Record your custom starting ship designs

[slayernz]

Hey all,
As the ship designer has been out for a while, I'm sure you've all dabbled in creating a custom ship to start your journey into the quadrant. The price limit certainly limits your options, but still gives you a huge number of potential designs. What have you come up with? More importantly - why did you choose those options?

My starting ship for Impossible Difficulty is aptly named "Midget"
Hull = 11
Armor = 3
Engines = 20
Solar Sails = 22
Crew = 40
Cargo = 50
Guns = 18
Torps = 3
Fast/Medium

In-game upgrades
Cargo Prow +16 Cargo
Escape Shuttle (cos it's Impossible Difficulty!!)
Water Fuel Tank
Nano-Solar Sail Coating +6 Sails
Sail Command Probe (+4 Sails)

Resulting in sales =32 (and getting the bonus efficiency for having 30+ sails

Midget was designed with efficiency, especially with the painful starting curve you get with Impossible. Water in, water out.
I wanted to be somewhat competitive with my gun-bunny approach, hence the 20 engines. Would have preferred 22, but budget kept me below the magical 2 EHr.
Cargo was as big as I could manage. Again, I needed to take as much waterfuel with me as I started, and I also needed enough of a hold to carry shortage goods (hunt for the Shortage Rumors!)

All in all, it's a good ship. Not perfect by any means. Weak armor means early on, I spent a lot of time fixing up the ship - and myself. Enemy ships were able to close range quite easily until I got to around 30 pilot. I'm still taking the occasional hit with it in combat where I am level 17, and enemy captains are 25-27. Still, I am aiming to hold onto this ship until I'm level 20, and getting Hard Core Elite.

THEN - I upgrade to the Slayerz NR4 and see how far I get in the evil challenge that is Impossible

Update
I've reached level 20 on Impossible difficulty. The ship has held up really well, and as a result, I am sitting on over $1m worth of credits, a ship that only costs 0.04WF per green sector and 1.66 per red. I can carry a max of 91 units of WF, meaning I can comfortably do several contracts without needing to stop and refuel. Doing a shortage gives me 66 units of sales capacity, resulting in over $130k worth of revenue for every shortage I satisfy. Yes, there is often a cost in buying the goods, but I believe the gross profit would be close to $100k per run. Not bad considering the ship cost was less than $118k

[Cory Trese]

Awesome Idea.

[johndramey]

Man, you're going to make me juggle my new Ironman group in battleforce, my fun squad in heroes of steel, and start up ST. Thanks a lot!

[slayernz]

Oh yeah, I'm playing ST again and loving it! I've neglected some of my other games though - sorry Vraes and Tami. I do love you both.

Community challenge for March will be a Star Traders game. I got the idea after playing what I was playing. You have to create a ship that costs less than $100k. You then have to play in that one ship with any upgrades you can stick on it until turn 10,000 turn ... or you're dead. It's just a matter of determining what the points will be - and whether contributor will beat us all or not

[johndramey]

I'd definitely be down to try it, although I'll have to play around in the ship designer a bit and come up with a ship I like.

[capthawk]

Feb 16, 2016 0:48:35 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Oh yeah, I'm playing ST again and loving it! I've neglected some of my other games though - sorry Vraes and Tami. I do love you both.

Community challenge for March will be a Star Traders game. I got the idea after playing what I was playing. You have to create a ship that costs less than $100k. You then have to play in that one ship with any upgrades you can stick on it until turn 10,000 turn ... or you're dead. It's just a matter of determining what the points will be - and whether contributor will beat us all or not

Lol I'm terrified of these challenges. Just now thriving on Crazy, 3rd try MO. I'll have to wait to post the stats of the starter ship that got this guy going as due to disagreements with SS it was stranded 40 AU from current position. However, I did have the cash, just enough, to fly back out in a Jango One hell bent on revenge. The inspiration for out though was this ship for my second try at Crazy. It almost made it but I way over-used it and it's rep cost was high.

Sortie Class I
Hull 8
Armor 3
Engines 16
Sails 16
Crew 21
Cargo 45
Guns 12
Torps 3
Upgrades:(lol) wf tank, spy bank, escape pod, record hold, omni-stealth.
It did

[capthawk]

Feb 16, 2016 0:48:35 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Oh yeah, I'm playing ST again and loving it! I've neglected some of my other games though - sorry Vraes and Tami. I do love you both.

Community challenge for March will be a Star Traders game. I got the idea after playing what I was playing. You have to create a ship that costs less than $100k. You then have to play in that one ship with any upgrades you can stick on it until turn 10,000 turn ... or you're dead. It's just a matter of determining what the points will be - and whether contributor will beat us all or not

Lol I'm terrified of these challenges. Just now thriving on Crazy, 3rd try MO. I'll have to wait to post the stats of the starter ship that got this guy going as due to disagreements with SS it was stranded 40 AU from current position. However, I did have the cash, just enough, to fly back out in a Jango One hell bent on revenge. The inspiration for out though was this ship for my second try at Crazy. It almost made it but I way over-used it and it's rep cost was high.

