Overview
After playing this game for an embarrassing amount of time ive amassed a library of tips and tricks. Therefore ive compiled all my knowledge into one comprehensive guide to help new players not fumble around for 200 hours.
Prelude
So you’ve recently purchased From the Depths or your looking for tips. Well welcome to the party!
before you get into the meaty goodness of this guide I feel obligated to mention a few things.
1. If you’re unsure ASK SOMEONE
I cannot stress this enough if you have questions about anything ASK SOMEONE. there are numerous places to go if you have questions but here’s a list of some of the best places to go:
On Steam:
[link]
unlike many other games the discussion page is not only active but provides useful information. There are several people who are extremely knowledgeable in almost every mechanic
the two most prolific are:
[link]
[link]
there are many more people willing to help you out but these two guys have personally assisted me on several occasions, Plus there really cool dudes.
(I am also personally active and more than willing to answer questions in the comment section of this guide itself)
The Wiki:
I am now aware fourgreenfields is actually updating the wiki before now it was totally useless, but hes really cleaned the place up
The Wiki: [link]
His profile: [link]
On Discord/Youtube:
[link]
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoDrepkVq5BRICv2QO3uPmg
Not only is borderwise one of the best FTD youtubers but his discord is an awesome place to hang out and discuss the game. Sadly It’s not a craphole and if you are excessively based you’re gonna get banned
And if all else fails:
[link]
The forum is a pocket dimension filled with immortal litches whose shear knowledge will flay your mind and crush your very soul to fuel their 40 barreled cram cannons
jokes aside this is where the dev’s hang out if they cant answer your question they will consume your spleen for being a tzeentch worshiper, Tread lightly.
2. Experiment
Ok so you have escaped the forum alive with an unanswered question or you don’t wanna put up with anyone, well there are hundreds of vehicles built in to the game and thousands on the workshop so go in with a scalpel and dissect some ships. Better yet build a test platform and go wild!
3. Please be patient, And don’t give up
The jokes about peoples first ships taking 200 hours are shockingly honest. This game is going to be brutal until you get the hang of it.
Everything is going to seem unbearably obtuse, But once you crawl up the skill curve you will be amazed, if you just aren’t up to it there’s no shame in just taking a break. I’ve nearly smashed my keyboard in frustration only to come back 3 hours later and instantly realize the problem.
I’ve played 20+ Sandbox games a good portion of which where voxel based and none come anywhere close to this game, so please give FTD a chance, it really is worth the wait.
A note on mouse based building
Don’t use it
keyboard based building at first it will seem janky but its been optimized specifically for ftd and once you get the hang of it its amazing how quick and precise you can be, not to mention the earlier you start using it the less painful the switch will be.
How to hull
Not a whole lot concrete to put here, mainly because how you shape your hulls develops as you build more. But here’s some tips to get you started
1. You have a hotbar, Use it
in build mode you can assign blocks to your number keys, This can substantially speed up building.
2. USE BEAMS
if you’ve been a noob for around twenty minutes its likely someone has already screamed USE BEAMS at the top of there lungs at you already. The reason for this phrase becoming so prevalent is that beams are superior to blocks in every single aspect, But just to beat this dead horse I’m gonna list every aspect
1. Durability
1 metal blocks health=350
1 metal beams health=2100
350×4=1400
2100-1400=700
congrats using beams equals 700 free hp without any added cost!
2. Performance
using beams means you divide the blocks your computer has to process by 4, Thus increasing performance for you and your buddy’s. (Trust me the mutiplayer lag is already horrible
and does not need any help)
3. Crosshatching
This is going to get covered more thuroughly in the armor section. Essentialy leaks are a crapload easier to plug when using beams correctly
3. Boyancy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_principle
For your ship to float it needs to displace its own weight in water under the desired waterline. Too little under the waterline and it will sink
Tl;dr you need to have more under the water than over it
Example:
the ship doesn’t go that deep into the water but it makes up for it by being wide.
if you have enough engine power and are willing to mess with PID’s you can just take the easy route and use downward facing propellers to force your ship up out of the water (most onyx watch ships do this).
4. Stability
this handy quote from Samlow puts this way better than I could:
“How do I keep my ship from capsizing?
There are several methods of doing this. Looking at how real life ships are built is a good starting point though.
The cause of capsizing is often the point where the center of mass (CoM) crosses a point where the ships stability cannot stop it from moving. In easier words: the heavy part of the ship always wants to be as low as possible.
