space. My ship would B a mid size freighter that can punch above its weight class in a pinch.
Quite helpful
Great video! And I have a question…
Ive been playing around with Keen’s factorum warship and really liked the interior, but felt it lacked a couple things like airlocks and and some other rooms etc. So I built my own version from scratch, implementing these as I went. But now, i need to do the exterior and i suck at exterior. It looks like a box, and s terrible misformed one at that😂
How can I get the exterior somewhat decent? Honestly even considering getting help to do it
If you’re not fussed about windows, I build a shell around my ships that doesn’t necessarily match the interior. Completely aesthetic, and then you can use the void spaces between to pipe conveyors for any turrets or docking ports you might want to
Nice
Id love to know how can i calculate the amount of thrusters I need based on the ships weight
Depends on what you want for acceleration or lift capacity. If you really struggle, I would suggest going into creative and just making a brick with your desired weight and estimated thruster need. Test it out and add or remove thrusters until you get the desired performance
Umm.... Atmo's don't need intake space.
That said, excellent video otherwise.
My brother has a huge dreadnought in sandbox and im trying to figure out how to beat it. He also uses the shield mod, and a custom weaponry mod that has categories like kinetic, laser, explosive, piercing, etc. He is slow but has very good weapon range and coverage 🤔
I REALLY want to build a ship using the ion engines because I don’t want to play on planets, just space
Mainly because I don’t understand the weight limit each engine type has
Never occurred to me to use light armor for the framework and structural gaps
What about angry CLANK GODS ?
a buddy of mine always uses hydrogen thrusters,
he always says we need to pollute this planet or WE NEED MORE DIESEL.
Make own video of armor and interioe design
14:26 can you make that video
With somewhere near 2000 hours on SE I only have about 5 hours on survival, so to me Form us function, most of my ships are modded and very un-survival friendly
W
did he forget about prototech, or is that a future video?
@@eshfwog not covering that in ‘basic’
@LunarKolony gotcha
Only 5 hours ago? Thought this was from a year ago
Intro song?
@@-Bile- abba when I kissed the teacher
@@LunarKolony sorry, I shouldve been more clear. I meant to this video specifically, its different to your normal intro.
It is inaccurate to say ion and atmospheric thrusters don't need fuel! They just don't need hydrogen, but they still need electrical power.
@@richardcall7447 electrical power isn’t fuel though so it is accurate ?
Under 1 hour 👇
Good for you🙄
i nid to know why we nid intirior stuff
1st comment
First