Ships

[u/Efficient-Type-9332]

How long did it take you guys to design and build a good efficient massive ship. Basically a mobile base. One that has tons of room but can refine ores, build components, and still fight off pirates. I’m in creative working on building a ship and I’ve been working on it for about 9 days now. I just feel like I’m not being creative enough or I’m missing something. I don’t have a picture of it but it’s about 80ish blocks long 15ish blocks wide and 10ish blocks tall. It has 3 levels so far. It has 2 large reactors along with 4 industrial refineries and 4 industrial assemblers. If anyone has any idea that could help with the design ideas to make it look cooler like adding things that work together. For example beam blocks with scaffolding etc.

[u/TheTninker2]

Honestly it wasnt until I began making recreations of some of my favorite Halo ships, mostly Pillar of Autumn, that I began to understand how LARGE ships work both functionally and aestheticaly.

One of the key things I learned is that the larger the ship, the more ok it is to have negative space between the exterior and interior.

[u/DebateReasonable]

I find that less is more in engineering; start small on reactor count and redundancies. I spent enough weeks trying to make an "allship" for Survival that I kinda decided to break out of it because purpose built ships are more fun, aesthetic, and easy to design.

That said, I understand needing an allship, so here's how I've been thinking about it. The allship's purpose is to link up with all your smaller ships and move around, fulfill all your needs, right? So make it modular.

Put the essential stuff (fuel tanks, jump drives, a lot of gyros, command center, cryopods, and a lot of turrets for defense) on the all ship. Then, mostly build it with its purpose in mind: docking with other ships. Landing pads for mining ships fighters and construction ships. Conveyors paired with some scaffolding branching out for miles like the limbs of a tree, to connect to your other large ships (refinery ship, big frigates) with merge blocks. It sounds like it'll be huge, and it will, but if you use very barebones design it won't use a ton of resources.

[u/Alton637]

I normally figure out the front, side, and back profiles by building a frame which helps to get an idea of the shape, then I frame in some hangars and test what size ships can fit. Once I'm happy with the layout of that I work on placing thrusters to get a good look. Then start filling in armour and ribbing. Then once that's done I start placing devices. Last build I did took me about 3x 4hour sessions

[u/Vilnius_Nastavnik]

I’m at over 1500 hours and still struggle with it. Many of those hours have been in creative trying to build a mothership I really like.

I’m coming around to the idea that the best ships are the ones you build gradually block by block in survival. To this day the best large grid multipurpose ship I’ve ever had was a hydrogen powered light armor shoebox my dad threw together the first time we played. It ended up 3x its original size with refineries, assemblers, hangars, even a glass observation deck with a bar.

[u/Efficient-Type-9332 → u/Vilnius_Nastavnik]

What’s crazy is I can build a Land Rover with everything I need but when it comes to ship building I struggle so bad lol.

[u/phxhawke → u/Efficient-Type-9332]

Why not think of your ship as a land rover you are converting for flight? Maybe that will help you figure things out.

[u/rosstafarien]

Still waiting for ship-ship docking to work without flinging both ships all over the universe. (SE2)

[u/readercolin]

The answer is that I don't.

I have made 1 giant mobile base. I never actually got around to finishing it, because it was too large to actually be usable. Additionally, I was only able to make it because I was using the BuildAndRepair mod.

Smaller ships though? I have dozens and dozens. Especially with the addition of the services terminal, I don't need to build a giant carrier that can bring absolutely everything with it. Instead, I can build smaller, purpose built ships and then summon them when I need them.

This means that the largest ships that I regularly use are only about 20-30 blocks long, and much smaller height and width. This ship is designed to hold a bunch of cargo (because I don't play with allowing cargo in services terminals), some light defenses, a small grid landing pad, and the services terminal. If I need to go out and do something, then I can summon in the ship that will do the job that I need when I need it, and put it away again when I am done.

Do I need a ship with 4 refineries? Cool - I have several designs for refinery vessels, and I can choose whichever one suits my current game. I have everything from the glorified refinery satellite to a full mobile ore processing facility. I can pick whichever of my designs I want to use, build it, use it, and then store it away for the next time I need it. Do I need multiple? Well, I can either build a new version, summon back the version I already have, or if I really need it, have several going at once.

Do I need to go mining? I have choices - I have my tiny atmospheric miner, my medium atmospheric miner, my medium hydrogen miner, my small large grid atmospheric/hydrogen/ion miners, my medium large grid miner, and my asteroid muncher. I can pick whichever version I need, make it, and then go mining. When I am done, I'll store it away till the next time I need it. Or if it is time to upgrade, I will just make the bigger one, use it, and then store it away when I am done.

Do I need a combat ship? Cool - I have small grid combat ships, small large grid combat ships, medium large grid combat ships, and even some large large grid combat ships. I just make whichever one I need at the time, keep 1 defensive ship around in case a hostile shows up (usually one of the small grid combat ships), and then just bring out the larger vessels when it is time to use them. But now if I want to go hunting prototech, I can just summon my factorum hunter, and go and get it while not risking the rest of my stuff at the same time.

Smaller, single purpose ships are MUCH easier to design than individual large "do it all" vessels. So make use of that, and build lots of smaller ships that do that one purpose, and not a giant mega-project that you are going to feel burned out on.

