Overview
A general guide for people experiencing issues with ship building. Here you will find examples of do and don’t as well as tips and tricks.
Introduction
Since time immemorial man has been building boats. Big, small, short, long and in many different shapes. Some designs have lasted, and some have faded. The goal of this guide is to inform you – the up and comming masters of the sea – on how to build better boats.
This gould will contain 2 main sections:
1: Building a Galley(IV)
2: Building a Wildclass (>VI)
This guide is made by Loxias and Alexander and it currently up to date with version V0.1.2 (build 110)(as of version 0.13 this guide is obsolete unless you set physics block coalescing threshold count to 1000 or more.-Alexander)
Carrack
Historically, Carracks were a sailship developed in the 15th century, powered by three or for masts. In The Last Leviathan, these characteristics are not mandatory. Instead, they are the size IV ships with a maximum of 10000 Power. This means that they are one of the more jack-of-all-trades ships in the game. They have decent speed, firepower and are sized to match.
Shape and Streamlining
One of the first things you need to decide is how long and wide the ship is going to be. For this design we are going to make the ship 13 blocks long(6 blocks forward, 6 blocks back and the helm in the middle) and 7 blocks wide(3 to the left, 3 to the right and the helm in the middle) This will end up in a ship that is not too big, but still sturdy enough to sail in the strong waves of the Creative map. After this you need to design the basic shape of the ship, and there are endless oppertunities to be creative.
For this build we are going to use a pseudo-tearshape design, where the bow is narrow and the stern is rounded. This will allow us to put more stuff on the back of the ship, while also minimizing drag in the front of the ship. A tip that will make this quicker is that pressing ctrl+left mouse button will delete blocks and ctrl+middle mouse button(the scrool wheel) will copy whatever block the mouse cursor over.
Now it is time to make the main part of the hull. One method is to make it one block in from the previous layer, and work downwards. Keep in mind that this is not the only way to do it, and some designs will require you to do different styles. Once you are pleased with the shape of the hull, it is time to start streamlining the design. First step is to add a wedge block (I will call these half blocks for now) to everywhere it makes sence. As you become more comfortable with the games build mode, this will not be necessary, but for now it is easier to remove blocks that don’t fit than switching blocks all the time.
Much better, it is starting to look like a ship. Now comes the part that is difficult; inner corner(the single block missing 1/4) and outer corner( the triangular block) blocks. As of version 0.1.2, this is more tricky than it needs to be due to the game lacking some rotation features(this will be adressed in the next patch).
Smoothing out the corners of the ship is probably what is going to take the longest when building your first ships. One thing to remember is that the block (as of version 0.1.2) only rotates on the Y-axis in relation to the block it is placed on. This is shown by big circle on the side it is connected to.(see screenshot to the left). One way to get around this issue is to place dummy blocks to rotate your block in the direction you need.
Now that the edges are smooth, it is time to carve out the hull of the ship. This is done to reduce weight and save power. Remember that we are on a budget of 10000 points, so the fewer points we spend, the more we can use on things like sails, propellars, weapons and armor. It is also worth remembering that two 1×1 blocks is more expencive than a single 1×2 block, so it is a good idea to look over the edge of the top layer and remove any unnecessary 1×1 blocks.
Now that the hull is carved out, we add the deck. This will make the ship lighter in the top and by extention, more stable in the water. One mistake in the screenshots is that there are nothing connecting the helm in the middle to the hull of the ship. It is only the deck and that is bad. For extra safety, it is advisable to add a block underneath the helm to make sure the ship will not be destroyed by a fire on the deck.
Movement
Now it is time to put on some sails, propellars and a rudder. We will add a Large Sail two blocks behind the helm and a Sail with boom one block from the very front of the deck. Next up is the rudder, so we place a medium sized rudder to the lowest flat block in the middle of the stern. At this point it will be difficult (and slow) to go against the wind, so we also add 2 medium sized propellars, one on each side of the rudder. For now, this should be good. It is important to remember that at this point the ship is much lighter than it will be by the time we are done adding guns and other things, so we might have to change this.
Guns
Now that the ship is ready to sail, lets add some guns to her. There are many different weapons that can be fitted. For now we are sticking with the standard canons due to their ease of use. As for the type and placement, I have opted use Deck Canon 2 as it is not too expensive and does good damage. I placed 4 canons on each side of the ship, three infront of the big sail and one behind it. This is done for better weight distribution as it is better if the ship is a bit rear heavy than front heavy.
Troubleshooting and Improving
By now we have a functioning ship, but there are still things that can be done to make her better. The first step is to make her more stable in the water. The best way of doing this is to add a Keel to the bottom of the ship. The keel is very heavy, so it stabilizes the ship by change position of the center of mass. The best position for the keel can be bit of a guessing game depending on the design, but for this design it was on the far front of the bottom layer.
Now she is more stable, but going against the waves we seem to have encountered an issue. On the way down from waves the propellars are exiting the waterline, making her loose momentum and generally making the ride sluggish. This can be easily fixed by moving the propellars further down into the water.
In order to mount the propellar in a suitable position we had to remove one of the half blocks and replace it with a normal block. We have also changed from two medium propellars to a single large propellar. Be warned though, two medium propellars have more power than a single large.
Now we are getting places. As you can see the propellar is staying below the waterline, making her better at sailing against the waves.
And there we have her. After adding some decorations, a telescope and some armor we have made a ship that is relativly quick, well defended and that can deal damage when it is needed at 9379 power, making room for 621 points worth of upgrading and/or expanding.
Link to the ship in the workshop: Guiding Light
Wildclass
74 gun 3rd Rate
Many real world ships would classify as Wildcass, but when it comes to the age of sail, only Man o’ War comes to my mind. Historically , Men o’ War were the largest ships afloat, with more than at least fifty guns even in the earliest days of their existence, they’re also the largest ships possible in The Last Leviathan. They were actually not as slow as you might expect, since speed of sail ships depended on the angle, wind speed itself, and the amount of canvas a ship carried. You need quite a beefy pc for these as they’re easily more than 1k blocks.
Shape and Streamlining
Wildclass is big. Really big. and you need a hull design that can support that. For that first you need to figure out the length to width ratio. For this game ideal ratio for me is 1:3 (for every 1 width block add 3 length block) so my of my ships are either 9:24 or 7:21 etc. If you’re building a ship that spans the construction area(which is 25 blocks) you may need to stay at 9 or 7 so it can actually vary between your designs.(my biggest ship is 13 blocks wide(at widest point) and 25 blocks long) always set a layer of blocks that will be the waterline.(meaning the blocks under it will be UNDERWATER) For big ships a hull(which needs to be hallow) needs to have 2 empty layers.(the SS has only 1 layer of empty area but the ship in that SS is small)
the hull that is under waterline needs to have as little drag as possible. thats why it needs to get narrower as it goes. 
and when you’re building you will see that you cannot attach blocks into nothingness. so you need to put blocks to the backs of triangle blocks so that you can attach another layer of triangle blocks(while making it narrower) without a need to fill that layer with blocks.
and as you can from see previous screenshots if you put a layer of triangles instead of full blocks to the backs of the previous triangle block line it will be lighter which means more speed. the rudders are 2×2(length and height) so you need to cut 2 layers of blocks from the stern of the hull(under the waterline) to be able to attach rudders and propellers.(the reason why you need to keep the 2 layers of blocks on the waterline and upwards is for space. Whether its for more crew or guns or trade goods its good to have just a bit more space. As for the bow.. As i said you need as little drag as possible which means 2 or 3 layers under waterline(depending now how big the ship is) needs to get narrower. 
Movement
Like this design, most Wildclass ships are big and heavy. This makes them a force to be reckoned with, once they arrive.
Even with so much propellers and rudders its pretty slow get used to it. Always put your Masts(always put 1 block under your mast as shown in the screenshot) in the middle of blocks that you place between cannons(as shown in the screenshot). This will prevent them from getting damaged as long as they do not take a direct hit.
Guns
122 gun heavy 1st Rate SoL with 55 gun broadsides. One of the advantages of Wildclass is that they have no power limit. This means that you can fit as many guns as you want. More you can place without risking the ships stability the better the ship is. When placing the weapons, make sure to properly place blocks to either side of the guns, this will allow you to not only increase the integrity of the ship but also give you a platform to create another deck. Since mortars are… well… mortars and fire cannons take up 2 blocks, deck cannons are the only choice for the ships in this class. You can put flame throwers mixed up with deck cannons or you can put mortars on the weather deck.(this was done in history) always put your cannons 1 block in.(meaning that in a 7 block wide hull cannons will be placed on 2nd blocks(1st block being the outer layer))
Troubleshooting
Links for the Ships:
Heavy 1st Rate : [link]
2nd Rate : [link]
3rd Rate : [link]
