Shipyard

The Shipyard is the screen where players are able to design ships and edit existing designs. While the game comes with default designs, players can take advantage of the high degree of customization the system allows and create ships adapted to their own play style (or specifically tailored to counter their opponents).

Overview

Overview of the shipyard screen (0.79b).

On the right hand side of the Shipyard is a list of hulls for your race that are currently unlocked in this game. New hulls can be unlocked via researching technologies in the research screen. The image to the right shows an example of the shipyard screen with a Ralyeh missionary fighter hull selected.

Also on the right hand side is a list of statistics for your ship which include:

• Production cost (before bonuses)
• Total power capacity
• Power recharge (without power require to fire)
• Power recharge at warp: Modules consume double power at warp (FTL travel). If the power recharge at warp is negative, the ship will drop out of warp when its power reaches zero. This will cause it to perform multiple warp "jumps" instead of warping continuously.
• Total hitpoints
• Shield power
• Mass: The more mass, the slower the ship for a given amount of thrust. Each slot has a base weight of 0.5.
• Sub-light speed
• FTL speed: speed at warp
• Turn rate
• Ordinance capacity
• Cargo space
• Presense of a command module (Cockpit, Bridge, or CIC) (Yes/No)
• Presense of empty slots (Yes/No)

On the left hand side is a list of modules currently unlocked. New modules can be unlocked via the research screen. After clicking on a selected module a window will open on the bottom called Active Module. It will list certain stats that the selected module outputs. The stats are for each individual module selected and will be totaled on the right side of the screen. The list of these stats are stated in Module Statistics.            

In the center of the Shipyard will be an image of the hull/design you have selected overlayed with many squares marked I, O, IO or E. E slots may only be fitted with engines. O slots are usually for weapons and armor, while I slots are for internal components such as the bridge, shield generators and power reactors. IO slots can be used for either.

Modules and designing ships

Weapon arcs toggled on

Each component of a ship is called a module and has several statistics such as:

• DPS - damage per second (for weapons only)
• Hitpoints
• Mass
• Production cost
• Power consumption (excluding armor and fuel cells)

To add them to the ship, modules must be dragged into the appropriate slot (I, O, IO or E) on the ship from the module list on the left.

Most modules in a ship (excluding armor and fuel cells) must be powered in order to function. Placing power plants such as an Anti-Matter Reactor powers modules within a certain radius around the reactor (signified by a lit-up area of squares). Placing power plants also increases the speed at which your ship recharges power both while still and while warping, while adding other modules decreases this.

Each module added to a ship increases the ship's hitpoints, up to a final total.

In addition, each module has a production cost. All modules together create the final, total production cost of the ship.

Weapon modules come in two different mounting styles. Smaller turret-mounted weapons have a firing arc that can be adjusted 360` by clicking the installed weapon and dragging the displayed firing arc with the mouse. Larger, fixed-mount weapons have an icon indicating they can be rotated - before installing the weapon, use the arrow keys to mount as front, side, or rear-facing.

The arcs setup can be displayed by pressing TAB. This will show you all current weapon firing arcs as well as shield coverage.

Ship speed

Each module added to a ship increases also the ship's mass, making a ship heavier and slower, reducing its sublight, FTL, and turn speed. This can be offset by adding more or larger engines, or, later on, by adding power-hungry Inertial Damper modules.

Ship speed is computed as follows:

$\text{sublight speed} = \frac{\text{sublight thrust}}{\text{mass}}$
$\text{FTL speed} = 35 \cdot \frac{\text{FTL thrust}}{\text{mass}}$
$\text{turn speed} = \frac{1}{700} \cdot \frac{\text{turn thrust}}{\text{mass}} \text{rad/s}$
$\approx 0.08185 \cdot \frac{\text{turn thrust}}{\text{mass}} \text{deg/s}$

The sublight and FTL speed multipliers (base of 1 and 35 respectively) are listed in the Diplomacy screen.

Power consumption

(as of 1.05)

The power consumption of a ship while in warp is [it's total power draw]x2.

The listed power consumption is with energy weapons not firing.

Saving a design

To save a ship design, first make sure there are no empty slots, and that the ship has a bridge or cockpit module to be piloted from. When you are ready, click "Save As..." in the lower right corner of the Shipyard.

The design will now be available for production on the colony overview screen of any colony with a Space Port.