How to Improve Laser? MORE LASER!!

[@sabetwolf]

A small tip for Ion aiming - Ctrl-P allows you to precisely place where an ion is aiming, rather than aiming to something grid-aligned. This allows you to make very specific angles to help aim your ions - for example, it was very possible to hit those front aiming crystals with your first design

[@Beef__]

Fire Ant paint looks great! And I love how the front of it is designed to look like an ants mandibles

[@Aavak]

Thank you :D

[@someone-mh5uf]

:D

[@wyrdean_9649]

@@Aavak Also an fyi, your suggested crew is actually 200, not 86 You have 86 bunks You're doing well as you're managing your crew well, but even so, 120 crew short technically

[@yoyodada230]

@@wyrdean_9649 He mentioned a few episodes back that the game recommendations are very kind, and dont completely consider how effectively the crew can move around and the crew roles, he is mostly going for a limited crew while keeping an effective pace, because in campaign its a lot harder to get more crew, though it does look quite significant ngl, then again the ship doesnt seem to have too much power troubles in the video after the redesign.

[@thenecroinniceclothes5019]

Called it. Spinal Rail Cannon flanked by Ion Arrays. Honestly, I recommend that you manually dictate when the Rail Cannon is fired. That way you do not waste shots by allowing the crew to automatically fire it at the target's strong defensive points (shields, thick armor) just because the target entered range. You use the Dual Ion Arrays and the Fire Ant's missiles to deal with Shields and armor and you use the Rail Cannon as a finisher against the squishy interior where it's nothing but corridors and modules.

[@frite2002]

Aavak, you have found the formula for good cosmoteer content. Very enjoyable content

[@darthbob1656]

Quicks suggestion for if you go for an even longer spinal mount railgun, and especially given that you already have your ship split in separate segments. Instead of one railgun, put two side by side. Your crew already can't walk across an accelerator, but if you have the crew on one side to power and supply one railgun, if it's mirrored on the other side you have the crew and power to supply a second. The obvious drawback is the wider twin launchers are a larger target to get shots down, but you're also already layering shields properly.

[@bobthemudman5088]

Something to keep in mind is that a large reactor battery has 3 charges and will use all three charges for filling a single charge need in the bridge and sensor array. Maybe throwing in a capacitor that feeds them would help keep the 3 charges being used efficiently.

[@janniszimbalski6652]

Doesn‘t the same happen when loading the capacitor?

[@KrysRevamps]

@@janniszimbalski6652 yup, capacitors downgrade the charge back to one per crew. The best way to save on crew is to use large reactors as near as possible

[@bobthemudman5088]

@@KrysRevamps I could be misremembering but doesn't the capacitor just separate it into 3 single charges?

[@janniszimbalski6652]

@@bobthemudman5088 Yeah, but if there is only one slot empty in the capacitor, then the crew will still put a triple battery in there and throw 2 of those away. Same as when they are loading a system. They don‘t wait for 3 open slots, afaik.

[@fade2dblack]

You had me worried at 22:20 when you built armor on the starboard side while not in mirror mode. I was glad to see after a cut that you had resolved the discrepancy.

[@lamename2010]

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it yet, but you seem to have forgotten that you didn't have mirror mode on and various changes to the plan were not accounted for, such as when you removed doors from the ion beam generator into the main corridor. The other side still has those doors.

[@Alucard15423]

Take a look at the "Sol Renatus" its part of the Cabal combat ships. It's a very nice example how to do a hybrid Railgun /Laser ship. Just look at how the central prisms are placed to allow the railguns to shoot past them and use the same central barrel.

[@kpuff2477]

Just so you know, I had never watched your channel before a couple days ago. Today, I find myself checking KZbin throughout the day looking for a new video from you.

[@nickgrout2502]

Same here! Top quality Cosmoteer content!

[@DudeInGloom]

agreed, so far the only decent cosmoteer content.

[@nickgrout2502]

@@DudeInGloom Lathland has some good cosmoteer content as well

[@--Arthur]

I agree - That ship certainly have the balls to stand side by side with your other creations

[@Reoh0z]

After losing some crew through Airlocks, I started binding them to the hotkey "0" and locking the airlocks when I want everyone to sit tight.

[@WifiThing]

i like how you do emit your mistakes in design and tell how you made that mistake so we can learn from it.

