Basic ship design guidelines

[Peter]

Got a simple question at the moment that I can't find an answer to in any of the libraries or quick forum searches.

Can anyone point me in the direction of some guides for designing ships? For example, do I need only as many gun decks as I plan to have guns, as the ship material category description would suggest, or should I add a lot of gun decks if I want a heavy and fast hitter, since the description to "gun decks" is "Increase to-hit rolls for 1 range." That description would suggest that the count for this is more of a "strength" multiplier rather than a simple matter of how many gun decks my ship has with which to mount guns to and fire from.

Similarly, can anyone describe to me action points versus motion points? I understand that actions relate to firing of guns or torpedoes, exploring or repairing, and motions relate to the moving of the ship. However, will someone clarify if there is any benefit to having more action points than the one gun I arm with requiring? Can I fire a gun and then another? Experience has suggested otherwise.

Thanks in advance!

[AA]

1 just a bonus
2 if you have 2× required ap you can fire 2 times same goes for 3× and 4× Peter

[Cory Trese]

I will work on adding a Ship Design section to the player's guide.

www.tresebrothers.com/star-traders-4x-empires/game-manual

Ticket #2880 4X - Help - Basic ship design guidelines

[abysmal]

I think it would actually be good to include under the quality section what happens when you start building over quality. Because for some reason, my population wants to go to my Tennath outpost with Quality 8 when my Thulun prime only has 6 people, Quality 18, and absolutely no tourism ... I have to build over quality and hating it.

[Peter]

Nov 15, 2014 2:19:55 GMT -5 AA said:

1 just a bonus
2 if you have 2× required ap you can fire 2 times same goes for 3× and 4× Peter

Any idea a good proportion of "bonus" to target? Is 1/30 (the rest allocated to durability/evasion/etc.) sufficient, or should I load-out my fighters with >50% gun decks?

[Cory Trese]

Nov 16, 2014 12:16:58 GMT -5 abysmal said:

I think it would actually be good to include under the quality section what happens when you start building over quality. Because for some reason, my population wants to go to my Tennath outpost with Quality 8 when my Thulun prime only has 6 people, Quality 18, and absolutely no tourism ... I have to build over quality and hating it.

It states that for every 1% over Quality, you pay 1% additional Maintenance.

I will add the rules about Morale loss.

[AA]

Nov 16, 2014 15:42:15 GMT -5 Peter said:

Nov 15, 2014 2:19:55 GMT -5 AA said:

1 just a bonus
2 if you have 2× required ap you can fire 2 times same goes for 3× and 4× Peter

Any idea a good proportion of "bonus" to target? Is 1/30 (the rest allocated to durability/evasion/etc.) sufficient, or should I load-out my fighters with >50% gun decks?

i don't know

[vylox]

Nov 16, 2014 15:42:15 GMT -5 Peter said:

Nov 15, 2014 2:19:55 GMT -5 AA said:

1 just a bonus
2 if you have 2× required ap you can fire 2 times same goes for 3× and 4× Peter

Any idea a good proportion of "bonus" to target? Is 1/30 (the rest allocated to durability/evasion/etc.) sufficient, or should I load-out my fighters with >50% gun decks?

For values of your ship systems under 3, you receive a penalty on rolls, for values greaterthan 3 you will receive a bonus. The bonus is to base chance to hit and a small addition to damage.
Any value of 3 provides neithera bonus or a negative to your ship.

Movement points are the number of tiles that a ship cañ move per turn.
Action Points are used for attacking, refueling, repairing, exploring, and scanning. The amount of actions each individual ship can take per turn.

You might as well ignore part of AA's post on attacks, as the only weapons that require 1 AP are some of the light guns, and there aren't any fast reactors with more than 2AP. No offense 

[AA]

I did not say fighters vylox

[En1gma]

And if I'm not mistaken, vylox, firing a weapon or using AP also spends an equal amount of MP. I believe this was done for balancing.

[AA]

I forgot about that yes En1gma

[vylox]

Nov 18, 2014 17:34:19 GMT -5 En1gma said:

And if I'm not mistaken, vylox, firing a weapon or using AP also spends an equal amount of MP. I believe this was done for balancing.

I had noticed this, and forgot to mention it. However it does not appear to affect refueling. (I could be wrong, I havent actually playedin over a week since ive been busy with classwork)

AA
from your statement, one would assume that there are 4AP reactors, which is not the case. I made a clarification as the only ships in the game that can attack twice during a turn, are fighters using a 1AP weapon. Just as there are no Fast Reactors with 3AP, no reactors other than Fast reactors have listed 1AP or 4MP. 

[AA]

Well i could not remember how high it can be vylox

[Deleted]

Nov 18, 2014 12:50:57 GMT -5 vylox said:

Nov 16, 2014 15:42:15 GMT -5 Peter said:

Any idea a good proportion of "bonus" to target? Is 1/30 (the rest allocated to durability/evasion/etc.) sufficient, or should I load-out my fighters with >50% gun decks?

For values of your ship systems under 3, you receive a penalty on rolls, for values greaterthan 3 you will receive a bonus. The bonus is to base chance to hit and a small addition to damage.
Any value of 3 provides neithera bonus or a negative to your ship.

Movement points are the number of tiles that a ship cañ move per turn.
Action Points are used for attacking, refueling, repairing, exploring, and scanning. The amount of actions each individual ship can take per turn.

You might as well ignore part of AA's post on attacks, as the only weapons that require 1 AP are some of the light guns, and there aren't any fast reactors with more than 2AP. No offense 

wait what? so you're saying a ship with 8 gun stats and a ship with 3 gun stats will be just as good in gunning, all other things being the same? Are you referring to captain skills or ship stats?

[vylox]

@starfixer

A ship with 8 guns in the ship materials will be more accurate and have a higher average damage than a ship with 3 guns in ship materials. The same goes for the captain skills. The game even states this within the ship designer. The ship designer used to have it mentioned stating that any ship material scores under 3 will provide a penalty.

For ship design, an allocation of 0, 1, and or 2 for gun decks, torpedo bays, evasion, shielding and sensor will all be below "average" for those actions or affects. Examples:
A ship with 0 gun decks can have a set of guns added, however it is unlikely that said design will actually hit anything using a gun.
A ship with 0 sensor will have no sensor range and will usually give you horrible or bad outcomes from exploring anomalies.
A ship with 0 evasion will invariably get hit every time.
A ship with 0 shielding will take increased damage when using invasion and when getting hit by Xeno torpedo attacks.
A ship with 0 torpedo bays will likely never hit when firing torpedoes.

Ships with 3 points allocated to locations of ship materials will have a 0 modifier for attack, defense, explore, and damage reduction rolls.
Ships with 4 or more points allocated to ship material locations will receive a bonus to attack, defense, explore and damage reduction rolls.

For sensor, the range that the ship can "see" is dictated by the sensor in ship materials. With 3 being the baseline average allowing a ship to "see" 3 tiles of distance around the ship itself.

Captain skills also play a roll in the effectiveness of the ship for a given task. A repair ship with a captain having a high repair skill will fix more damage to a "wounded" fighter than an identical ship with a captain having a lower repair skill.

I hope this clarifies things. I know that sometimes I am not explicitly clear when I try to explain something, and the message might get garbled.

If you need anymore information or advice in this regard, please let me know, or anyone else in this thread as AA and En1gma both seem to be able to explain easily also.