Need some manual about configuration of ships and bases.

[dhayut]

Especially the civilians ships/bases:
1. how much cargo it needs for a given ship class (small, medium, large freighters, mining ships, construction etc.)?
2. how much passengers need a passenger ship to hold?
3. how much cargo storage a mining base, a port, etc. needs?
4. what speed is better for civilian ship? does it need armor/shields?
I observed some problems of civilian ships being destroyed by giant space crayfishes, so the question is - how much speed it needs to escape these creatures before warp jump?
5. what weapons a mining station need to destroy giant crayfishes?

Is there any manual concerning these and related questions?

[Aeson]

1. how much cargo it needs for a given ship class (small, medium, large freighters, mining ships, construction etc.)?

I typically give my small/medium/large freighters 5/10/15 cargo bays if I'm designing them myself, because those are easy numbers to add and maintain the distinction between the classes. However, the computer doesn't really seem to distinguish between the various types of freighters, and also often only carries very small loads in the freighters. 5 cargo bays is probably more than enough for just about any hauling job the computer will assign to a freighter.

3. how much cargo storage a mining base, a port, etc. needs?

For spaceports: 1 cargo bay, because it's the minimum required to have a valid design. Spaceports and any other base built over a colony share the colony's storage capacity, which is essentially unlimited for all practical purposes.

For mining stations, see here:
tm.asp?m=3653092

For bases not built over a colony and which do not have construction yards, I would not add much more cargo capacity than would be needed to hold the entire capacity of the fuel cells of the station, as this theoretically allows the station to receive a full fuel load from a freighter all at once. Much more than that is overkill, as the only thing that stations lacking construction yards need nonfuel resources for are refits.

For bases not built over a colony that do have construction yards, check your ship designs and see how many resources they require. Multiply that by the number of construction yards on the station, and then multiply that by another two or three or four to allow the shipyard to build several runs of ships in a row rather than a single ship in each yard, and that's the cargo capacity you require.

4. what speed is better for civilian ship? does it need armor/shields?

20 or more speed is good enough. 30-35 speed plus a high turn rate (~20 degrees per second) is good for escaping pirates and typically doesn't cost your civilian ships too much space or power. All ships should have armor and shields, though civilian ships really only need enough of either to keep them intact until they can engage the hyperdrive, so one to five armor plates and one or two shield generators is probably plenty.

5. what weapons a mining station need to destroy giant crayfishes?

Depends. Has the Giant Kaltor or other space monster eaten other ships before? Regardless, it's better to deploy a small fleet to a system to kill the local space monsters than to arm a mining base heavily to deal with it. The only space monsters that respawn are the sand slugs over desert worlds with a certain spicy resource and, together with that resource, are a reference to Dune, while the only ones that multiply are a shimmering silvery swarm, though the Ardilus can move between systems if I'm not mistaken (Giant Kaltors, Space Slugs, and Sand Slugs never leave their home systems). Five blasters or torpedoes is probably enough, if you remembered to put a decent amount of armor on the station (space monster attacks are unaffected by shields; it doesn't matter if your ship has 100 shields or 1,000 shields, the monster will start damaging the hull and armor as soon as it starts attacking).

Is there any manual concerning these and related questions?

You can try looking around in the War Room section of the forums:
tt.asp?forumid=794

Here are a couple of related threads:
tm.asp?m=3649319
tm.asp?m=3575061

You can also look in the stuff in the Guide to Guides; some of the threads linked there have some stuff about ship design:
tm.asp?m=3497284

[janamdo]

Yes, the game is userunfriendly , it gives not at start the basis component structure of the ships, bases , etc
Poor documented..

[Airpower]

ORIGINAL: dhayut

Especially the civilians ships/bases:
1. how much cargo it needs for a given ship class (small, medium, large freighters, mining ships, construction etc.)?
2. how much passengers need a passenger ship to hold?
3. how much cargo storage a mining base, a port, etc. needs?
4. what speed is better for civilian ship? does it need armor/shields?
I observed some problems of civilian ships being destroyed by giant space crayfishes, so the question is - how much speed it needs to escape these creatures before warp jump?
5. what weapons a mining station need to destroy giant crayfishes?

Is there any manual concerning these and related questions?

1. For freighters, I aim for 10000 cargo space on EVERY size freighter. S, M, and L freighters are all the same design in my games. Mining ships need as much space as you want them to mine. Mining ships vary widely in performance, based on the richness and number of resources on the planet they're mining. I shoot for 10000 cargo on mine. At this level, a ship mining from a Mineral/Luxury world with 3 resources at 50% apice would reach full cargo capacity in just over 1 year of mining. Gas miners mine at 4x that rate, so you can get away with 3-4 times larger cargo holds on gas mining ships.

2. I have zero data on this question. It's a good question though. My general rule is "go big". I have nothing to support that though.

3. 37875 cargo. Here's why: tm.asp?m=3653092

4. I give them 30-ish speed, with enough shields to stop a single small pirate vessel's attacks for a few seconds (300 or so), and 2-3 plates of armor to survive a brief Giant Kraltor attack. I'm not sure what speed you need to ESCAPE a Giant Kraltor, but it's too expensive to design your fleet around that value. It's something like 70 speed.

5. A mining station with 10 or so armor, and 5 maxos blasters can kill a Giant Kraltor, though it will need repair. I put long-range torpedos on my stations for this reason, so they don't take component damage. Usually 5 of such weapons.

And no. Sadly no manual. Though I would love to write one someday.

[johanwanderer]

I would recommend using the automatic designer as the guide. Play a game with all the designs set to Automatic and see how they get upgraded. That should be pretty close to the "right" design as far as cargo, entertainment, docking, research, etc. is concerned. Take it from there and tweak it as you see fit.