[@benmackinnon3645]

If you expand the ship further maybe adding some tertiary weapons systems for small fighter craft on your sides and engines and maybe a deck gun or two I LOVE them!

[@tubman1952]

So... after watching all these episodes... I couldn't resist the urge any longer. Bought Cosmoteer! Was well worth it.

[@BalthazarB2]

Bring a friend along if you can. Always fun watching them mess up and explode.

[@buizerdhawk26]

widening the fire arc of the frontal emitters a bit might help too. you are firing against your own armor there

[@BalthazarB2]

Aavak, it is probably a good idea to bind shortcut control groups to your two frontal prisms so you can control and aim them directly, otherwise they won't turn.

[@reaganmcmahon6955]

How wonderful to be snug as a bug in a rug to weather the storm when Avaak drops another Cosmoteer video. Glorious!

[@boingzebadee5337]

New 3x1 sloped armour pieces and the box structure pieces also have a bunch of new stuff too in today's update!

[@magoshighlands4074]

Based on the effect, perhaps changing the rail gun up for a disruptor and keeping the rail gun for a dedicated craft, something like the Fireant, long ranged hard hitting fire power, perhaps lighter and faster than both the Scarab and Fireant to best exploit thin points in enemy armour?

[@ghriszlybare2547]

One tip i haven't seen yet is regarding door placement. Its a good idea to turn off automatic doors and think about where you need them. Fires only spread through doors and it helps in creating an efficient route for the energy pathing. For example the reactors near the bottom of the Scarab should have doors directly to the engine rooms but it looks like it doesn't.

[@HeathenSWolf]

Scarab icon now looks like an alien kid in a shrek hat, offering to hug you. Adorable.

[@wobatt]

Suggestion on cockpit placement for a longer railgun: Try making it a bit more asymetric, by having the cockpit and scanner on the left, using the space that your main storage is in. You can then have all storage on the right, cut off from the left by a railgun going from one end of the ship to the other.

[@atomsorcerer8356]

This would be VERY costly in terms of resources AND crew, but i would genuinely recommend building a Railgun-focused frigate. That way you can design the ship around the super-long barrel, rather than trying to fit it into your already existing ship. Futhermore, i would even recommend putting at least 2 or 3 Railguns on it, and use a tactic called “Railfanning”! Railguns are 0° weapons, and fire precisely where they are aimed. So if you have a bunch next to each other, they will each fire straight ahead in parallel. But if you tell each one to only fire ON-TARGET, then they will only shoot if they can line up with their target. Doesn’t sound very good, right? Well remember, you can rotate your ship, so suddenly the Railgun will hold it’s fire until it lines up with the target, and then shoot it with precision. But we’re not done yet If you have multiple Railguns set to only fire on-target, and you give them all the same target, then when the ship rotates it will barrage the same spot of the enemy ship with high-damage, high-piercing rounds, in RAPID succession. Then you simply let the Railguns reload, and rotate the ship the other way, and the volley fires off again. Railfanning is an INCREDIBLY powerful strategy, at the cost of having multiple Railguns on a ship, and needing to constantly manage the ship so that it will keep rotating (or “fanning”) back and forth. A lot of investment, but well worth it i would say. [EDIT] You only need access to ONE side of a Railgun Accelerator to fully power it, even though it has battery slots on both sides. One-sided access is perfectly viable!

[@T.efpunkt]

You can adress the different sizes of system rooms by placing 2-bed rooms, airlocks and fire extinguishers arround the 9×9 ones.

[@sebastianramos8920]

The attack team these ships make is awesome! Love to see the Fire Ant have A LOT more missile lunchers!

[@judet2992]

Very Death Star. I like it. Also try replacing one of the non-functional sensor arrays with a smaller reactor to supplement power with the old one but I like this.

[@pachanga5382]

I'll never get tired of seeing a rail gun vaporise a vessel when it hits the right spot. Because of their size they are logistically awkward. I'm just redesigning and I'm looking to have a dedicated rail gun crew to keep it powered. Plus you end up with a ship in two halves so crew assignment is vital to prevent them working efficiently.

