@@Phrosphor im not sure but it's probably quite common when designing rockets, since if you want to flight further you need more fuel but that fuel makes the rocket heavier so you need even more fuel, this is the main reason why most of the fuel for a rocket just gets burned to make it out of the atmosphere so yeah if you ever play kerbal space program you will know exactly what i mean
In practice, in spaceflight the available total size of booster is fixed to some existing vehicle, so what rapidly gets lost is available payload. Effectively instead of rockets getting bigger and bigger, the probes you launch get smaller and smaller as you need them to go faster. Of course when enough money is available, they do use very large rockets, but they're generally very limited.
This was a thing long before rockets. To cross the desert you need water. To carry the water you need more men and/or beasts of burden. The more men/animals you bring, the more water you need.
Everytime I get to ship building I'm like "this time I'm going to have it all: armored with 6, no, 10 guns! And FAST and SMALL and I'm going to sudden strike every city and every SG and then I'm going to win ez". 3hrs later I leave bittersweet: impressed about how ship building is so very well balanced and sad because it felt so close. Good job by the way.
I have definitely fallen down this hole several times. I also got totally obsessed with building the 'ultimate lightning'. Maybe I need to try that again.
Just put a 37mm on top and switch the AKs for D-80s, add a layer of reinforced hull all over and you are pretty close to a perfect lightning: The extra weight is balanced by the 20% maneuver buff + you are able to shoot missiles(saves fuel) or deal close in finishing blows with the secondary. I mod them on-the-go because of immerson. As for the Gladiator, i also prefer a CWIS and 3 D-80s. strip the missiles, add some armor and a 3rd D30S and both ships are easily holding their own till the endgame, just leave their skylarks at the perimeter ;)
"We're going to use this ship as a basis for the new ship" - 5 mins in, completely dismantles ship and starts from scratch. Great video though, good thoughts on the latest patch. I like how you explain your thoughts on how to build.
Hah, yes, it was pretty dramatic. I should have maybe said that the only reason we have a Yars is that is one of the cheapest ways to get a new bridge module, which is the only way to add a new ship to your fleet during the campaign! It isn't a perfect build by any means, but it will hopefully get the job done as we edge closer to Khiva.
@@Phrosphor It seems there is a lot of penetration through reinforced hull even with normal rounds or proxfuse rounds. I noticed this particularly where your fuel tanks kept catching fire even though the reinforced hull sections were still there (though they were damaged). They seem to let a lot more damage through. That leads me to think that armor still has a lot of value even after the update. I do think AP rounds being nerfed a little bit would bring things into balance more.
22:30 - I cannot confirm this, but I have been told by other players that having crew below 100%, either to start with or because crew died, decreases XP gain. So if you have 80% crew you'll gain 80% of the XP you would have gotten in a given fight if you'd had 100% crew. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't.
@@Trifler500 I'd like to imagine that the crew stops by the local Макдоналдс (McDonald's) every time your ships reach a city. I mean, you gotta produce and store all that methane somehow, amirite?? _... heh, fart jokes..._
8:58 - If you add a thin strip through the middle like this, I find that it's very easy to have the bottom half of the ship simply fall off. What you can do to avoid this is to stagger the 2x1 sections and the 2x2 squares, so one up, one down, one up, one down. Then if a 2x1 is destroyed, the 2x2 square will hold the ship together. It's not perfect, but it does work better. EDIT: You ended up fixing this during the course of your design anyway. :)
So, one thing I've been meaning to say for a while. I think most of your problems simply boil down to trying to fight everything with one ship. Honestly, I was totally confused when I bought the game after watching your playthrough (about half of where you are now) and doing the tutorial. I tried to solo ship win the tutorial/opening mission to take Ur, because I had only seen people on youtube do fights with a single ship. It was brutal. But in the tutorial you have a big damn fleet (I guess I also didn't realize that nothing of the tutorial stuff carries over... So losing the starting garbage ships didnt' matter which I only learned after two hours of trying to do it without losing a ship haha) Fact is, you are supposed to use, and retreat ships as they get damaged. I still soloed most things to about the 40 % of campaign mark, but after that... just bring more ships. (I realize you can't NOW, do to losses. but A couple times you lost lightnings, you were getting beaten down/discouraged, which seems to have led to the hitting "retreat" occurances, on fights that 2 lightnings could have won easily.) After about the second save point city, I don't think single ship attack groups is viable. I try to transition to strike groups of 2 lightnings w/ a skylark fairly early, rotating the solo attacker when it is still viable to keep morale high. This solves two issues, first and obvious one, fuel. you run out of fuel on your lightnings trying to chew through some of those larger fleets (or fleets with beefy boys like Gladiators). With two lightnings, just retreat when it hits 20% fuel or less, and number two comes in and cleans up. Second problem. You keep saying, NO ARMOR I don't want to get ganked by AP. Easy, I have never seen the enemy use AP, but I have a modified Paladin 2 with lots of armor which I have been going head to head against Strike groups with. Why no AP? I think the enemy has the same rules as player. I start with two lightnings, third ship to fight is the Pally. They just tickle it with Prox fuse after I do what damage I can flying the lightnings and waste a bunch of their missiles. You are trying to make super one size fits all combat ship. But this isn't a one ship game, you have a FLEET, fight as a fleet. (It may also just be that the AI is dumb and just uses prox fuse always because it is the "Best" due to being most expensive? I need to keep playing and find out I guess lol) Finally... I'm sorry to say it, but I think Zero Sum (may she rest in peace) was a boondoggle from the start. I think lightnings are about right, and about as much as you want to put into a glass cannon. Any more money on a ship that is so fragile just seems like a good way to get a lot of expensive shit destroyed. Further, what can a ship twice the size of a lightning do, with twice the guns and expense, that one lightning, followed by a second or third lightning tagging in NOT do? Just my thoughts. Don't know if any of that is useful.
You are completely right - the Lightning plus Tanker strategy is incredibly effective for early game. I think I demonstrated that pretty well in this playthrough. Up until we took our first Fleet HQ I was able to cover a huge amount of ground, generate a lot of cash and build up a lot of intel very very quickly. Now that we are running into hard garrisons I need to change my strategy. This is very evident and I am already compensating (after some nasty losses) by softening targets with air strikes before sweeping in. Ideally I want to shift my doctrine to contain a 'sweeper' and a 'striker' at minimum. The sweeper is focused on either many rapid fire low caliber cannons (57mm or 100mm) or large caliber cannons with plenty of Prox Fuse ammo to quickly nail down and destroy corvettes and low armor frigates. Once the sky is clear of pests, I want to switch to something that can go toe to toe with the larger armored destroyers and cruisers, plenty of armor and AP rounds. The 'Thunder' is an answer to a problem I created for myself where I currently don't have the funds or chassis available to instigate this strategy, so it's a little bit of an 'all in' model until I can pull my head above water. I really appreciate your input and I do read all these comments, it means a lot to me that people are willing to spend their time and pass on their thoughts. As to the No Armour issue, the times I have tried to deploy heavily armored ships (of screen) has been very similar to my on camera experience with unarmored ships, just instead of prox fuse imagine walls of AP rounds. I wonder why our experiences are so different!
Just make it the entire screen large, the ship spawns in the middle engulfs the others they crash get blown up and you win with giant holes in yours. How that one would react to a nuke I'd want to witness.
One of the things I remember from futzing around with ship builder, was that simply having engines (regardless of their orientation) counted towards the speed and thrust to weight ratio for the purposes of the tactical map game. For example, you could put two of the Skylark's non-gimbled engines pointing out the sides and it maintains it's speed and t2w. You said you wanted this ship to be more up-down dodging, perhaps consider putting two of those four DS30's on top to give you descent authority.
I am pretty certain, but I may be wrong, that sadly you can no longer rotate the static engines anymore (after patch 1.13). Please let me know if I am incorrect, because it would be a huge upgrade if I could still do that.
@@Phrosphor Hmm, perhaps a somewhat cheesy solution to this might be to have two versions of the game installed. One of them being your main (updated) version and the other kept at v1.12. The latter would be used for building ships which are then transferred to your main version. This way you could override the restrictions on rotating static engines. Though, its completely understandable if you'd rather not do this
Oh shi-I just noticed your name and realized who you are, