Ship Design
From Magellapedia
This is a basic guide for ship designing. You can use it to get started on designs, and then when you're comfortable, you can experiment on your own.
First off, there is no such thing as the perfect design for every race. Each race has specific commanders, and they’ve all got their strengths and weaknesses. This means that in order to do a guide that would accommodate every race, it would be very long and very tedious to make. So, in the light of that fact, these are all just basic designs to give you an idea on what to use. Keep in mind these are all going to be Doomstar designs, and then I’ll give some advice on using smaller ships.
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The Most Important Part – The Walls.
Walls are the most important part to any race’s armada. Their purpose is to deal out a lot of damage to start with, gain the “threat” of the enemy fleets, and then keep that threat. In order to do this, you want to make sure your walls kill enough stuff in the initial hit, keep firing fast enough to keep the enemy’s attention, and then be able to take all the damage so your other ships don’t get fired on. That’s a lot for one type of design to do, but if made correctly, will save an entire armada.
So, what weapons do I want on my walls? The first weapon you want on your walls is Homing Black Hole (now called Zero-Point Missiles) or, if you play Dementian, Psionic Domination Torpedo (which is essentially the big brother of Zero-Point Missiles). The God of High Damage and High Cooling Time. This effectively will make your walls kill at least a couple of the enemy ships in one shot and grab the enemy’s attention first. It also has a high range for getting a good first shot. But, we’re going to do something with it that you won’t be doing on other designs, mixing weapon types. In order to keep the interest of the enemy, its important to have the fleet continue firing, or the enemies will basically get bored with it and fire on other things, which would cause them to die. So, on the last slot of the design, throw on some Auto-Fire Gauss Cannons (or better Distortion Blaster, as they now have the same cooling time). These have the lowest cooling time in the game, and will easily keep the enemy’s attention just where you want it.
Alright, I’ve got my wall weapons down. What different types of walls are there?
In the spirit of keeping things interesting, there are 3 different types of walls. Shield Walls, DR walls, and HP Buffing walls. Each of them uses a different armor, and each has its benefits for their race.
Shield Walls are used highly by one race, while others have the option to use them. Dementians are the ones in the game that use Shielding and only shielding. The races which have the option to shield are Jinchou Tennou, Thatloque, Cochehua and Mactabillis. Shields are strongest against missiles, but rather weak against ballistics and Phasor. Shields use Wall of Klein armor (now called N-Space Distortion Plate).
DR Walls do not mean Damage Reduction walls! They’re the second type of walls, and the most widely used. Every race except for Dementians have a commander that can be geared toward using DR walls. DR walls work by making the enemy’s ships miss. If you’ve ever played any dice based RPG, imagine it like a Dice Roll for attack and a Dice Roll for defense. In order for the enemy’s fleets to hit you, they need to roll a certain number or higher, and if they fail, they miss. Except we’re dealing with thousands of dice. DR Walls use Eternium armor.
There is a simple calculation for overall defense rate, which is important to know in order to design things:
(armor defense rate + mobility defense rate) * (computer defense rate + morale + fleet experience) = total DR
HP Buffing Walls are the least used. They can be used by Karakiri, Celebrus Opes, Thatloque, Mocupea and Mactabillis. They rely on using commanders and devices to gain as much Impenetrable Armor as possible, effectively making the ships uncritable. You can relate this to stacking Resilience in World of Warcraft. Although I’m going to explain how to make such a wall, I’m going to say that its only for experienced players to try. These walls aren’t particularly strong against anything, but aren’t weak against anything. These kinds of walls use Energy-Organic Crystal armor (now called Organic Carapace Crystal).
So, what devices for each wall type?
For Shield walls, you want to work on making the shields as strong as possible, because as their hp goes down, the ships get weaker, obviously. The main devices for these are Force Field Generator, Amplifying Chip, and Shield Capacitor. But, since Doomstars have 5 device slots, you can choose 2 of the following to fill up the others: Coprocessor (now there are more processor types, Quadprocessor being the best, so use that one), Ablative Coating, Reinforced Hull. I’d suggest using Ablative Coating since it will help out against crits, which could happen when facing an enemy with Time Wake Homing Missiles or Nahodoom Ray Launcher. So, the other device is between Quadprocessor or Reinforced Hull, which is entirely up to you.
For DR Walls, it all goes by buffing the devices that help give it mobility or more numbers into the DR Calculation shown above. Inertia Nullifier, ECM Jammer, Quadprocessor, Booster Device (now called Accelerator Engines, or Psi Drive for Psi races), Self-Conscious Fleet. I like throwing Reinforced Hull on the design too, to give it a little extra HP.
For HP Buffing walls, its all about stacking HP and Impenetrable Armor. Ablative Coating, Organic Carapace and Reinforced Hull. Throw on Quadprocessor too. The last device is your choice. You can go with a specialty device like Kwang-11, Gyro Deformator, or Crimson Figurehead, or try to throw on a DR device to give some extra to that. Another possibility is not to use Quadprocessor but two shield devices: Amplifying Chip and ForceField Generator. This will give some additional shield power.
Congratulations, if you followed this guide correctly so far, you’ve just designed a great Wall Doomstar.