[@Liango-dz3kn]

I just realized that the fire ant looks like a specific part of the lower part of the middle part , higher than the lowest part, in between the semi low part of the human male body

[@Friend2Trolls]

It might be more efficacious to build a ship around a railgun, rather than trying to adapt the Scarab around one? If you pull the railgun out, you could be firing three beams at a target, with more efficiency. All of that said, the railgun is really cool and I've been wanting to see you try out the various other weapon systems. It'd be really neat to see things like the deck guns and cannons being used for instance! Over all though, still a good time. And I'm glad you fixed mirroring the armor before you went into combat on the Scarab, it was giving me fits. :P

[@nommy8599]

Just so you know, Saris has a guide on railfanning on YT that's very good. It goes through hotkeying the weapons and targeting techniques for using multiple rails really effectively. Might give some inspiration / ideas. GL!

[@baileyaskew6566]

amazing series! I cannot stop watching, I think it would be cool to isolate the railgun in the middle so if a shot does come through and it explodes, the two side split away and can act on their own.

[@00impulse00]

Very nice paint job for the Fire Ant. The redesign of the Scarab is cool, would love to see full length rail gun. I feel the Fire Ant needs more missiles. It does good damage I just don't think it applies it fast enough. Great episode as always Aavak!

[@MiscellaneousMcC]

I’m currently using dual 7 accelerator rail guns mounted side by side and they will one shot many ships presenting their sides. They also are very effective at firing on stations outside the stations firing range.

[@Petq011]

5:10 I feel like a lot of people have already said that, but you can freely overlap the shields "non-buildable" field with the thruster's field and it would still work as it does now. The shield would just be one square forward, and potentially offer a bit more cover to the crystal, as shells from normal cannons penetrate and damage up to 5 meters (iirc). Which doesn't matter at asll, since that's a big shield. 😅😂

[@martinbergen2963]

Dont underestimate the Power of the Railguns. I got 3 long range ships in my fleet, each with 4 Railguns and they plow through armor and shields. You will see it if your Barrel got länger and you Power them constantly. Thanks for your Video, its nice to see how others handle stuff

[@B5P0]

The Number at the suggested crew shows how much crew is on the ship rn and the other shows how much can be. you have to stay on the symbol to see how muchcrew is suggested

[@septim08]

the scarab looks good. as for extending the railgun with a few more accelerators, i would probably also double the ion emitters to extend the torso section of the scarab ;)

[@superdossi8003]

Love the content right now, ships are coming along beautifully. I would be very interested to see some swarm ships down the line too once you’ve got all your main ships ironed out. Just a group of 10 or so small ships with either one nuke launcher or rail gun that are low cost to repair and replace that will tear away at ships and bases by overwhelming them. Keep up the good work!

[@twinkyoctopus]

At the lower level, where I am it's not uncommon for the railgun to one-shot the various enemy craft, and it's very satisfying

[@TheToric]

A big railgun can one-shot basically any non-sheilded opponents. Almost useless againt sheilds, unfortunately.

[@twinkyoctopus]

@@TheToric that's where disruptors come in

[@opposed2logic]

@@TheToric rail fans can break through most shield setups, especially in career. the way you use railguns in cosmoteer isnt by having 1 long one. you have a ship with 6 railguns of around 8 accelerators (+106% damage per rail) then you set them all to target the same part of an enemy ship. you now "fan" your ship (rotate it so it sweeps over the enemy ship) and all 6 railguns will fire sequentially as their barrel lines up with the target. the result is that your 6 railguns all fired on the exact same spot at an enemy. with that set up one salvo from your railguns will disable 2 stacked large shields + 2 small shields behind them. that means on the second sweep you will hit the armor directly, and with 6 100% railguns you will penetrate 8 layers of bricked 2x1 armor. this means you will almost always punch through straight to the components behind armor. this means that maxoverlap smallshields + full armor in front of them will be entirely taken out (penetrated + destroyed) by 2 volleys.

[@opposed2logic]

@@twinkyoctopus dont use disruptors on rail. you get more railguns instead and fan the enemy. you can one shot any shields

[@edijs99]

Ion beams can be redirected by your other ships if they have crystals. So that means that you could have a ion ship out of range of any weapon and a battleship that would guide the beam and take the attacks. You could redirect the ion beam from a single emitter up to 5 km. However at that distance it is just a laser pointer with non existent damage.

[@Alnarra]

A single supplier can provide for both the bridge and the sensor suite. It's actually kind of handy, I just give them their own private reactor and isolate them in armor with the bunks for their operations staff and a single two person bunk for their energy supplier.

[@jordanu6501]

Should make a dedicated railgun ship. And name in The Pinocchio.

[@PyroMancer2k]

DISRUPTORS! You need to put some on your ship as they are OP vs Shields. In creative I tested TWO Disruptors set to continuous fire Against SIX Large Shields all next to each other with Large Reactor and lots of crew refilling them and the two still manage to breach the shields faster then the six Large shields could be restocked. Putting a pair of Disruptors on front can really help get down those shields so the Railgun can penetrate the ship hull. After testing and realizing how OP Disruptors are I tend to target them first thing as my current ship, like yours, relies heavily on shields and not so much on armor. Same with EMPs though can only target launchers and hope PD take them out. Personally I don't use EMP Missile cause they are too random where they hit and I want anti shield fire where my weapons are currently focused.

[@219nate]

When calculating the thruster requirements, you dont need to add up all the engines, just the largest draw on opposite directions, ie if you have 2 thrusters on the front and one on the back, you just add up the draw from the larger side as they will never both be going at once

[@Redicule_research._ridiculous]

If you start to take damage to your railgun, the whole thing is gonna explode, leaving a way open all the way to your reactor. I'd like to see some more armor

[@grim2792]

I love the ships you designed so much! They look awesome and are quite effective in their functions. I love it

[@Tabledar]

I went ahead and did some for sciencing on the missile reloading. No gap with a direct storage connection to the missile parts allows 2 crew members to fully load a missile bay in about 12.25 seconds from the time they pick up the first HE missile part. With a 1-corridor gap, the time extends to 15.79 seconds. With a 6 corridor gap, which is the closest gap between the Fire Ant's missile systems and missile parts, the time extends to a whopping 31.87 seconds, nearly thrice as long as no gap.

[@Tabledar]

As a bonus, I also did a test simulating the Fire Ant's turns and moving walkways, and it's slightly more efficient than the standard 6 tile gap at 31.57 seconds with 2 crew members.

[@katathoombs]

Rewatching the series. Didn't remember the _Fireant_ looked so much like it collected skulls for the Skull-throne.

[@Vulkanodox]

Longer Railgun is very suboptimal. Just like lasers lose efficiency the more you combine them the railguns lose efficency with each booster. It is far more valuable to build a second railgun than extending one. to efficiently shoot both railguns at a single target you put both of them into "shoot at target only" mode and then lightly rotate your ship from left to right and back. As your ship rotates it will fire both railguns as they align with the target. that is because the railguns are fixed and you can only aim them by moving the ship. And the most efficient way to do that is rotating. This is called rail fanning and gets extremely powerful when you stack 6+ railguns. Very high precision strike damage. Most weapons like lasers and the normal guns lose out in end game ships because they are not accurate and have to eat through masses of shields and armor to damage anything. In addition railguns can have the longest range in the game and paired with enough reverse trust you can keep enemies at range indefinitely where they can not even start to attack you.

[@silaslithian5298]

It would be entertaining to make a pure rail gun assist build. Less shields, maybe some missiles, but just a long stick covered in small thrusters, point defense and two conveyor belts wrapping around the overcompensator barrel.

[@jacobflesch6953]

the compartmentalization increases, next episode: 20 section ship! in all seriousness I'm glad that changing the ship to sections worked for you Aavak, and if you need more space in the scarab you could get rid of the moving walkways that aren't necessary for combat, like ones near storage that will not be in use during combat

[@jacobflesch6953]

if there are any

[@Kotiri]

I feel the Scarab's main body should be 2 units wider to make sure the array sections don't have as good of an entry to the railgun and maybe later make a railgun dedicated ship that is based on maybe a termite

[@jameshitchcock1486]

What if you make the railgun part of a different ship and put a aiming Crystal there so you can bounce the beams back and forth between the front two aiming crystals and then redirect it to the one in the middle to fire that is if the bouncing of the laser would work to make an incredibly powerful shot

[@12463trf]

I found the ion beam so powerful, I decided to start again and RP as a brigadeer/cannoneer, focusing on cannons and explosions. It's definitely more challenging, but satisfying in a different way.

[@williamhess180]

switch the reactor and the sensor array to make it a little more symmetrical or put all three in a line maybe?

[@danielhall5364]

The New Fire Ant. AKA The Twig and Berries.

[@demos74dxs]

Love the redesign with the rail gun.

[@Chuck_vs._The_Comment_Section]

It would be great if there was a combination of this game and HighFleet. So the staging, the graphic style and the "technical foundation" of HighFleet but the combat works so that you can actually use your ships as a fleet. - That would be like a dream come true!