Waves will make your CoM move from side to side. As such you will need to design your ship considering stability. There is multiple ways of doing this:
– Heavy material keel. Can be suspended lower for higher effectiveness
– Wide vessel stability. Build your ship wide or with pontoons (catamaran style)
– Active stability enhancers. (Jet stablisers, hydrofoils, Jet engines)”
-Samlow FTD Q&A
Samlows profile: [link]
How to Armor
1. Heavy armor is bad and it should feel bad
A really common beginner mistake is overuse of heavy armor “Cuz it’as the bestist aramor in the whole game ekks dee =3 !!!1”. In reality heavy armor is best used sparcely to protect vital components like ammo and the mainframe.
1. Its way too expensive
One heavy armor beam costs 100 resource. To prove this is insane built a 4×4 metal wall with a spall liner and still had enough for a cool antenna, For the same price.
2. Its not that much better than layered metal
Here is one heavy armor beam boasting its 40 armor rating, But right next to it is 2.4 heavy beams
worth of metal with an even higher rating, Also this is only 3 beams thick if I line up 5
beams (the same price as 1 heavy beam) I get an armor rating of over 60!
3.Its as heavy as lead
That is not hyperbole on my part its exactly as heavy as lead
4. Emp
This isn’t really a downside when heavy armor is being used correctly (For ai bunkers) however if
your whole hull is heavy armor and the enemy has emp your gonna have a bad time
2. Crosshatching
Crosshatching is the practice of alternating beams orientation to create a stronger superstructure
On the left a simple stacked beam arrangement, On the right the same armor crosshatched
The same armor with holes punched in them
As shown in the screenshots in the event of a penetration crosshached armor makes a smaller hole, preventing following rounds from getting a free pass. It also helps prevent large explosions from shearing sections of hull away.
Tl;dr its not a huge deal but every little bit helps
3. Emp and how to counter it
Emp is a tricky devil that loves to suddenly rear its head at the worst possible moment.
1. Know the enemy
Emp works by flowing through metal to the most vulnerable component, frying it then moving on.
“Metal” includes things like aps/cram components,engine parts and almost everything that isn’t
wood or stone. Plus the “most vulnerable component” is usually the ai mainframe
2. The easy way
just sprinkle some surge protectors near vital ai components like lwcs and the mainframe and
you will be alright. However if the enemy is equipped with any sort of serious emp weapon they can
(and will) overwhelm the surge protectors and fry the mainframe
3. The right way
with one simple trick you can make your mainframe impossible to kill with emp!
A fully insulated ai bunker! Simply fully encapsulate your ai bunker with wood or stone and presto its impervious to emp
4. Spall Liners
Spall is created when a HESH shell impacts armor. HESH shells send a shockwave through armor regardless of thickness and creates fragments, The damage of these frags is based on the armor value of the inner layer of armor. These factors mean HESH is an extremely effective at shreading internals behind armor. The most effective way to counter HESH are spall liners
the test range equiped with 3 236mm HESH cannons
Bare metal after 7 rounds. As you can see HESH can wreak havok in an unprotected vehicle
Wood spall liner after 7 rounds. By switching the second layer with wood the damage is drasticaly reduced
A glass spall liner after 9 rounds. glass has the lowest armor rating of any material and is therefore the best spall liner, (be advised glass is total poo at stoping anything other than hesh)
p.s. slopes/wedges do count as an air gap and will spawn fragments, so if your willing to sacrifice looks they work really well
A note on Shields
Shields are a quick and easy way to drastically increase the survivability of your ships, just a couple notes.
1. Shield strength
Shields of strength 2.5 and under are really not worth the 300 resource of the projector, that 300
resource could be better spent on armor and the engine power could be used to push around said
armor. With shields above around 7.5 the exponential increase in the power cost means its actually
better to just get 2 shields of around strength 5, Because the hardware and fuel to power a high
strength shield will likely exceed the 300 resource of another projector.
2. disrupt shields
Sadly as far as I can tell disrupt shields are useless. Disrupt shields are intended to Disrupt the
path of a projectile. Except it costs the same amount of energy to run as a reflect shield and will still
set off inertial fuses. The only thing I could see using them for is for weird layering or spreading out
large amounts of cram fire? If you can come up with a use for them please enlighten me.
*As of 2020 they got removed Lol*
How to FEG (Fuel Engine Generator)
FEGs are one of the three primary methods of creating engine power which is required to do almost every action.