Common Mistakes when Designing Ships
Some common mistakes I’ve seen when designing something is that people try to give bonuses to everything, effectively making the ship less powerful in the end. You do NOT want to try to mix weapon types on ships other than walls. You don’t want to try to make each ship a DR and Shield monster. Buffing both just ends up being a waste of space.
Fast Fire Weapons, And Why The World Revolves Around Them
Rarely is a battle ever won in the first shot of missiles. I’ve only ever seen it happen between Doomstars and Cruisers, and when that happens, its not pretty. So, in order to fill the space between when your missiles are firing, its important to have weapons that are powerful and fire fast. Over the course of the battle, the fast fire weapons will deal out a lot more damage than the walls. If you’ve ever played World of Warcraft, these are your DPS characters, and your Walls are your Tanks.
So, first and foremost, you have 2 different types of weapons that are used as fast fire. Beams and Ballistics, and they each have a commander type that they go with. Beams are used with Energy System Specialists, and Ballistics are used with Ballistic Experts. Pretty easy stuff to figure out.
But the big question here is how to design a good fast fire ship?
The ships are pretty much the same in their design, except for a couple of device changes. Both use Eternium armor, since it’s the most effective against fast fire. Note: In some cases other armors might be better. Karakiri will likely use Organic Carapace Crystal, as they get a 20% discount on ships with bio armor. Also, if they us Hive Mind commanders, they will not be as vulnerable to critical hits. If you expect to be mainly up against beams, you can also consider using N-Space Distortion Plate. However, this will make you weak against Ballistic (or Projectile) weapons.
The point when designing a good fast fire ship is to maximize the damage they deal, while lowering the cooling time. The devices you want to use to achieve this are numerous. Quadprocessor, Amplifying Chip, Self Concious Fleet, Ballistic Accelerator (only on Ballistics!), High Energy Focus (only on Beams!), Shield Phase Detector (mainly on Distortion Blaster fleets) and Structural Analyzer (mainly on Beam fleets). Alright, I guess not so numerous.
Basically, a good basic fast fire design is Quadprocessor, Reinforced Hull (or Ablative Coating), Amplifying Chip, Shield Phase Detector/Structural Analyzer and Ballistic Accelerator/High Energy Focus. These devices create the most damage and least cooling time, and are the exact devices I use on my ships.
But what weapons to use?
For Ballistics, its pretty obvious to use Distortion Blaster. So, I won’t go into detail about other options. People claim that Auto-Fire Gauss is better, but if you use that, then it’ll fire faster than your walls, and the AFG will steal all the threat. Note: Due to weapon and device changes, Auto-Fire Gauss and Distortion Blaster now have the same cooldown time. Generally Distortion Blaster deals more damage, Auto-Fire Gauss Cannon can be used as a special weapon, however its use requires quite some skill.
For Beams, it’s a bit trickier. Oscillation of Dissonance is regarded as the best widely-available Beam in the game, but you can’t leave out Phasor, which comes a close second. So, what to do? 2 slots of Phasor, the rest of OOD. This will make the fleet deal a good amount of damage to both shields (which OOD is weak against, but Phasor is very good against) and DR walls (which Phasor is weak against, and OOD is very good against.) For Mactabillis, simply replace Phasor with Nahodoom Ray Launcher and put more than two NRL slots on the doom.
For almost every race, that’s the basics of designing ships. Build some of each, and put them in a formation of 5 in each row, all set on formation. Like this:
You can use 5 walls, 10 ballistics, 5 beams... or 5 walls, 5 ballistics, 10 beams.. or 10 walls, 5 ballistics, 5 beams, its really up to you.
But, now we get into the tricky part – using Psi weapons! (Hooray?)
Psi weapons are used mostly for beams. Psi Storm Generator is a very effective weapon when used well. If you’re a Tetecuhtin, then it can create a devastating addition to your armada.
Basically, designing a good Psi ship is kind of the same as designing a Beam Fast Fire ship. High Energy Focus is your basis for it, and then throw on Psi Control System and Mind Tracker in order to buff the Psi attack. The other two devices should be Quadprocessor and either Reinforced Hull/Ablative Coating for some defense buff or Structural Analyzer for some more firepower. Easy enough, right?
If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed something that occurs in most of my designs – 2 devices that keep repeating. Reinforced Hull and Quadprocessor. I cannot stress enough how important these two devices are, they’re the best ones in the game. Adding more to the computer (Quadprocessor) will boost your DR and your AR. Reinforced Hull is an extra 20% hp, which means your ships live 20% longer.
Specialty Devices!
Don’t worry, this guide is almost done. Specialty devices are designs that aren’t absolutely needed in an armada, but can give it that nice extra push to greatness. The devices that come under this category are Kwang 11, Crimson Figurehead, Insanity Field Generator (only available to Psi Races) and Gyro Deformator. You can throw these all on one design and make it your commander fleet, with Time Wake Homing missiles. A good general design for this would be Eternium, and the devices are the 3 mentioned above, and of course, Quadprocessor and Reinforced Hull.
On to different ship sizes! Basically, use Reinforced Hull and Quadprocessor on everything from cruisers, and put them on Dreads too, but with one of the devices based on the ship type that you’re using. Simple enough.
Now that you’ve read this guide, you’ve graduated from hxc’s school of Ship Designs. Congratulations. You’re now ready to battle!
--Hxc 10:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