[@20ZZ20]

Starsector is similar to this (and better imo)

[@smithiWerben]

This game is mostly a ship building simulator with the ocational target ship for combat practice, but i love it :D

[@andyman286]

The stongest shape looming really good

[@supremecommander2398]

OCD Alarm: the two inner most Ion cannons have asymmetric door placements. and TBH, given how inefficient your beams are against shields... you should consider pairing the Railgun with some disruptors or EMP missiles on a third Ship. to answer the question from the beginning of the redesign: instead of a railgun, you should have put a deck-Cannon back there next to the bridge :D

[@janniszimbalski6652]

Deck cannon next to the bridge? Ya cheeky bugger!

[@johnlongmore5750]

You know what's better than a big spinal mount railgun? TWO big spinal mount railguns, since the crew can fully load power into an accelerator module from one side and you have to have good pathing along it anyway.

[@Madcat1975]

Aavak if you select the last crystal in an Ion beam chain and then press crtl and an number key you can assign it to a weapon group so you can then target each beam to a different target.

[@dominicdemmer12]

My experience with the railgun is that it doesn't go through armer bot it goes through coredors and everything it does lots of damage but it stops at armer.

[@athena3250]

Aavak, you cheeky devil, you fixed the janky armor in the Scarab in the cut at 24:24!

[@gaberielpendragon]

It looks like the crew count on the scarab is about a third of what it needs. The numbers between the / is the number of bunks you have. The colored bar behind it is how much the ship wants to have. I don't think crew has collision. @20:55 for a very short time the suggested crew popped up asking for 200 crew in the ship. Railguns highly prefer having a specific component targeted, it gets a bit messy when not as it will tend to fire at the first bit that comes into it's firing line. At least with a single barrel, railfanning doesn't really matter.

[@jamesrozell6467]

Splitting your ion cannon really made a difference.

[@PhoenixianThe]

Does anyone else find Aavak forgetting that mirror mode is off and then patching it up between cuts to be just _thrilling_ drama? Sure, it's something that happens to all of us, but at the same time there's the question: "Oh, is he going to see it, or will that realization in the middle of something when it matters?"

[@Aaroc200]

I'm a little late to the party, but I feel like an overall redesign to the scarab could be in order, along with a new name: The Scorpion. With the rail gun being the "tail" and the ion beams being the "claws". That's what I was thinking of the whole time you were talking about extending the rail gun.

[@gothicpando]

There's mods to make the railgun competitive with the ion beam, not totally on par, but a good second best.

[@overlordkamina4016]

By having the moving walkways facing away from the reactor near your ion beams, the crew return trip to get more batteries for them is doubled. Either add another hallway with return walkways or remove the movers all together to increase efficiency with the ion beams.

[@jgvandenhoorn3888]

the railgun becomes quite more powerfull if it can keep shooting. it ran out of energy after only a few shots. I mostly use to of them, one to take out the small shield, the other to kill what it is protecting. also, you have the minimum required crew only. a skeletal crew will keep the ship funcional, but it caused the power fulctiations. although, with how hard crew seems to come by, i appove of the allocation of rescources to cut down crew travel time

[@HiImKyle]

Surely you could just keep the small reactors for the thruster clusters, opposite facing thrusters never fire at the same time from what I can see, so you should probably only be counting one side/direction of thrusters when calculating your power consumption right? Also I really wish you could hyperjump to your own ships

[@finnmaccool3721]

If you're going to redesign to support a railgun, and the railgun needs a corridor to supply power... how about a central corridor and a railgun barrel on either side. Twice the fun!

[@Babalas]

The railgun is very much a sniper weapon capable of hitting components behind a few layers of armour. At around the 34 min mark that missile launcher would have made a very tempting target as it would go through the thruster too. I've one shot those pirate bases that leave a straight path to their reactor unguarded.

[@atomsorcerer8356]

I just discovered something with some playtesting of my own, and i think you might find it interesting. Ion Beams can shoot into prisms on your ship to be redirected, obviously. However, this also applies to ANY Ion Prism that you own. Even if it’s on ANOTHER SHIP ENTIRELY. I tested it out and you can 100% shoot Ion Beams out the BACK of your ship, bounce them off a few smaller ships carrying Ion Prisms, and then use a small prism ship BEHIND the enemy to direct the beam at them. You can fire the laser around corners. I don’t know how viable this is for a real strategy, seeing as you’d need multiple small, agile, vulnerable ships to bounce the beam off of. But who knows!