Sortie Class I
Hull 8
Armor 3
Engines 16
Sails 16
Crew 21
Cargo 45
Guns 12
Torps 3
Upgrades:(lol) wf tank, spy bank, escape pod, record hold, omni-stealth.
It did great in spying and surprised me in blockade, it would make money and not be challenged/discovered often.
I made it to be a low signature, fast and quick contact runner and early game spy. I might revisit it someday.
Oh yeah, it cost 117,985 which I only remember as it's the closet I've come to the value cap.
So funny going to shipyard to see it at 350k-ish in game!

[beverage]

Currently kicking it in the Spectre

Stealth based Torper as a Pirate. Pretty sweet as I have been suceeding in Combat and Assassinations etc from the Beginning on Insane

Hull 12
Armor 4 (6)
Engines 22 (28)
Sails 24 (32)
Crew 30
Hold 40
Guns 12
Torps 10

Still dallying with the optimal upgrade path but as of now running
Advanced Bridge - Helps my Pilot Officer
Sail Command Probe - Helps my Pilot Officer
Extended Mainsails - After Command Probe bumps Sails past the magic 30 number and improves Torpedo attack
Ancient Reactors - Landing Bonus and helps when an enemy can close from long range
Heavy bulkheads - +2 Armor (Not concerned with escaping but probably shoulda gone with Weapon Cabinet for Blockades)

Always buy Torps from you Ships Flag and you'll be knocking em easily although only level 7 as of now so I'll see how long it lasts.

Skill Focus
Pilot 12
Tactics 13
Stealth 12
Negotitate 2 (note to noobs, get a minimum of 2 negotiate asap as it cuts each Exchange transaction time from 2 weeks to 1 )

Let ya know when I'm dead

[capthawk]

beverage what a great tip on Negotiate! I'm def noob and will be adding that from now on!

[ChocoCrowbar]

Curious seeing all these ship designs. I'd be up for that March challenge.

My starting ship:

Hull: 9
Armor: 3
Engines: 16 + 6 + 5 = 27
Sails: 23 + 4 = 27
Crew: 40
Cargo: 51
Guns: 13
Toprs: 2

Upgrades:
- Ancient Reactors (engines +6)
- Titan Components (engines +5)
- Crew Xenox Suits (just in case of aliens)
- Advanced Bridge System (can't touch me with my superior pilot skillz)
- Sail Command Probe (sails +4)

With a Pilot lvl of 27 ish water per turn goes down to 1, so it's not the most efficient ship, but it has kept me alive because it let's me run when the enemy captain is way to overpowered. If it's a merchant, the engines let me maneuver around and blow out it's engines, letting me loot all I want.

If I so choose, instead of Ancient Reactors for +6 engines, a +3 Sails +8 cargo option is available, to reach 30 Sails and hopefully have a very efficient ship.

Work wonderfully for short distance trade routes (Syndicate Capital - Steel Fortress; Javat Prime - Ursae Thulun; Cadar Prime - Syndicate Captial)

[slayernz]

New starting ship
Hull 12
Armor 3
Engines 24
Sails 24
Crew 36
Hold 46
Guns 14
Torps 2
Fast/Quick

Yes I am not Cadar - but this ship is the largest starting ship I would want to fly. I've custom-character'd too, with a spy-based character starting with 11 pilot and 6 Tactics.

[Darth Cthoras]

My starter ship costs just under 118k, and has the following:

14 Hull
6 Armour
24 Engines
24 Solar Sails
45 Crew
54 Cargo (99)
21 Guns
0 Torpedos

Medium
Medium

This gives me a solid setup for my custom class Independent Pirate:

9 Charisma
13 Wisdom
13 Quickness
1 Strength

10 Tactics
10 Pilot
1 in all else

I then add:
Structural- Cargo Prow +16 Cargo
Combat- Cargo Pod +7 Cargo
Interior- Cargo Vault +12 Cargo
Armament- Cargo Pod +10 Cargo
Propulsion- Water-Fuel Recycling Plant

This all combines into a fairly solid build on Challenging for hunting prey.
Boosting my Intimidate and Negotiate up to 6 each, I then max out Pilot and Tactics evenly. With such stats, no enemy yet has managed to flee or chase me, even in this bulky battlecruiser.

[slayernz]

That'll be a good gun-bunny pirate ... lots of cargo upgrading though. I'd almost be tempted to throw in one of the engine upgrades to get your EHr over 2

[Darth Cthoras]

I assume because it would make me more fuel-efficient?

[slayernz]

increasing engines decreases efficiency - but offset by your pilot skill (as a gun bunny, that's your primary stat), your ship efficiency comes down anyway.

Having higher EHr means that you are able to change ranges more efficiently during combat.