Let's Fight Fire with Fire!!

[@Aavak]

Super late night upload, for all you night-owls out there! Let me know what you think about the flak question.

[@maxxwelthrix432]

We appreciate it

[@User-md3ul]

and I thought I'd go to sleep nevermind ;)

[@justinfriesen7155]

Just off work on the West coast USA, so perfect timing for me!

[@Sef_Era]

It’s only 9:00 PM here! I’m not going to say ‘no’ to an episode, though :) Edit: maybe put a mining laser on the ‘front’ of the Scarab, to delete (or atleast massively reduce) any rocks or scrap you hit? Not to collect the loot, just to destroy the blockade… While you’re redesigning it anyways.

[@lidltraut8258]

I have allways used the flak cannons, so i would be really curious how the regular point defense holds up with higher numbers. I would appreciate you trying it out

[@Daemonworks]

I can't help but feel that the double-wide rail charging corridor would have been a good idea, as it would let you use conveyors... that's a lot of walking.

[@bradwiersma]

Agreed. As well one could wonder how much a 3x3 reactor with a 3 wide corridor putting up belts against the rails and a return down the middle would improve the reload efficiency.

[@nommy8599]

Yes for 2 wide gap but no for conveyors. The distance makes it still inefficient in terms of fire-rate/crew compared to placing several small reactors. To run 2 rails 100% fire rate you need 1 small reactor and 2 bunks per 8 accelerators. Put the reactor in middle and a bunk either side dedicated to supplying 4 accel. There's space for airlock, extinguisher and even a hyperdrive every now and again. I've tried using medium reactors spaced slightly father apart instead but there are firing delays doing that because the railgun parts only store 2 power and the crew AI doesn't prioritise well enough to keep everything topped up. Same issue with conveyors and distant reactor.

[@MasterOfYoda]

The sandwich configuration is just going to ruin both accuracy and reload times. Just put down 2 rails in the middle with no gap and feed them from the sides.

[@nommy8599]

@@MasterOfYoda Can you explain how a small gap ruins accuracy? I didn't watch whole vid but seems like he has 2 options: 1. Target parts & fan - gap is fine - guns shoot whenever ready and pointed at part 2. Just let it shoot at whatever - what difference is a small gap anyway RE fire rate - I take it you didn't read the comment above, right?

[@Petq011]

Also, 2 crew running face-to-face trying to pass each other also slows them down by 50%, so having the tunnel 2 wide and 2 doors on the reactor would be the optimal solution. Or just hope that they never run into each other.

[@0shii]

I'm not sure the disruptors fit with the range your other weapons are aiming to fight at, you might be able to lose them You're probably under supplying the railguns, there was something on the reddit recently about how many extra shots you can get out of them with more crew hauling power. Rather than turning off the nukes, you can just set them to hold fire - That way the operators will stay there and you can get them operational again faster.

[@Aavak]

This makes a lot of sense, thanks for the suggestion!

[@Ben-li9zb]

Ion beams can damage other prisms, the reason you weren't hurting that one ship is because it had 4 small shields converging right in front of the prism

[@ReatuKrentor]

I feel like the Fireant hull design could work as a battlebarge with deck cannons.

[@stevenwojtysiak6392]

I like the 3 wide separation between the rail guns with two outer walkways running away from the reactor next to each barrel and one walkway in the center coming back to the reactor. You could put one flack cannon at the front between the railguns and remove the two outer ones. (or a shield, though that's a long haul to keep it charged.)

[@LordTruespirit]

If u put a large shield between them then u could just put the reactor at the other end to keep the shield powered with the same distance to the rail parts. A flak would require storage and/or ammo factories which would make it a challenge to squeeze between the rails. How much impact would a wider separation between the rails have on it's aim?

[@PhoenixianThe]

Has anyone mentioned yet how the placement of the aiming crystals at the front of the Scarab makes it look like the beams are refracting off the edge of the shield bubble? Because it's a very cool detail.

[@nommy8599]

FYI engine room makes thrusters use +50% power also. That's why small reactor couldn't keep up (3huge need 1.8/s, had 1.5/s). What you've got now is good. Hope you feel better soon. Also, ditch flak, I think.

[@Aavak]

Oh! I had no idea it needed more power too. That makes much sense XD

[@glaucousgrey990]

You were the final push that made me go and buy the game, been having a ton of fun! Also, something that I've found VERY useful and convenient is to bind easy to reach keybinds (the two side buttons on my mouse) for changing the timescale. Makes speeding up for travel and slowing down for combat much faster and easier.

[@Aavak]

Thanks for the tip :D

[@rs2excelsior]

My two cents on the flak batteries - perhaps consider dropping the flak for a couple of PD turrets, and in the near future, build a small escort ship with mainly flak and PD to tag along beside the Scarab and help shoot down incoming missiles? EDIT: Love the rearward armament on the Scarab - makes a ton of sense given how it engages. Looking forward to seeing how it performs in future battles!

[@gnomadix2023]

For the rail gun, why don’t you have a walkways on the outside going up so they can reload with energy quicker and the central corridor between the two accelerators should have a down facing walkway. This could massively speed up firing/energy delivery.

[@Dawnseeker_Ch]

Because you can't walk through the accelerator to use the walkway on the other side that would help you get back...

[@naseweis6105]

i think he wants to say loading upper halve from above and the rest from down. i have dual 106% rail and load both from down and can shoot co stanrly. rail can shoot every 4 seconds, that helps too

[@DyingCr0w]

Thought exactly the same.

[@dillonvandergriff4124]

For loading the nukes faster, you could fairly easily make a direct corridor from the storage to the launcher by bumping the bunks between the two in towards the center by one block. If I'm understanding walk speed right, that should double the rate at which they can travel twix the two.

[@Esperologist]

51:48 - That wouldn't speed them up in this situation. (Presuming you mean the Scarab's nukes.) Ignoring the time in the storage room (as it will always be part of the travel time) and the time in the missile launcher (also always be part of the time). Travel time 'in room' is 50% slower than corridor... which is to say it takes twice as long. So for simplicity, we'll say corridors are 1s per square, and 'in room' is 2s. As of the end of this video, they travel 3 'in room' (6 seconds) and 2 'in corridor' (2 seconds), so 8 seconds between storage and launcher. Pulling the two bunks away and routing through the corridor there instead would be 5 'in corridor' (5 seconds) and 2 'in room' (4 seconds)... which would be 9 seconds total. Speeding it up would require moving the reactor so it is direct corridor the whole way (5 seconds)... or pulling the bunks and the small shield one away for dedicated corridor there (6 seconds)... or a complete redesign that moves the storage closer. Note : There are only two places the door can be on the launcher... left side or right side (current design has it left side). I mention it, because I think that is where you are thinking the speed would be gained... but that one piece of corridor between the bunks and the launcher cannot have a door directly into the launcher. The station terminals to run the launcher are blocking that wall.

[@stevenhartl3716]

@@Esperologist What about swapping the launcher with the disruptor before moving the bunks?

[@david2869]

Now that the Scarab is attacking backwards, you could change the name to "Bombardier" as in a bombardier beetle that sprays hot liquid out its backside to ward off attackers.

[@May-gr8bp]

Is it genuinely hot liquid or is it acidic/alkali/poison?

[@david2869]

@@May-gr8bp It's actually hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone. I think it's alkaline and of course would be poisonous. But the reaction makes the aqueous reaction liquid hot.

[@12463trf]

You probably already found out by now, but you can launch mines from the launcher even out of range. Ctrl click them and set them to a hotkey, and use the button (IIRC: N) to fire off mines manually. Perfect for when using a trap ship that forces them to chase you while you outrange

[@moofish7618]

i do think people conveyors are essential for long rail guns if you want a higher fire rate, it takes those porters so long to travel up that corridor and more porters would clog the hallway as im pretty sure passing through someone also slows them down (but dont quote me on that one).

[@LordTruespirit]

People movers would require either separating the railguns an additional tile or running 2 double corridors on either side of the rails with a med reactor for each.

[@ddshiranui]

Feeding enemy prisms is an absolutely hilarious idea which I now feel should be implemented in the game.

[@atomsorcerer8356]

Someone ought to make a mod for that, lmao

[@Aavak]

It would be amusing if nothing else XD

[@martindinner3621]

Okay, we confirmed that you can't feed enemy ions, but can you feed friendly ion crystals on a second ship?