[@Taalen]

Before the last redesign, your left innermost ion beam went down because it was crewed by energy haulers. Your bridge was 4 operators short, you only added bunks for 2 more. I think at the end of the episode one of the ion beams was still not crewed by operators, but not sure. Didn't stop firing though. As for the Fireant, would it make sense to place it on the Scarab's opposite flank? That way it can approach the enemy's side, flip 180° and maintain position with it's rear firing thrusters rather than the reverse ones. Please keep up the good work, your videos are always a pleasure to follow. Furthermore, if they're ever giving an award for the least obnoxious person on the internet, I'll be sure to nominate you.

[@kriegscommissarmccraw4205]

For the sensor array, bridge and tractor beam, can't you just move the sensor array under the bridge and stick the tractor beam in the other available space? Sure you'll be missing some storage, but you'll get a tractor beam.

[@joshuavaillancourt3140]

I would classify the Fire Ant as a missile frigate; I like how you transformed the Fire Ant.

[@batman4ever666]

Thanks for the episode

[@Anonymouzor]

what if you put a spinal mounted railgun through the Hercules?

[@danielkenny7522]

"Any respect you would have for me as a person, would evaporate like the dusk before the dawn." LOL

[@MoralPyromaniac]

I wonder if you could make a ship out of conpletely separate modules. I'm talking completely separate, like jigsawing peices of separate ships together. Be interesting to see if a larger thruster jigsaw peice could drag them all along with it.

[@dethkruzer]

At least the Fire Ant's paint job makes it look less like a certain piece of anatomy. That rail gun needs to be bigger, I'd say running the full length of the Scarab, maybe even poking out the back. Although this would require either dividing the rear thruster cluster in two, or moving the thruster cluster to the end of the rail gun.

[@swordknight1075]

spent like 2+ hrs building a storage ship, then clicked on this love the vids man

[@GtierGoes]

Love watching and enjoying the episodes, Aavak. 😊

[@0shii]

While you don't need all the points provided by a bridge, you can use two control rooms - They take a little more room, but use 1 less crew, and might be easier to make symmetrical :D Also, worth noting the railgun only needs to be supplied power to one side, although that information might hurt your symmetry!

[@Tabledar]

Is there any way for you to get the missile systems in direct contact with their ammo stowage? Even having them one full grid space away noticeably affects the reload time, I find. You might even try a vertical compartmentalization of the middle section of the Fire Ant Mk.III into two parallel middle sections to give each side dedicated loaders.

[@adriant1654]

I love the sound of my double railguns firing....

[@icyheart788]

Hey Aavak. loving the series so far. One thing I am curious though. As an idea for when the DPR4 returns. perhaps turn it into a full out battleship using deck guns and heavy armor/shields mixed around since you have mostly avoided using any cannon based weaponry.

[@joshuavaillancourt3140]

The pant job of the Fire Ant is like if the the Fire Nation were in space.

[@Nevir202]

22:15 the fact he doesn't realize he isn't in symmetry mode, leaving that hole in the left side of the ship hurts my soul.... And that's after making his ion beam doors asymmetrical...

[@DjDayOne]

You can run 4 ion beams off of a single medium reactor. Plus it takes way less crew if you bunch it all up together.

[@Catowillis]

Just started watching your vids and enjoying the content immensely. Why not make a third ship thats long and norrow that can sit in the back thats like a sniper? From what i saw the railgun can bypass shields with a long enough barrel. Making systems easy targets for the railgun.

[@anotherkenlon]

Missile ships need an option to wait until all bays are loaded before firing, I think.

[@divedweller4295]

42:30 - 'It' turned around? 'It' felt? You sapped it's thrusters and blew off an entire section of it's hull! 45:20 - If you can't outpace an enemy, doesn't continuing to run away just spread the debris across the system and increase the risk of backing onto something?

[@siennility4706]

If you angle the Fire Ant slightly more towards the enemy in combat rather than being 100% broadside (only down to like, 90 to 95% broadside) it will be able to better use its rear thrusters to keep up with its enemies and move around them

[@matthewsleppy1118]

On the fire ant it could help to have some additional thrusters on the right side to help maintain station in combat.

[@justinfriesen7155]

Fire ant is looking great! Won’t lie, no armor on the girders connecting the engine pods bothers me! 😂