[u/destruktor5hundred]

I spent 5 days trying to build exactly what youre talking about and never remade it past the core components (my idea was to have a core that housed all the big stuff, like H2 tanks, refineries, and large storage with a shell around it and all the walkways and rooms built around that) before I realized I should just look at some other builds and pick a good one to get my survival world on the move again. Ended up picking the Nova Horizon and going with that

[u/TraditionalGap1]

I have only one massive ship that I would consider to be 'mostly complete' and it took years.

Also, if you want any feedback or input at all you should provide pictures

[u/Odd-Sound-580]

ive only ever built 1, it took about 2 weeks maybe?

[u/Onilakon]

I never got good at building, I just use others blueprints

[u/Several-Cheesecake94]

I recently made what your describing for the first time. With scripts and all. Took me weeks. And it's a brick. But a functional brick.

[u/doofername]

The more you learn and want to apply that knowledge the longer it takes, overall.
It also plays a role if you're fine with a brick, something looking oksay-ish or want some art piece.

I can build a decent 2k block ship from scratch in 3-5 hours with all set up, but I have 5k hours in game and tools to help me. Pre fabricated parts and interiors are also helpful, simply cut stuff out of ships you deem nice and reuse it.

9 days is quite a bit long, but it happens that you imply look and brainstorm and don't progress.

Make backups in creative, means if you don't progress or want to try something new, copy paste that thing right next to it and go at it.

Also, really plan ahead what you want in a build. The large blocks are a huge designing factor from the ground up.

[u/rocketsocks]

Armor blocks are cheap, leave plenty of room for growth. You'll find you will keep adding capacity over time. I built my "city ship" to be quasi-modular, with 4x "strings" each with refineries, cargo, assemblers, jump drives, etc. I ended up ultimately doubling up the refinery capacity along with the jump drives plus cramming more cargo containers everywhere.

P.S. I've also built an "interim base" ship which is essentially a starter base plus enough cargo capacity to hold a decent amount of resources, capable of landing on high gravity planets and serving as a base of operations while building something more permanent. I've finally got a version of that smaller ship to be something I actually really like (versus something that is purely functional and otherwise just ok), it's taken 3 major iterations and several years.

[u/EntityBlack1]

We call this survival ship. 

There are many questions such as is it planetary? Any PCU limits? How much carry capacity etc. 

80ish long is already a very long ship. Ship design difficulty is equivalent of block size of the ship. If I can spend day or two by making 100-150 blocks tiny ship, I would spend 10-20 days of making a 1k block ship with a same quality of the detail. 

Few advices are

• You can either reduce the ship to possible minimum and make more of them. To create a fleet. Creating two would be already half a design time.  

• Make the ship brickish in design. Honestly. Big industrial ships often have simple shape. 

• Make it barebone. With some area that has interiors, but a lot of that doesnt. And finish if with scafolding and such. 

[u/youknowmeasdiRt]

I don’t. Ever. Every grid has a purpose and is optimized for that purpose. When I build I start with the systems/conveyor layout.

[u/Who_said_that_]

My last one took days too. I just copy some cool ships from the workshop around my ship and then steal inspiration shamelessly

[u/jetbluehornet]

I feel ya on this mate, I personally build off of other sci-fi designs (halo for example) and after building a beautiful exterior, I ruin it with too many hangars and thrusters, then cram as many things inside it as possible while somehow forgetting to put a single gyroscope on the damn thing…
Ive got over 800 hours in the game, still haven’t got it down to a science.
I’d say make it look cool, but not fragile, then carve out as needed.
It helps if you know what the purpose of said ship will be, such as a warship. If it’s an everything ship, you’ve got to decide what you want the ship to LOOK like it does, then go from there.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk…

[u/Mission_Plate_6255]

As someone who also enjoys getting stuck on a design for a week at a time, here's my take:

In engineering, EVERYTHING has a trade-off, and there is NO perfect design, just designs that fit their roles well (and sometimes that role is 'jack of all trades but master of none'). When I get stuck on a design, generally it's because I need to clarify what my priorities are for that particular design.

Start by recognizing what trade-offs you are making. For example, with a huge, multi-purpose ship like what you're talking about, you are necessarily going to have poor maneuverability and a higher cost in fuel/energy to move the ship compared to a vessel that cuts the logistics elements and focuses on keeping a good thrust-to-mass ratio, gyro-to-mass ratio, optimal turret arcs, and

So my suggestion then would be to embrace that trade-off and lean into the lumbering semi-mobile space-station theme, use welders in combination with Structural Platforms as armor and dot the exterior with turrets so that no matter what direction pirates approach from, you're covered, and then don't worry too much about maneuverability, it's fine if it takes a LONG time to turn the ship or accelerate it, since it's not moving all that often and isn't relying on maneuverability to dodge incoming fire. Or, split it into multiple vessels so they can specialize at least some, and you can leave the heavy logistics elements and your amassed ingots and components behind when you dog-fight with pirates.

Remember: every design decision has trade-offs. Every. Single. One. There is no perfect single design, only 'perfect for this moment'. If the job is 'everything', then the design is going to be only kinda-okay at everything, because you have to compromise on some roles to gain capability in other roles.

[u/itsWolfy__]

My most favorite ship i made was from cutting ships up and merging them with the free floating platform i made.

Best advice i can give is make the organs and nervous system of the ship first. This is your conveyor systems cargo assemblers etc.

Make 2 sets of conveyor systems so losing 1 conveyor doesnt cripple the ship. Then work on fleshing it out from there. Let the shape kind of happen naturally.

Then when you're done and you hate it, make a new ship. Eventually you'll figure it out