[@obsessivecorvid]

@@martindinner3621 yes, you can(someone made a multi ship death star once)

[@mixingbrownie]

Love the series, and love how you walk it through with the viewers. Keep up the good work

[@andreasscherf1736]

I love your ships. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!

[@crazymechanicgaming]

I have copied the fire ant exactly then modified it. With a bit of a re-work to command and control and the side engine clusters I have managed to get the whole ship to run on just 2 medium reactors. It still has 110 crew just like the original and it is still exactly the same shape its just its insides have been tweaked. Also I recommend swaping 2 launchers to EMP. I named my variant the Antlion because I think it looks a bit like one.

[@CaffeinatedFingers]

Have you thought about a little dedicated sun-diver tug to pull out the really $$ asteroids closer to the sun? Kind fun to run because of the challenge of keeping the shields toward the sun or Poof! (especially a challenge while tractoring the resource asteroids to safe space). Maybe built as a scaffolded attachment on the Hercules that detached only at need and otherwise serves as a front shield cluster...

[@LordSockenIoch]

You can rotate your ship by hitting r during a fight. By doing that you can also see the range of your weapons and rotate your ship so the railguns can hit what they are supposed to hit.

[@WovenTales]

With the way formations are tied to the orientation of the primary ship rather than the relative location of the target, the Fire Ant is taking a long time at the beginning of every battle to cross the field when it could essentially just turn in place as well. While I've not played myself, would it be worth the micromanagement to have two different formations with the Fire Ant on opposite sides of the Scarab to get it into position faster? Or instead maybe set up a default engagement angle which would allow it to "break formation" when the battle begins?

[@Aavak]

This may well help, thanks for the suggestion!

[@spit782]

I love when he is railing petite spaceships (you can make so many jokes)

[@Maeyanie]

Ok, since you made a point of it, and apparently I have a weird idea of fun, I went back and did a "thruster cluster" count... I got a total of 15 times. Timestamps below, if anyone else catches one I missed please post a reply with the timestamp. :) 1:18, 1:20, 1:24, 3:04, 3:06, 12:41, 12:44, 12:50, 13:09, 13:37, 28:11, 30:08, 31:37, 31:45, 31:54

[@aracaniusinfinius2880]

I like the idea of a 2 wide walkway between the rails. You'd get moving walkway loops, options for reactors on both ends of the rails, an extra shield to cover the rails and maybe even 2 more small flak if you choose to ditch the extra armour for those.

[@travispluid3603]

I would love to see a Solar Diver ship- in case you didn't know, there's large quantities of rare materials inside of the melty area of a star. You can block solar damage using a shield, and pull asteroids out with a Tractor beam to mine them.

[@nazaxprime]

Now this, I would like to see... Very interesting industry options. I can't wait to see how we push the games possibilities with mods. More crew, and larger fleet craft counts is very compelling.

[@nazaxprime]

Do shields deplete under stellar bombardment and does a ship need 360° coverage, or can it be directional?

[@LordTruespirit]

@@nazaxprime I thought crossing the red line just damages the entire ship equally regardless of shields & armor? Would be nice to see it "for scienced" LOL

[@nazaxprime]

@@LordTruespirit agreed, this is the first I've heard of shielding against it. Would be cool to see the feature developed and exploited if possible...

[@oldsoulrathael]

The thruster clusters still pass muster! Now that I have that out of my system, I like the "backwards" design for the Scarab. It's very much artillery at this point, so it fits well to have it specialize in fighting retreats.

[@Aavak]

Yeah, this felt like the most obvious next step.

[@ceselb]

This series is 100% why I watch you for this game almost exclusively. Well done, near perfect format. Also thanks for cutting out the designing like you did. I thought I'd enjoy that bit. Turns out, that was not the case.

[@SpectorOfDoomYT]

For the railguns, I used a similar setup on one of my ships, with similar problems on the recharge time. The solution I found for that configuration, is to have at least 2 porters per railgun and have a "people mover" (moving walkway) going in each direction in between the rails. Downside is, it requires 2 spaces between the rails, one for each direction. I eventually got tired of having to have to fan the railguns and just slapped them together with a moving walkway on each side of the set.

[@superdossi8003]

I always look forward to your videos, good way to wind down. Although I was very drunk when this released last night and I couldn’t process anything that was going on in the redesign XD

[@madPav3L]

40:35 No damage has been done because your railgun is still reloading from previous fight. The shot you heard was the enemy ship firing at you.