Here’s a basic FEG with every part straped to it
1. Carbs, Turbos, and Supers
Carbs are the more fuel efficient but less space efficient option. Carbs increase the power of
adjacent cylinders buy 100.
Turbochargers are interesting components witch kill 2 birds with one stone, Turbos
when given exaust gas and connected to a carb will increase the carbs high rpm efficiency and
cools the exaust gas (and due to the low power output of carb FEGs there usualy reving high).
Superchargers increase the low rpm efficiency of adjacent carbs since carb FEGs rev so high
these are really only useful in large engines
2. Injectors and Radiatiors
Injectors are much more powerful than carbs but are much trickier and chug fuel. Injectors
increase the power of ONLY 2 adjacent cylinders by 200.
Radiatiors can connect to the crankshaft or to cylinders and reduce the temp and reduce the fuel efficiency even further, This is necassary because without turbos to cool exaust gas
Injector FEGs can overheat causing the entire engine to shut down
This small engine produces 1000 power, not quite as good as an injector one of the same size but waaay more efficient. These tend run a bit hot due to the length the exaust has to travel, But not nearly as hot as injector FEGs
P.s. Don’t forget to change the settings in the FEGs menu (hit e on the engine block)
How to Steam engine
Steam engines are interesting because they skip the middleman and burn resource instead of fuel this also means there way less efficient, But even more powerful than injector FEGs.
This Backup steam engine puts out over 3000 power
1. Useage tips
Steam engines can be used as as the primary source of power for a vehicle but due to there
inefficiency the boilers need to be regulated (by acbs) when not in combat. I find there really useful
as emergency backups
2. Propellers
The main advantage to using a steam engine as the primary powerplant, Is Steam propellers. Steam
props can push large ships to blistering speed without much power loss.
This is the minimum amount of parts to power a propeller, you have to connect a prop to the prop
shaft to the reduction gear to an engine shaft to the engine itself.
A note on Ammo
Ammo barrels are both the most dangerous and most important components on a ship. Therefore you should strive to have as few as possible.
1. Ammo regen
Ammo barrels will very slowly regen ammo however this can be sped up massively by using ammo
processors witch will take resource and engine power to make 20 ammo per second. This means you should always check the ammo cost of your guns/missiles and never use more ammo storage
than is necessary.
2. Ammo explosions
When ammo barrels explode they will only do damage to blocks within 3 meters, so try to avoid
putting components closer than 3 meters.
How to simple Weapon
Simple weapons at first glance may seem to be useless and underpowered but if used correctly can be just as deadly as custom weapons
1. Cannons
The small cannon is inferior in every aspect except ammo cost and a slightly larger traverse.
The large cannon is a compact, reliable, and cheap weapon thanks to a whopping 15000 damage
with 2 armor pierceing. thanks to its supriseing damage a single large cannonball can destroy up to two wood beams and do 1k damage to a metal beam, this plus there cost makes them perfect for spamming dozens of cannonballs to peel off layers of exterior armor.
The autocannon is a fully automatic fixed gun that when mounted on a turret makes for cheap and
effective aa, Be warned though 6 of these puppy’s will burn through hundreds of ammo in seconds.
2. Rams and Drills
The simple and elegant solution to ship demolition, just accelerate to RAMMING SPEED! Although it is awe inspiring to watch two metal behemoths slam into eachother in a symphony of twisting metal and splintering wood, This does damage to both vehicles.
Rams solve the issue of mutual damage because they take no melee damage whilst multiplying
damage dealt. However be warned that once your vehicle has slowed to a halt rams will stop
doing damage and you will get stuck
Drills are an alright solution to getting stuck, But if possible use rams on spinblocks as they don’t take engine power and are scary effective.
3. Countering Melee
A quick side tangent: by sprinkling rubber blocks on your hull you can negate some of the
damage done by melee ships. Rubber wont stop dedicated melee components like rams but if the
enemy’s hull hits a rubber block it will sap away most of there speed, Causing them to get stuck
and become vulnerable to attack
4. Lasers
Lasers are an odd short range weapon that projects a 500m beam for 5 seconds that does 1600 damage with 10 armor pierceing. Its useful for wierd close range boats and heli’s
How to Cram Pie in ya facehole
Cram cannons are the go to battleship guns thanks to there simplicity and durability these guns can take a beating and dish one out.
