Spacecraft Design

This section is in need of revision. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. The reason given is: The new spacecraft (See Spacecraft Update) are slowly coming together, so we can start rewriting this page now. The old spacecraft design page has been archived on a separated page.

This section is in need of revision. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. The reason given is: Let's rewrite this! I'll start Celarious (talk) 23:38, 17 February 2017 (MST)

Design Studio

Spacecraft are designed inside a Design Studio. Each story of a Design Studio enables a separate studio for players to design spacecraft.

Players may work together in the same studio to develop a spacecraft design. In this case, the first player to enter the vacant studio is registered as the architect and owner of the design.

To enter a studio, display the Labor (F10) window and click on the "Enter" button of a studio. When a studio is "Vacant", you may leave the password box blank or you may enter a password of your choice. The password you enter establishes that studio's password until the studio becomes vacant. To join an "Occupied" design studio, you must enter the password that was established by the first person to enter the studio.

Once inside a studio, display the Spacecraft Design (F6) window. Nearly every function and button has a usage tip that appears once clicked which describes what the function does. Use the exit button to return to the game environment.

Spacecraft Designer Interface

An image of the new designer interface.

The new designer interface is accessible through both the offline launcher and in-game while online. Upon entering, you are inside a bounding box (yellow lines) that define the design area, with a grid underneath you and two axis.

The interface is heavily based on menus as seen at the top of the screenshot. This means there are a lot less buttons on the F6 menu, which might seem less confusing than the previous designer. The F6 hotkey or the designer button on the left toggles both the Parts list on the right of the image and the black bar seen at the top of the screenshot. However, it does not toggle the white menu buttons seen at the top above the black bar.

Note that the black bar is not able to be moved like most other interface windows, only the Parts list seen on the right can be docked and re-positioned.

The Parts list

The parts list contains every single part that is within the current spacecraft design. This includes hull objects, imported meshes, rooms, berths, etc. This allows you to easily see everything within the design at once, and also provides buttons for toggling the visibility of each part, the lock state (whether or not you can make changes to the part), whether or not the part is included within the final design, and a seal (which allows other users to modify the design afterwards). Will attempt to provide more screenshots here

Equipment

Module	Function	Module	Function
Berth	Personal respawn location for two people. Stateroom berths can accomodate two colonists instead of people.	Sensor Station	Operates Sensors. Only one permitted per room.
Engineer Station	Tunes maneuver drive performance. Required to operate FTL drive.	Shield	Defends against missile, energy weapon, tractor beam and transporter attacks based on total shield units aboard.
Fire Control Station	Required in each weapon bay to operate the weapon. Only one permitted per bay.	Shield Station	Operates energy shields. Only one permitted per room.
Maneuver Drive	Provides thrust for maneuvering. Enables a station to hold its position. Provides artificial gravity inside spacecraft. Required for all spacecraft.	Space Fighter F1 Location	Space fighter parking location. Spacecraft automatically fetch friendly fighters from the solar system to refill empty space fighter parking locations. One fighter location is filled per minute until the total number of fighters aboard equals the number of fighter parking locations.
Helm Station	Controls attitude and velocity of ship. Required for all spacecraft. Only one permitted per bridge.	Space Fighter F2 Location	Space fighter parking location. Spacecraft automatically fetch friendly fighters from the solar system to refill empty space fighter parking locations. One fighter location is filled per minute until the total number of fighters aboard equals the number of fighter parking locations.
Hull Opening	Large wall-length opening through hull wall.	Surgery Unit	Performs complex anatomical operations. Place only one in each sickbay.
Life Support	Maintain a habitable environment. Required for all spacecraft.	Transporter Pad	One pad is required per person transported simultaneously. Total pads in room determines maximum object size
Medic Station	Required in each sickbay to operate surgery unit. Place only one in each sickbay.	Transporter Station	Operates matter transmission equipment. Place only one in each transporter room.
Navigator Station	Displays solar system and wormhole information. Plots courses to travel among the stars. Only one permitted per bridge.	Turret (Side)	Provides a standard mount for various weapons on hull walls.
Power Plant	Generates power for all ship systems and drives. Required for all spacecraft.	Turret (Top/Bottom)	Provides a standard mount for various weapons on hull top and bottom surfaces
Power Relay Station	Distributes power between ship systems. Displays status of ship systems.
Sensor Station	Detects objects within range based on total sensor units aboard. Range adjectives refer to the following distances.	FTL Drive	Enables interstellar travel through wormholes or faster than light travel.

Doors

Some equipment is typically placed in multiples. These are Maneuver Drive, Life Support, Power Plant, Sensor, Shield, Weapon, and FTL Drive units. Brush size assists in placing these units. Brush Size is increased and decreased using and buttons at the right side of the toolbar. Brush size allows more units to be placed in the room that is clicked. Units are not placed in neighboring rooms as a result of brush size.

Equipment can be erased one-by-one using the Erase Equipment button.

Multiple equipment units can be erased using the Erase Equipment in Area button. Brush size determines the area that equipment will be removed. Only equipment of the type that is clicked, and in the same room, will be deleted. Other kinds of equipment in the brush area are not deleted. In other words, if you click on a maneuver drive unit, only maneuver drive units inside the brush area are deleted; doors and hatches are not deleted.

Valid Design

A valid spacecraft design must define a Spaceport, Starbase, Spaceship, or Starship with one contiguous hull. When your design is complete and valid, do the following things.

• 1. Press F6 to take the Design window away; this is important because the model behaves differently when the design window is visible.
• 2. Walk through the design to be sure you have placed adequate doors and hatches to get into every room.
• 3. Select a Blank Disk as your current item.
• 4. Store the design onto the disk by pressing the button with a green triangle icon . If the button is not visible, verify the design is valid and try saving the design using the grey file cabinet button . The current working design must be valid, saved and unmodified before it can be stored onto a blank disk.
• 5. Go to a spacecraft factory.
• 6. Display the Labor (F10) window. Select the design to manufacture. This will cause the factory to mass produce spacecraft using the design.
• 7. Alternatively, the Labor (F10) window enables you to purchase a design outright. Ship purchased this way are privately owned. When the ship spawns, you are immediately assigned the Captain's berth and teleported to somewhere in the vicinity of your new ships helm.
• 8. The implications of private vs subsidized ownership are described on the Spaceship page.

Spawning

Space stations automatically spawn in orbit with crew. The space station will not spawn if there is one already of equal or higher TL design.

A spacecraft that fits on or inside a box 21x21 squares and 5 decks will spawn on the road slabs directly bordering the spacecraft factory. As long as they are empty of vehicles and spaceships.

A spacecraft over 21x21 squares and 5 decks will spawn outside the space station of the planet it was built on (as long as it is empire owned). The space station has room for upto 4 craft to spawn this way. Removing a space station will not reset the spaces. You'll have to hunt down the old spaceships and move them to free up room.

A Privately bought ship will always spawn in orbit directly above the city it was bought at.

When you return to a design studio, the previous working design you were editing is usually present in the studio. This is true even if you did not save the design before exiting. This is a convenience; do not depend on it to preserve your working design every time. Sometimes the working design is lost. It is safest to save your working design before exiting a design studio.

Construction

The maximum size for a spaceship to be buildable on a slab on a planet is 21x21 tiles and 5 decks high. Purchased ships always spawn in space, without any fuel, and do not necessarily spawn near space stations (at least if the space station is also privately owned). It may be wise to have hydrogen in your inventory when you buy your ship, so that you can put some into its fuel tanks. Having a large number of power plants also helps the ship keep power longer initially, since its capacitors will not go empty as fast.

It should be noted that resources must be above a certain Quality to be harvested/produced at each TL, and that each TL spaceship or space station requires that all the components and materials that it is constructed from be at least that TL. The relationship is 8 levels of Quality per Tech level from base zero. E.g. Resources with a Quality of 0-7 are limited to TL1, resources with a Quality of 8-15 are limited to TL2, and so on. You need resource Q248 or above to produce TL32 resources.

A spaceship can be constructed one of two ways. Either it can be manufactured or purchased. If it's manufactured, then it is labeled as a 'subsidized' ship and is owned by the empire where it was built, although people from that empire will be able to claim berths in it and fly it. A subsidized ship receives free repairs and refueling at all cities and space stations owned by the same empire as where it was built. Lastly, when a subsidized ship is destroyed, it must be rebuilt and all cargo and funds on board are lost.

A purchased ship is owned by the player who purchases it, but must be purchased with that player's personal funds. These ships do not receive free repairs or refueling, but if they have an officer or captain (player, not AI!), they will respawn above the city they are spawn-tied to when they are destroyed instead of being destroyed forever. The cargo and money they carry is also saved when they respawn. A single person may buy any number of private ships, but may only captain one of them. It can be wise to use a privately purchased ship as an automated trading vessel, due to the rather high rate at which those disintegrate in atmospheres, stars, wormholes, and whatever else the AI crew decides to plow into. Bear in mind that they do not respawn in pristine condition, and that (theoretically) if your officer manages to get killed and you are not the captain, the ship may fail to respawn due to lack of an officer or captain.

Notes on designing a ship

When designing a ship, keep in mind, that:

1. One berth (if ship have any berths) is always reserved for a captain.
The order of precedence for reserving a captain's berth:

Officer > Passenger > Crew > Troop berth.

2. If you want your ship to fly, instead of bounce around aimlessly, you need Engineer console. And an engineer to operate it.

3. If you want your ship to leave planet's orbit and reach for other planets, and stars, you need Navigation console.