[@CarlGorn]

I counted 15 instances of "cluster thruster." I was interrupted several times whilst watching, so my count may be off.

[@skirata3144]

As a third option you can launch the nukes out of the side (e.g. move the launchers next to the side facing large shields) which would give you back the room in the front.

[@EmberBlaze99]

So the mines themselves are the thing that need to slow down to arm, not your ship. They also bleed off momentum pretty quick. I would recommend including mines in the scarab's arsenal as the mines can serve as a good distraction for PD systems to allow for the nukes to more reliably hit, also the mines themselves will shred shields and armor

[@septim08]

flaks still useful there. your rails could use faster battery reload time, try moving walkways the scarab rotated itself to attack, and now that gets some getting used to. informative and good info on individual weapons systems targeting. i would love to see some Mines in action instead of nukes, on whether the pursuing ship will try to avoid the mines or just plow through and weather the damage

[@yobgodababua1862]

Total sympathy for the face numbing. I had to have a "deep cleaning" last week at the dentist which also for some reason involved enough anesthetic that I could not feel my face for several hours, and had no control over my lips for the rest of the day.

[@bow-tiedengineer4453]

For the point defence, a trick I've found is to put them into the mouth of the spinal mount. It doesn't give much extra in the middle, but you can get 2-3 point defense on the right defending the left and vice versa, more if you shrink the center cone a couple blocks. Or have a wider cone made of point defense instead of armor.

[@elewe4594]

Did not expected this, well now its a late night session

[@thunder98027]

I really like the scarabs design, I think I'll have to make something similar!

[@willhendrix86]

Now I have to know, if I have 3 ion ships, two hanging back and targeting the central ship will the energy combine? Then the aiming ship can be a defense tank.

[@LordTruespirit]

Would u consider "for sciencing" the use of mines? Save the game give them a try for verification of how they work then reload the save maybe? It would be a learning experience for alot of people I'm sure =)

[@MasterOfYoda]

He can just switch the nukes for mines, it takes literally one resupply trip.

[@Aavak]

Sure, I'm happy to for-science some mines for you :)

[@PyroMancer2k]

For taking systems vs going straight for the bridge it depends greatly on the ship your facing. A lot of ship designs have a ton armor and shields protecting the direct line to those systems which means you need a lot of focus fire on one spot to drill through it super fast. In order to achieve this I find massive Ion Beam setups or Railguns work best. Most of the other weapon systems spread the damage out too much which results in much of the ship getting blown up anyway. Also vs some ships you do wanna hit weapons systems first like Nuke Launchers. And depending on ship layout sometimes it's better to go for bridge and others the reactors. Can't wait to she how you will start handling some of the actually challenging ship later in the game in the level 14+ systems.

[@roadtrain_]

I've got an idea for the scarab... Mining lasers at the 'new' front. They absolutely TEAR through ship hulls and asteroids alike, and perhaps could help with clearing the path when you're flying away. Also, I must confess I'm in favour of the double wide corridor for loading the railguns. It allows walkway usage as well as a central shield, both of which would be very beneficial.

[@greyed]

17:11 - All in all that armor are just bricks in the wall!

[@LordTruespirit]

Railguns are very explosive, if they get hit the whole thing blows up all the way down the ship. Is a walkway between them enough to keep them from both exploding if 1 is hit or would u need a strip of armor to separate the explosions?

[@satannstuff]

Railgun explosions are directional, they don't blow up anything placed beside them but will blow up whatever is directly behind if there's no armor in between.

[@Babalas]

There is a teeny tiny little gray bar that shows up under pop up when you have a weapon selected that shows its reload progress. Have yet to find a more obvious way of telling when the railguns are ready to fire again. Hence I do a lot of nose wiggling at my enemies waiting for the guns to fire again

[@melind82]

Its real difficult to know how to balance flak/shield/armor, I've tended to go with lots of armor and buried shields since that seems to perform the best with low crew numbers, since worse case you have a bunch of armor that needs to be chewed through. To really make the rail gun shine though, you need use them pretty much only targeted and ideally you have a good way to disable shields (aka emp missiles). I recently setup a sniper ship that started with 2 and now 4 rails on it, and that thing is monstrous if it gets a peek at some unshielded part of a ship.

[@rogueishcharm]

I feel like flak is not at all worth it, and you covered all the points at the end. It takes a ton of space, labor and resources. It also really doesn't perform much better than three point defense; even so far as having a much narrower field of fire. Using the same space to make point defense with a regular shield behind it usually performs better, or having point defense flanked by super shields.

[@jonathanlanglois2742]

You absolutely do not need extra porters for the jump drive. They can load it with hyper fuel while you are traveling and you generally won't be fighting when you are using the jump drive.

[@Aavak]

Fair point!

[@Ragnaracc]

26:50 if I'm being entirely honest I think objectively the scarab is getting too...diverse with it's weapons systems. And I think that deciding which ones you actually want it to have and moving the rest to the fire ant, Hercules or even another ship entirely is probably a hard set of decisions you have to make. (Ultimately I think the flack should come off and perhaps the ion weapons should move to another ship)

[@GtierGoes]

I have the same thought. Too many weapon systems. Crew and power as well as speed are being taxed heavily. 😅

[@Aavak]

Very legitimate concerns.

[@tomduke1297]

railguns dont need much power, you can just put in a few capacitors along the lenght and easily triple the reloadspeed. you would need to make it a 2wide gap between them, but that would also give you the opportunity to put the bunks along the length of the railgun to speed up reload even more. that is a lot of benefit for a widening of the craft by a single block.

[@NeoSyncPrime]

Aavak I blame you for making me addicted to this series!

[@Aavak]

Guilty as charged XD

[@gaberielpendragon]

There is a gap in the side shields letting shots into the engines without any defense. Still running at half or less crew under suggested numbers. From what I can tell each ship needs 200 plus crew. Flak is fun for shooting ships with, not exactly good, but fun.

[@bigangryscotsman]

Put a corridor on the scarb from the central reactors to the rail gun to assist reload speed

[@RalphusMaximus]

Swapping to PD guns instead of Flak would work better for the Scarab, you could even utilize the space for more shielding.

[@ethanj8728]

If having flak batteries is more efficient in crew usage, then it may be useful to have them wherever you can afford the space and tuck point defense where you can't.

[@ChristopherMocko]

For two railguns of that size, you may want to consider more energy haulers and moving walkways. If you're going to be Rail-Fanning, a bit more separation between them will give negligible aiming difference. Also, I'm not 100% sure there is a maximum speed at which mines can be deployed, you may want to pop a mine launcher on a fast ship and test it.

[@audreyprofeta9214]

You could say the armor is staggered. I think if it like theater chairs that allow you to see between heads in front.

[@a_commenter]

Turns out that although woven armor is better, woven armor with the short end of the 2x1 facing forwards is actually less effective than non-woven armor with the wide end of the 2x1 facing forward

[@LordTruespirit]

True which is why the weave must always face the most likely direction to be hit.

[@LawdBreaktwist]

wouldn't a two tile conveyor-hallway be better for the rail-reload-racetrack? love the rest of the redesign, especially since my stuff in these sort of games tends to be either a big cannon, or multiple, to which i strap some engines or a giant cargo brick which spews out thousands of missles and/or mines if in danger

[@SpectorOfDoomYT]

Look out, it's Missile Briiiiiiikkkk

[@kaxman1]

for railgun fanning to work properly it seems like you need to set railguns to fire only at target, and give them a specific target. otherwise you get a lot of shots that are at the targeted ship but not at the part you want them to hit. seems like in "fire at will" mode they will still take a shot at a valid target even if they're not lined up with the targeted part, or even in eg multi-ship fights they'll shoot at a ship you aren't even targeting if the ship flies past the barrels.

[@naseweis6105]

+1 super important. there is an awsome guide in youtube, just search for railfanning.

[@jesselynch317]

Keep the flack. Because they are good at keeping missiles and other projectile weapons from reaching the shields

[@elitehunter459]

feeling like more PD would do better than the flack plus saving some space to move the reactor behind some more armor and add a few corridors to speed up transport

[@thunder98027]

You can be going faster than 30m/s for mines, although they might need to be going slower than 30m/s to activate. I'm not sure, but I would try mines. They SHRED armor and shields because they break into so many pieces. The effectiveness, unfortunately, does depend on quite a few things, though.

