Ship Design AAR - Tutorial including pictures restored 2019

[rjord2021]

Another type of optional component, that is particularly useful for battle, is a damage control module. Having added a few weapons and designated my ship as long-range fighting craft, it might not hurt to have one of these onboard. This particular system, the S1F2 Repair Bot, reduces the damage the ship will take a very decent 20% and provides a repair rate of 5 secs per damaged component. Because my ship will be fast, and hopefully be able to outrun enemy ships, it might be a good investment to have a repair bot, which will be able to refresh damaged systems while the strike craft outruns its pursuers.

[rjord2021]

Although self-repair, high-range, and maneuverability are all good defenses, they are not replacements for a decent shield. Shields are large systems, sometimes as big as reactors, but they provide the first line of defense against most weapons. Not having shield power is a recipe of quick destruction, and many ships base their “flee conditions” on the level of shield energy they have remaining. I’m going to add a few of these, that provide 115 shield energy per component, and hope I have enough size left to keep it under 330, but still be able to add a few more engines (all of this extra size has slowed down the ship considerably).

[rjord2021]

Now that I have added a few weapons and shields, my ship is now size 123 and beyond the support of the single life support and habitation module I added. Looks like I am going to have to max the ship out at 330, which will make it more expensive but more deadly. If you look at the weapon dialog box, you see that the torpedoes have a conical shape damage marker, indicating that the damage they do depends more on their range than the Concussion Beams. Also, you can see in the bottom right that my ship has a self-repair rating, a damage reduction, 360 shield power at a 0.8 regeneration, but no armor, counter-measures, or stealth visibility. My ship’s speed is up to a cruise of 20, but my acceleration has dropped to 7.9. Looks like it’s time to do a little tweaking to get this ship up to standard!

[rjord2021]

One thing I should probably add are a few troop transport pods. With my strike craft’s planned fast speed, it might be perfect to get into a fight, blast away, and then quickly land troops before reinforcements arrive.

[rjord2021]

Of course, adding some troop pods dropped my speed and acceleration further. I will definitely have to address this!

[rjord2021]

One of the more interesting weapon types in Distant Worlds are the Area Effect weapons. They come in two different flavors, but my favorites are the Hyper Deny weapons.

[rjord2021]

When an enemy ship is within the radius of one of these weapons, they will be unable to charge up and use their Hyper Drives, effectively cutting off their escape attempts. When I finally get the speed of my strike craft to where I want it, I imagine that this ship design would make the perfect raider – jumping in, pursuing, and blasting with long ranged lasers and torpedoes. The Hyper Deny has a range similar to the Concussion Beams, so that should mean that I’ll still be able to blast away at my enemies, keep them in range with m acceleration and speed, and prevent them from leaving the battle. Oh… this is going to be a wicked ship!

[rjord2021]

It is time to finally rectify the acceleration rate and speed of my Cruiser. I add several thrusters, and a few vector engines, until finally the speed rating is at a nice 35 cruise and 10 acceleration. Presumably, this means my ship can reach top cruise speed In 3.5 seconds. Not too shabby! The turn rate is at a 32 degree/second rate, so the ship should be able to make a full circle in 11.25 seconds, or turn a 180 radius in 5.62 seconds. That is a little slow, but we might just have to settle for this to avoid slowing down the ship’s forward thrust.

[rjord2021]

After adding some armor to my ship (which unfortunately reduced the acceleration down to 9/sec) it looks like I’ve got a pretty decent design. I kept the ship under 330 size, to lower the cost and reduce build time, even if this wastes some of the life support and hab capacity (looks like they will have nice luxurious rooms).

[rjord2021]

One final consideration is the addition of electronic counter-measures. Because my ship depends on range and torpedo banks, it might be a good idea to foil similar style ships with some ECM. The problem is, these systems use power and will add a little size to my balanced ship.

[rjord2021]

Speaking of power use, it looks like we have plenty of power to spare from our reactor. It might not hurt to have a little excess power for weapon fire and such, but this amount seems a bit excessive. If this were an actually game, rather than an AAR, I would probably go back and add more power using devices and balances them with more engines, but for ease of writing, I’ll leave it the way it is.

[rjord2021]

Feeling like my design is missing a little “oomph” I go back and add a few more weapons, just to give it more of a lethal edge. I balance this by adding more engines as well, to get that cruise speed up to 40 and return my acceleration to 10 (at the cost of turning speed). I decided to add those ECM and a few troop pods, and the ship has a nice firepower of 100. Looks like all I have left to do is give it a name. How about “The End of Days.” Sounds nice and fearsome! Should you be more of a practical designer, you could just name it “Long Range Raider” or something like that.

[rjord2021]

One of the neatest tools is the Construction Summary screen. With the press of a button on the design screen, you can quickly look at all of the components you chose to add to the design, and what type and how much resources will be used to construct these components. This is a great way to see a breakdown of what your ship is going to require, so that you can plan ahead and see if your economy can support building such a ship. If you are running low on, say, Emeros Crystal, then you can see, at a glance, how much the design will need and be able to alter it accordingly.

[rjord2021]

Time to build an End of Days so that we can see the design in action! I quickly queue one up and wait for the ship to finish.

[rjord2021]

It’s hard to deny that it is an attractive ship… but looks don’t destroy pirates! Let’s see how it does 1-on-1 against a pirate raider.

[rjord2021]

I might have been a bit impatient, I didn’t let the shields charge up before sending it into battle. However, this highlights something I forgot. I only added 2 shield generators to the ship. I had meant to add more, but forgot, so the End of Days is drastically under-shielded. Still, because of its speed, it is able to keep the pirate mostly at bay and pelt him with torpedoes. The little dots in the background are the ranged effect of the Hyper Deny weapon. While I’m not happy with the shield capacity and regeneration of the design (my fault entirely), the combat performance is pretty impressive!

[rjord2021]

Hard to argue with this result!


Unfortunately the picture could not be recovered but I imagine the result was spectacular

[rjord2021]

I decide to get a little silly and take on a pirate base, solo, with the End of Days. The underpowered shields make this a little more difficult, but my torpedo range is actually outside the range of the pirate base’s weapons. Unfortunately, this solo ship can’t inflict enough damage to prevent the pirate base’s shields from regenerating, unless I close the distance and use the Concussion Beams – which puts me in range of the base. Next time, I’ll be sure to add more shields and perhaps trade a Concussion Beam for another torpedo bank. All in all, however, the End of Days is a pretty neat ship and a proof of concept!

Thanks for reading this AAR! Soon, you will be able to be both Galactic Emperor and Ship Engineer when Distant Worlds releases!

[rjord2021]

That finishes the recovery of the 35 pictures that were missing from the post created 9 years ago.

Hopefully some of you may find this useful when it comes to the complexity of designing your ships.

Thanks goes to Son_of_Montfort who created the original topic back in 2010.
You can visit the original topic at the link below and read a number of very useful comments that were made by others about ship design.

tm.asp?m=2411040

[USSAmerica]

Thanks for salvaging this thread, rjord1! It's very valuable to all newer players and as a refresher to those coming back to this great game after some time away.