Ship Subarchetypes

This guide explains designs and strategies that can be used in a variety of different ship archetypes. The main focus lies on competitive ships built for elimination.

Nuke Range extender (NRE)

NRE in action (Ship by Nick)

NRE fail: The nukes fired before the rail could destroy the structure

Nukes theoretically have very high range, but the problem is that their launch only gets triggered if the target is in range. You might think that setting the nukes to autofire solves that problem, but their range will sadly be decreased.

To still get full range we can use an exploit called NRE. It works like this:

• Target your nukes and a rail gun at the same piece of structure
• All the nukes must have the structure piece in its firing arc (except if you use illegal nukes)
• Autofire the rail and nukes simultaneously

This works because the nuke thinks it will be able to lock on, but removing their target will force them to default to a straight path.

Be very careful when using NRE. Making a mistake likely results in blowing your own ship up.

This strategy is not competitively viable as NRE can easily be dodged if you anticipate them. Even if they hit the spread out damage often isn't even enough to go through all the shields.

Preload

Preload should at least be considered by any ship using launchers. It makes the ship more flexible but adds the need for additional micro.

• HE missile ships often add EMP preload as they struggle against shielded opponents.
• Mines are often a good preload option for nukers or the other way around

Pretask

Large shield pretask on an avoider

Pretasking is done by manipulation crew in order to supply something faster.

This is done by pathing crew through one high priority resource consumer in order to supply another lower priority consumer. If the high priority consumer requires resources the crew that already picked them up in order to supply the low priority target will change tasks.

Pretasking is mostly used to make large shields recharge faster after they are dealt damage.

Assigning your reactor to any part breaks pretasking as crew will no longer change tasks for any reason.

Side Nukes

An ion rammer with side nukes (Ship by Plaus)

Side Nukes are a great addition to pretty much any ship type. You can launch them while getting closer to the enemy to hopefully hit and capitalize on resulting weak spots.

They are probably strongest when you are in a ram and spinning. You can launch them and your enemy will spin right into them destroying their squishy sides.

Structure Constructs

Structure is cheap and light and can be incredibly useful if used right.

Generally you want to use as much 3x1 structure pieces as possible since their health is the highest, and they also connect different sections with the least amount of material.

Ramming hooks

Info on Fions horns (by Luna)

As the name might suggest ramming hooks are most useful on rammers. They should allow you to:

• Tilt the opponent in a ram to get a better angle of attack
• Get a ramlock more easily
• Grab and hold escaping opponents using the hooks teeth

Bumper

Bumpers should be considered on any ship with large shields to protect them. Having the structure in front of the shield protects them much better but it will also be easier to damage that structure over time. Because of that the bumper is often placed slightly behind the shields.

Bumper like structure can also double in holding up your armor on ships like ion rammers.

Horn

Horns can be strong anti ramming tech and should be considered on any build struggling with ram locks. They are mainly strong on tb rails.

Ultra Light (UL)

The maximum speed of your ship is completely determined by your thrust/weight ratio.

Info

Formula for drag: $\color {white}max(speed/75,1)^{2}*speed*0.4$

So here are some general tips on how to make your ship as light as possible. Following the advice here will make your ship zoom across the map at crazy speeds but also comes with some hefty downsides. Keep in mind that your ship will be more fragile, harder to control, have worse uptime and convoluted setups.

For many ships it is more effective to simply add more thrust instead of trying to reduce weight. For this reason UL should only be used on ships that already are built to be very light (decreasing weight by 1% on heavy ships is much less efficient than doing the same changes on a lighter ship for a 10% decrease).

• Armor is forbidden. Using shields for defense is the most common way to achieve this.
• Use as little walkways and corridors as possible. Even routing crew through slow sections should be considered.
• Remove any other part that comes to mind! Examples: Fire extinguishers and backwards or sometimes even small forwards thrust (at really high speeds the low thrust added might not compensate for the extra weight)
• Medium/small reactors: Makes your ship a lot faster because you have to use less walkways in exchange for worse cost efficiency and sustainability.
• Operator crew detach
• Supplier crew detach

Waste Ship

Waste ships are designed to be as cheap as possible just being sustainable enough to defeat other ships of similar or higher cost. They are mostly useful in Domination. Waste ships tend to:

• have no reactors
• have little to no ammo storage
• generally cut survivability and sustainability