[@LordTruespirit]

Have u used mines? I'd love to see them in action myself but they seem to be the most space inefficient ammo type for missile launchers which raises the question are they worth the cargo space vs other missile types?

[@jonathanlanglois2742]

28:40 I have a similar thruster cluster on one of my ship with shields and I have a crew of 6 running all of it (including the machine room). I've got some crew in that ship which isn't assigned to any specific task and it isn't unusual that 1 or 2 of them will show up in the thruster cluster section.

[@waitwhat5015]

Lots of people said it but I agree and I think you should see it: You should make a double wide corridor for the rail gun and put people movers. Also I’m not sure but I think that when people move through each other it makes them slower (not sure though). One last thing, I think after you could put a shield generator for more security for the rail guns

[@_Garm_]

might help the Rail gun with conveyer belts to spead up the loading :D great videos :D

[@Aavak]

Consider it done!

[@wolf2403]

All I can say is, I wanna see you make a really long arm on a ship and use it to push a small enemy ship carcass into the sun.

[@Reeuwijk78]

If you forgo the flak and dive into front point defense, I recommend upgrading the feeding reactor as you'll need a bunch of em to replace the flaks capability and they devour power at an alarming rate. The battery efficiency of the large reactor helps in that case. Currently I'm building a diagonal flagship consisting of mixed shields, point defense surrounded by stucture with stragegicly placed armour pieces for defence. Named "Diagonus 2" Works great, but only because it's fed with large reactors. Main weapon system is double 8-tree ion beams. No railgun sadly, but I wanted to try a diagonal ship for a change. Mostly made blocky ships before. Really do like the idea of your wulfpack tactics. Might make a support vessel too. Have fun!

[@ewaep]

Pay close attention to what production buildings says for production, in this case parts vs missiles. A nuke factory produces 0.11 *missiles* per second. I personally only realized this because the storage says that it can hold 40 missile *parts*, then in brackets (3.33 *missiles*). It's still a large production building that doesn't produce very quickly during prolonged combat. From a storage perspective though, the factory holds about 12 missiles worth of parts/components and a storage the same size holds 28, so if you have more than a single 4x4 storage holding missile parts, converting to factory + storage for could work out better. Just remember that you need 2.5 times more iron than uranium.

[@Xenotric]

yeah the engine room also boosts the energy drain which is probably went wrong, gotta make sure energy comes in fast for it its less "free thrust" and more "discounted thrust" effectively 50% more thrusters for the cost of the 1 room Railguns are hard to get a good supply without being super bulky, ideally you'd want capacitors or multiple reactors dotted along to maximize reload speed as even with conveyors you are gonna be so slow with the reloads for long ones. Mine deploy speed should be the speed the mines have to go below to arm as they would be pretty worthless in combat if you had to slow to a crawl to drop them and hope the enemy decides to ram you to hit them. Would be perfect for the way the scarab fights and the range it tries to maintain

[@yobgodababua1862]

Stacked bricks have four neighbors. "Interwoven" bricks have six. Hexagons are the bestagons.

[@reaganmcmahon6955]

I can’t help but feel as though you may have introduced some grave inefficiency with a single long hallway and no people movers. I wonder if it would effect aiming the railguns that much to have two lane hallway since it would place them further apart. I love the railguns and I’d love to see different ways to speed load them. Thanks for the great content as always!

[@randallporter1404]

42:47 Disabling weapons is not necessarily the best way to turn off a weapon, as the crew leaves the weapon unmanned. Gone for tea or the latrine, depends on how close their quarters are located. Instead change the Targeting option to "Pause". This way when you're ready to use the weapon again, all the crew has to do is press the Enable button (You change the targeting option back to your desired choice.)

[@Pepperkaas6]

I have 6 crew and 1 small generator per 2x3 blocks of railgun. Each railgun block needs 1 energy cell so I need 6 crew for the fastest reload time. Biggest problem as usual is maintaining distance and rotation speed. 100m/s backwards required.....many many thruster clusters :)

[@zombiewolf123]

It might be the child in me but I cant help but notice the scarab now has a literal bubble but and its main strategy is to turn around and crap on the enemy. lol. as for the flack, I say replace it with PD and move at least some of that freeded up crew to the rail gun as that needs to be much faster.

[@m.ubaidaadam]

I quite like the flack guns so keep for me! also the void inside the scarab could be filled with a deck gun if you do get rid of the flack

[@Nevir202]

My option 3: replace flack gun with another super shield and just face tank all the enemy fire lol.

[@Yokoto12343]

Suggestion: New ship: Dedicated ore miner A small ship made to harvest and bring its cargo to the fireant. You could name it Neophyte Its the first batch of workers a joung ant queen hatches when establishing a colony

[@frostfire8490]

i have made a ship very similar to the fire ant and i find that its a good idea to put capacitors along the rail gun with its own crew quarter right next to it so you can rapidly reload and fire the railgun at the start of the fight imagine an alpha strike that is made up of three volleys

[@durgun8247]

A nuke has a durability of 7200, so it takes one second of continuous fire for a flak battery to take down a nuke

[@LordTruespirit]

I've never seen a flak take out a nuke alone. The only time I've seen a nuke taken out is with alot of PDs spraying in that general direction & a bit of luck LOL

[@durgun8247]

@@LordTruespirit nukes accelerate at 500m/s^2, and their range is 250 meters, so if a nuke does launch then it will hit your ship in less than a second (if I'm not mistaken)

[@LordTruespirit]

@@durgun8247 So if it takes a whole second for a flak to shoot it down then the flak isn't very useful against the nuke regardless

[@MiscellaneousMcC]

You don’t have to fan side by side rails, in fact you can easily put three with a double corridor between each and still not have to fan. As long as the distance between the whole rail system is less than the width of the opposing ship they will all fire together. You could easily do 2 rails side by side, then a double wide corridor, and another 2 side by side and have four rails firing at the same ship at the same time.

[@MiscellaneousMcC]

If you are focused on a single system fanning is decent, but so far I’ve not noticed a benefit in doing so against anything smaller than a station. Maybe when I start going up against boss ships it will be a big help.

[@vescovinator]

For the flak cannons they are very useful if you want to cut down its crew draw I suggest switch to ammo reserves only remove factories. My reasoning is you need people to move sulfur from storage to factories then operate factories then transport from factories to cannons. That is a lot of man power and energy vs ammo reserve->gun. You keep your ammo deep enough if that's gone half the front is gone already.

[@Aavak]

The factories don't actually need operators, they run automatically (something I was caught off guard by, too XD), but they do need a lot more moving things to and from, that's true.

[@johnlongmore5750]

The engagement cone on the flak battery seems very narrow, makes it feel almost better to mount it as far back as you can manage since you don't really occlude its engagement arc by doing so, then you could replace with 2-3 point defense on the close 'engagement face' pulling (explosive) ammo and the FB crew away from the front, and PD's don't need any crew manning them, just charging them (less risky) which you can back with armour in the same FB space, or even another small shield. Perhaps one extra square through the middle? Would allow a fore/aft moving path pair through the middle of the spinal railguns for faster charging, plus you could add in a bonus small shield covering the railgun tips just after the launcher module doors which would be served by the same fore/aft pathing.

[@aNytmare]

The hull shape reminds me of some sci-fi ship, but I cannot clearly tell which one. I am thinking Star Trek, maybe NX Class, but I am not sure.

[@bramweenink7697]

I've done some small testing myself with mines. And mines can be shot out at much higher speeds. My little test ship travelled at around 75 m/s. Fortunately mines lose their momentum after being released. Launching mines at your enemy while backing away could be viable. Not sure if an enemy will try to avoid them.

[@Bananahammock681]

I'm thinking, what if we have a conveyor run down the middle of those rail guns to deliver to them faster, and have walkways on the opposite sides for the return trip? Or can then not cross OVER the rail guns making that pointless? If it works, it could speed up reload time drastically. But if not, I guess it's no biggie.

[@Aavak]

A solid suggestion!

[@WorldChampInfinity]

Capacitors will help your rail guns fire faster. I would like to see your Ion crystals right next to the rail gun barrels so everything is shooting down the middle

[@nommy8599]

FYI: To run 2 railguns (2tile gap) at 100% fire rate you can use 1 small reactor and 2 bunks per 8 accelerators. Put the reactor in middle and a bunk in the corridor between the doors either side (so they can walk past it) dedicated to supplying 4 accelerators each. Normal walkway from reactor to accelerators. Add as many 'modules' (small reactors) as you need (probably 3). There's space for airlock, extinguisher and even a hyperdrive every now and again. I've tried using medium reactors spaced slightly father apart instead but there are firing delays doing that because the railgun parts only store 2 power and the crew AI doesn't prioritize well enough to keep everything topped up. Same issue with moving walkways and distant larger reactors. Capacitors offer no advantage here (same size & speed to grab cells & you have uranium). A little armor other side of rails near reactors will help protect them and completely contain their explosion. I don't know if it's possible to fire a rail at full rate with less space or crew (I'm doubtful). Anyone know a way? (>2 accel. per crew, 2 tile gap) Since the guns are there may as well have them able to shoot as much as they can, right?

[@Aavak]

This is a great suggestion, thank you so much for taking the time to test this and write up a comment sharing your experience. I'll see what I can do to incorporate this into my design :)

[@nommy8599]

No worries! The ships (images) and some scrrenshots are on Free ImgHost in case you wanted to take a look or try the test ship in game. The Album is 'Cosmoteer small reactor railgun module' - for search. I'll put link in another comment below (in case it's hidden). The '.ship' images (test ship and modules) can be dragged right into Cosmoteer if you click them 1-2 times to make your browser open the raw image in a separate tab 1st (then just drag and drop the image straight from browser into the game, or save and drag the file in). In blueprint mode it will be like you're pasting a copy of the ship/module. If it's a creative game, dragging the image into an empty space it will spawn the ship. Doesn't work for the screenshots (like the one showing finicky loader crew assignment). It's actually not quite 100% fire rate, more like 99.9% - sometimes there's a very slight delay, sometimes they fire perfectly. IDK why. I found it a bit finicky to load enough ammo also but found something that worked reliably. Easy to check by auto-firing the guns though. GL!

[@nazaxprime]

Ya know, I think I'd like to see a small fast mine layer flak ppd craft showing how the features work in isolation while allowing for laying out minefields... A separate shield breaker design may be complimentary. A high lateral speed or broadside design may be best? As for a nuke strike craft, maybe once the infrastructure is set up, a fire ant variant is in order.

[@LordTruespirit]

The Fire Ant is designed to fight at range which is why he removed the shields but nukes have only 250 range so u need to get close that's why he put them on the scarab instead. I don't know how many PD make up the fire power of a flak but they take alot less crew & space for sure.

[@shortnr]

What's the width of destruction for a railgun shot? If it damages/destroys the blocks along its shot line and one block to either side, you're potentially wasting destruction in the overlapping line. Maybe it would be better to have a three wide corridor? Then, you can have two moving walkways going up from the reactor and one returning one for faster power delivery.

[@raibolt8859]

At this point, the Fireant looks like a Flame sword… XD

[@fabianlowakaisora2049]

IMO, ditch the flak, get the point defence. I had 2 rail gun barrels as well, but I maxed out (31 accelerators i think?) Make sure you have enough thrusters to maintain your distance to let your rail gun do most of the work this way you will likely not be in range of the NPC nukes.

[@bow-tiedengineer4453]

I feel at least some of your pain, although the sore throat part of my cat acquired head cold is basically gone, replaced by congestion and postnasal drip.

[@sebastianramos8920]

Get the Flack out! haha But really, I haven't seen the utility of it

[@masked5929]

you don't need that corridor the crew can supply the whole section with power, even if it only has access to one side at least my design does that, i put both railguns directly next to each other

[@Loewenbrandt]

Just a question: does two sensor arrays on one ship change anything, beside looking symmetric?

[@schellingerhout]

sniff using nuke's what would the space environmentalist say about that ^^

[@willdutt]

You should try salad dressing (white vinegar), its very good if you might actually have a fungus/bacterial infection. Do water it down if its the 'pickling' vinegar or seems rather strong. (vinegar is also very good on cleaning floors and clothes of bad smells)

[@kylewallace9341]

As far as the flak goes, Personally I think especially in the higher levels they're really necessary, because you're going to end up fighting a lot more nukes, EMP's, and especially deck guns are probably coming up on enemy ships. So if you can, I would actually check the firing arc and see if you can move them back out of the way, Maybe even Point them sideways to act more defensively for things that go past your shield.