A basic cram cannon
1. Gauge
cram cannons under 750mm are useless as any smaller and the damage is going to be pitiful for
the reload time, still I recommend never going under 1000mm
2. “Tetris”
Cram tetris refers to stacking cram components to get the maximum inside one turret. Here is a borderwise vid that explains this and how to construct a cram cannon:
The platform in the vid: [link]
3. Pellets
1. He pellets are the backbone (sometimes literaly) of most Cram cannons, They don’t explode but
they are the weakest component of a cram cannon. He pellets are also over twice as expensive
as any other pellet so these need to be hooked up to as may loaders as possible
2. Hardener pellets are the other most prevalent pellet, Not as strong as HE but pure ap crams are
a weapon to fear
3. Frag pellets are an extremely effective secondary as they enhance and extend the range of the
primary explosion
4. Emp pellets are tricky to pull of with HE but still amazing as a decent 2000mm emp cram has
enough emp in it to fry every vulnerable component or melt several heavy armor beams
4. Fuses
Fuses are a crucial component of a good cram cannon as without fuses a low velocity round (read every round from a cram cannon) will regularly bounce off a single layer of metal. Also fuses take up space in the shell and reduce the payload so don,t shove 5 fuses in your shells.
1. High/Low altitude fuses are an oddball fuse useful for HE/Frag bombs, Or if for some reason
your using cram for AA these might come in handy.
2. Time from launch Is perfect for frag Crams just set this to -0.05 and watch DWG ships
Disintegrate. Is also great for HE/Frags when set to -0.01. P.s. you need a laser targeter to set
this fuse
3. Inertial fuses are required Cram shells fly soo slow that they bounce off angled wood
you have to have inertial fuses. The only issue with this fuse is its gotta be sensitive enough
to go off on a ricochet but not water, I find 15 degrees works pretty good
4. Pen depth/ time from impact These two both work best with AP/He or AP/Frag but are useful for different circumstances. Pen depth is best for detonating right behind layers of metal. Time from impact is best for lightly armored targets where the shell might just fly right through without hitting x blocks i.e. DWG or planes
5. Common Combos
1. HE/Frag one of if not the best combos is HE/Frag you get the brutal explosion damage plus
frags to ensure you don’t miss, Just be sure to throw in a timed fuse set to -0.01
2. HE/EMP This combo is kinda tricky because if you dont add enough (under 1/3rd) emp the HE
can destroy the metal before the EMP flows through it. But the results speak for themselves, even
as an assist the EMP is more than capable of frying whole ships, Plus the tracers are purple!
3. HE/AP Pretty standard round, Its sadly underpowered
4. Pure AP you haven’t lived until you have seen a 2000mm fridge bisect a whole ship. Jokes aside
Pure AP can do horrifying amounts of kenetic damage
5. Frag/AP very similar to HE/AP but is cheaper and can use timed fuses more effectively
6. Barrels
Generaly you want go for 50/50 Motor driven/Normal barrel with a elevation at one of the ends so you get 80 degree vertical traverse plus decent velocity, Other then that most of the barrels are self explanatory i.e. Does x at the cost of velocity. The only really notable barrel is the flash supression barrel because it makes the rounds harder to shoot down.
7. Packing time
Thanks to a recent rework you can now manually mess with the packing time of cram cannons. I recommend setting this to around 25-33ish% as packing density scales exponentially with time and above 1/3 the packing time tends to get ridiculous
8. Auto pellet assignment
There is also a auto pellet feature, as of now it is really poorly labled and a pain in the rear to wrestle an acceptable result out of. I just reccomend avoiding this like the plauge as at best it seems to be a tool for emergency refits and at worst a great way to mangle a perfectly good gun.
How to Cannon (Warning: Advanced)
1.Gauge snakeing
Since how the gauge coolers need to be aranged relies on soo many variables I cant really give exact tips so only a couple things to note:
On the left is one continuous gauge and on the right a much more durable branched design
1. Try to avoid going in one continuous line as if a single component breaks as it can disable huge
chunks of the gun. Thanks to the left and right splitters having two outputs, with a little effort you
can get a much better arrangement
Above is an inefficient and and fragile design, As not only is there unnecessary splitters but they are above deck
above is a much better design, As it uses a simple split buried deep in the turret
2. Just keep it simple and below deck, Most of the time turrets get disabled is due to a hit
above deck so the less complex snaking above the deck the better
3. And another borderwise vid
How to APS
1. Prelude
The Advanced projectile system is a massive beast to even describe therefore if I fail to mention something its not due to negligance its because mentioning every notable aps component would be an essay all in its own. Please experiment for yourself
The flak monkey, The patron saint of APS users
2. Heads
although a head isn’t required they have much better drag, And have unique effects
1. Explosive heads i.e. Frag,HE,and EMP are useful for very short shells where the only spot
for the payload is the head, And pure explosive shells
2.The composite head is the odd middle ground between AP/Sabot and generaly only used for
getting explosive shells to go faster, Due to the fact in any other roll there inferior to the other two
AP heads
3.Sabot/AP The AP twins to put it simply use AP for HEAP shells and Sabot for pure AP or smoke.
To put it in a more complicated light The question of weather to use Sabot or AP head for pure
armor pierceing shells is a complex debate As the Sabot head has, velocity, ap value, and No frag
chance but the AP head has more health and an insane 10x modifyer to kenetic damage. Really its up to your own preferance
4. Hollow points are not that useful in there intended role of ok velocity pure ap (except in high rpm guns),But since this head has no chance to bounce its extremely useful for pure HE as this allows you to, replace the inertial fuse with more payload, get a kenetic damage boost, and get a much higher speed.
5. HEAT used to be op as heck but it got nerfed into obscurity, One of the only use for it now is to use It to pass through exxxtra thicc armor and shields
6. HESH is HEATs way cooler older brother. I already covered how HESH spalling works in the
armor section but needless to say in 236mm+ HESH is brutaly effective against bare metal. Plus
like hollow points HESH wont ever bounce
7. Disruptor conduits are one of the best anti shield weapons in the game, Not much to comment
on here
3. Warheads
the literal bread and butter of your shells
1. Flak !!Has been buffed as of 2020 at some point the hard cap on explosions was lifted/raised and now flak works just as advertised now its just as good if not better than frag!! When used with timed fuses flak can melt surface components and pulverize wood/wings/whole planes, just be sure the shell is above 80mm and set your laser targeter to -0.01
2. EMP its nowhere near as good as Cram EMP but if you wanna sprinkle a little surprise in a long
HE shell these are perfect
3. HE High explosive the standard warhead, Great for most uses just be careful with detect range
because these can be pretty fragile
4. Frag aka canister shot aka holy cow where did my wing go? Similar to Cram Frag just set some
of these puppys to 90+ degrees and watch the carnage
5. Hmm what if instead of smoking my vehicle I shot it at the enemy… Genius! Smoke is the best
anti laser weapon as it Disables the enemy’s lasers while keeping your LAMS unaffected. With a
Sabot head and inertial fuse these baby’s can ruin a Lightning hoods day
4. Rear components
the components exclusive to the back of the shell
1. Graviton ram aka the meme that kills, these might seem like a joke but when configured correctly
can cripple ships or send planes into inescapable dives
2. Supercap for when you need a minigun on your sub, 75% might seem like it ruins the shell BUT
notice it doesn’t mention frags. Also has max length
3. Base bleeders are useful for getting extra velocity from shells thanks to the max length effect
4. Tracers are pretty self explanatory but they have max length
5. Max length. 3 of the 4 shell rears have a max component length of 100mm (some fuses do too but the max length vary’s). What this means is you can squeeze these where they really don’t belong, For example you can put a base on a 300mm 2 component 1 case shell and it will fit in a one meter rack. Thus max length is an important factor in clipless Aps guns
5. Component drag
For some reason components have a hidden drag value
a properly ordered shell
the order of least to most drag goes:
1. heads
2. solid body’s
3. fuses
4. warheads
5. fins and bases
you have to arrange sells in this order for maximum speed.
Standard Aps Shells
Although I explained a good portion of the Aps components I felt it prudent to add a couple shells I use frequently to give a good starting point/examples of decent functional shells. Also be warned most of these shells are abnormally short/lacking in gunpowder and velocity
1.Standard HESH
[link]
Here’s the small HESH shell I use frequently sadly HESH got nerfed recently, even so I still love these in 300mm cause you can cram em into a one meter autoloader
Recommended Gauge: 236+
2.Standard Flak
[link]
A very effective little shell works really well in the Aps simple weapons. If flak gets nerfed frags set to 120 work as well. Warning a laser targeter must be installed on your gun to set timed fuses
Recommended Gauge: 94-180+
3.Standard HE
[link]
“Cause vanilla isn’t a bad flavor” A bog standard pure HE shell it hits things and goes boom. I never really got the point of pure as if you want HE Cram does it waaaay better, but hey to each his own.
Recommended Gauge: 80+
5.Knockoff HESH Hybrid Shell
[link]
An interesting little hybrid shell that provides a decent payload, no bounce chance, and a little bit of Kinetic damage. Be warned this one isn’t gonna work against much more than the DWG as shields will still bounce these really easy, the kinetic isn’t that good unless its going 500m/sec+, and this shell doesn’t scale with size as well as pure HE/HEAP
Recommended Gauge: 236+
5. Smoke sabot
[link]
Getting a smoke warhead to hit a decent LAMS system is normally quite hard until you realize that sabot heads 75% debuff doesn’t affect smoke, allowing you to hit em via speed and respectable shell health (Plus the kinetic damage doesn’t hurt)
Minimum Gauge: 200 (Under 200 and the smoke doesn’t deploy)
6. Anti Shield
[link]
Say hello to the best anti shield shell in the game mix a couple of these into your main gun and watch the shields melt
Recommended Gauge: 200+
Note on missile gauge
Missiles now come in 3 different sizes Small, Medium, And Thicc. Small missiles are only useful en mass as they get a limited selection of parts. Medium missiles are what you should be using, They get the full parts selection and are generaly more destructive than small missiles. Thicc bois are for memelords and massive ships that have 12000 ammo to burn. However with a decent design Thicc bois can become unstoppable battering rams that make tactical nukes look like firecrackers, Just don’t rely on them too much
How to Miss(ile)
Missiles are odd, but effective weapons/utilities that stay relevant thanks to there ability to ignore shields and self guidance capabilities
1. Noses
Noses determine how your missile homes in on a target (if at all)
1. Thumper heads
useful for speeding up remote missiles, magnet torp’s, dumbfire, and laser riders
2. Infra-red
literal heat seeking missiles, they will home in on the hottest thing on a ship, Most of the time this is the engine/jets.
2a. Single pixel IR
Works the same as IR but the missiles go much faster at the cost of the missile having weird
guidance issues. Single pixel seekers have only 70 degree detection cone (normal IR has 120)
And they cannot see directly ahead All this means that the missile will oscillate in flight, This can
become a serious issue if you’ve got too many fins or are using frags
2b. Troubleshooting
If you are having trouble with your IR missiles don’t forget that the detection tool will highlight all heat
sources on any vehicle and helps a ton when designing IR missiles
3. Lasers
Wherever you/your ai points the missile laser, The missile goes there. Honestly I prefer the rider
receiver. Laser seekers are best if your using missiles as your main weapon as you can focus all
your firepower onto one point, However if someone pops smoke your Laser guided missiles
are useless
4. Active Radar
AR missiles will home in on the biggest flattest surface above water, And are (in my opinion) the
most reliable missiles. AR missiles are usualy reliable thanks to there ability to ignore
flares/smoke
(Just recently they added radar flares Shhhh)
5. Torp sonar
Not much to put here if your underwater use it. If you are above water don’t use it
6. Interceptors
Ill use missiles to kill missiles! Memes aside interceptors (if designed correctly) they
are great at defending large ships from cruse missiles. Also interceptors are (arguably) the most
cost effective way to destroy large missiles and long torps
2. Control components
1. Fins
Just put em at the rear infront of the thruster, they are effective on the front aswell but have
increased drag
2. Turning thrusters
Fins on Roid’s, much stronger but less accurate, best used with fins to offset the bad accuracy
3.Laser beam rider
Will make the missile follow the path of the laser meaning even in the event of the laser being destroyed the missile will stay its course. In my
opinion its superior to the standard laser head
4. APN
Forces the missiles to trim with the fins. Extremely useful for cruse missiles and torp’s And required for thrusterless missiles
5. One turn
Allows the ai to control the missile for a short pierod only really useful for vertically launched
missiles and torp’s. I recommend delaying thruster ignition and adding a turning thruster instead
but that’s just my preferance
6. Target Prediction
I strongly recommend against using this for anything other than in a surface to air role. But be
warned if your missile isn’t hitting this wont fix it, If your missiles wont hit try
laser missiles or use APN otherwise its probably
a design problem that compromised targeting wont fix anyways
7. Remote guidance
your ai controls the missile, similar to laser but it uses a ton of gppu to do it. I recommend only using this on large missiles because remote
missiles have no practical counter, otherwise if you want ai controlled missiles just use lasers
3.Utilities
1. Ballast tanks
useful for depth charges and torp’s
2. Harpoons
in perfect conditions these could be used for ramming, but unless your vehicle is covered in rams
these just tend to get both you and the enemy killed
3.Magnets
How do they work? Memes aside magnets are amazing for small missiles, dumbfire torps, depth
charges, mines, and long torps. Magnets work by pulling the missile towards the nearest vehicle
(the amount of metal doesn’t matter only the center of mass does) be warned that this also
includes your own vehicles regardless of the identify friend or foe module, So its wise to include
safety fuses with magnets
4.flares
flares are a cheap and effective way to throw off large missile swarms And in the case of sticky
flares an odd way to designate IR missiles
Standard missiles
Throughout this guide I included my ammo recommendations in a small sub-section but due to the unique nature of missiles (the ammo is the weapon system) Missiles necessitate there own category. These are just some standard designs and I implore you to tinker with them to fit your playstyle
[link]
Here is a versatile bomb/mine usualy 4-10 of these bad boys are enough to fry small OW ships or make great area denial.
[link]This is one of (if not) my favorite missile a Simple and Cheap Guided explosive. I love to strap about 4 of these to a ship and watch as they manage to tear off barrels and detection systems
(Be sure to use Ejectors)
A nice simple interceptor, Switch the thruster with a torp prop and it works great underwater
[link]Here it is! My standard medium range missile. This missile is setup to get thrown clear via 2-4 ejectors, Turn to face the largest target via its turning thruster, then light the main engine and slam into the target at considerable speed (And hopefully evadeing LAMS and interceptors along the way)
[link]Here is My standard Torpedo, Good for screwing subs and punching holes in ships
[link]Now I present to you the VLS surface to air missile of n2galaxys design! (from my limited test run) I found that it will kill most anything in the sky, And with a little more tinkering im sure you could tune it into a squirrel killer
n2galaxys profile: [link]
Heres a mini interceptor by Royal cat, And in his own words:
“For a simple and relatively cheap missile/torpedo defense you can make use of 1 block small launchers. By using a variable thruster, fins, fuel tank and missile interceptor, this is a perfectly capable missile defense, which is only more effective in large swarms.”
Royal cats profile: [link]
How to PAC, Man by n2galaxy
A PAC firing piece
Ive never built a PAC before but after posting this guide n2galaxy (Awsome dude from the prelude) offered to write this section.
“The Particle Accelerator Cannon (PAC) Is what you might call a “generic customizable weapon” that fires a laser-like beam at instantaneous velocities at the cost of electricity. Everything else is yours to customize. The firing piece of the PAC is very large (3x3x3) and the beam is most often shot directly from it. The bulk of the PAC system is made up of accelerator tubes, which are simply pipelines that extend from five asymmetrical ports on the firing piece. The longer the tubes are, the more damage and energy cost you get. You can have multiple beams in one shot.
The particles must launched from the firing piece, through the tubes, and then either back into the firing piece or out of a lens. There are three ways to do this. The first and most simple is the terminator. Terminator use is simply running a pipe from the PAC, slapping a terminator on the end, and then the particle will use the pipe it came from to get back to it’s firing piece. The second is a particle input port, which requires you to run a pipe from the firing piece and back into it, placing an input port as the last pipe. Input ports do double the damage but reduce the amount of beams you can have per shot by using two ports on the firing piece. The third and most unique is the accelerator lens. It is placed after your pipeline without returning to the firing piece and simply firing from itself. These do half damage but allow you to hide your firing piece deep in your ship, unlike other methods that require the main block to be the frontmost one.
Customizing the PAC is relatively simple. Everything but the piping is done via firing piece GUI which looks like so:
[link]
-Horizontal/Vertical focus allows you to make a PAC more accurate in one direction and less in the other. This is good for turreted PAC that need no horizontal focus but maximum vertical.
-Field of fire allows you to control how far from the center your cannon can shoot. Shots farther from the center are less accurate.
-Damage and Inaccuracy allows you to increase damage at the cost of accuracy or vise versa.
-Damage and attenuation allows you to increase damage at the cost of effective range. (More on that later.)
-Efficient/Overclock alloys you to increase damage but drastically increase energy cost. Good for ships with energy to spare, but without space for large cannons.
-Charge time simply the reload. It can be anywhere from .1 seconds to 10 seconds. (Spoiler: 10 seconds is best.)
Color is self-explanatory I do hope.
The damage type is quite important. Piercing (default) beams go through thick armor with thin holes. Great for mainframe-sniping but not very useful for shredding hulls. EMP simply creates an EMP charge upon impact with no kinetic damage. Explosive-shock is an inferior, knock-off impact. Impact is an excellent choice for cannons with excessive damage to make enormous holes in the target.
Attenuation is the rate in which the beam loses damage over range. Skipping the boring math stuff, 1 is best for 1km and under, 0.5 is best for 2km, 0.25 is best for 4km, ect.”
-n2galaxy pesumibly written during a break between sorting Fentanyl and driving tanks
His profile: [link]
Note on -={LAZERS/}=-
Really the hardest part of building a Laser is just getting an engine big enough to to power it.
1. Continuous or Pulsed?
Continuous lasers are garbage they used to make cool LAMS but that just got nerfed so there just useless now. 4Q pulsed lasers are the way to go for anything and everything
2. How may doublers?
For LAMS you dont actualy need any doublers just a Destabilizer or two. For offensive lasers you need at least 30 AP
Note on A.I.
1. try to avoid excess general processing cards those are expensive.
2. Use or at least try intra-vehicle transmitters they are really good.
3. strap a snooper to your mainframe there good aswell
4. if your ship is acting up try ai pids those help
5. idk man you just gotta tinker with the ai ALOT the ai setup and the ship have a symbionic relationship soo fragile even a couple thruster’s can wreck (or fix) the whole thing so I really cannot help you, read the tooltips and good luck
How to Detection system
Detection systems are your literal eyes and ears, So its importent to use them effectively
Pictured are the three types detection systems From left to right: The bearing detectors, Range detectors, and the misc detectors.
1. Bearing detectors
Bering detectors are used for detecting the ships heading so they can predict the position of the ship.
1. Cameras are cheap and are (arguably) the best bearing detectors, The biggest
downside is the large Gppu cost
2. Ir have a much faster refresh, half the gppu cost, are more durable, and cant be seen by
retroreflectors But theres also several downsides i.e. There up to 4x the price, Cant see through
glass, are half as effective at detecting, and there slightly bigger (last one isnt as bad because of
the health increase)
2. Range detectors
Pretty self explanitory, Predicts the range of enemys
1. Coincidence rangefinders, One of the best ways to detect range its relaitively innaccurate but
makes up for it with bearing detection, 1.25x range, and it can look through glass.
2. Radar is more compact, accurate, and has a higher refresh than Coincidence rangefinders. But
cannont look through glass so is less durable.
3. Laser rangefinder, An odd but effective way to detect range. The laser rangefinder cannot
see through smoke, And you have to have excelent bearing detection so the “lock on” time isnt
too long (yes it takes a while to lock on). It makes up for this by being the most accurate range
detector and a 0.1 gppu cost, Thus its perfect to supplement an already complete sensor package
3. Passive detectors
the detectors that work off your enemys detectors
1. Passive radar, Not as useful as you would think because few campain enemys use radar
2. Passive sonar, Extremely useful as not only will it give you excelent readings on every sub but it alows your LAMS to shoot torpedos
3. Retroreflection Sensor, An awesome addition to arrays as it only takes 0.1 gppu and will give excelent bearing and range on any cameras in its line of sight
4. The misc options
These are the options that are both less used or dont fit as neatly into the other two
classifications.
1. The wireless snooper, An extremely useful detector that gives decent readings on ships with
wireless transmitters (read almost every ship). This makes it great for getting your primary sensor
package pointed at the enemy, Thus reducing the need for 360 detectors (as 360 detectors take a
ton of gppu for poo readings).
2. The intra vehicle transmitter, Makes your ship more obvious to snoopers. But it transmits all
detection data to friendly ships and is extremely useful.
3. Bouys when used in tandom with there missile parts just act like there 360 counterparts but
detached from the vehicle
4. Sonar, Not much to put here if your underwater use it. If you are above water dont use it (sonar
has a huge gppu cost)
5. USE THE DETECTION TOOL
The best way to see what the heck is going on is via the detection tool, to access it click the middle mouse button and enable it via the top right, it will display range error as well as detection signatures
6. Closing note
When designing your ship be sure to have one range detector one bearing detector and a snooper.
That combo should yield decent results if you have any trouble, Or want to improve accuracy be sure to use the detection tool
Epilogue
Thanks for reading the whole guide! If you have any questions or see any huge errors please comment ill be more than happy to talk with you.
1. Shameless plug
[link]
[link]
If you liked the guide you might like my ships, So here are the links.
2. Realistic expectations
please take everything in this guide with a grain of salt, As it might become outdated or just be inferior to other methods. This guide is intended to teach you the basics, Not as a holy scripture to follow by the letter. As I said at the start please just ask around, I’m just one idiot who took the time to write a guide.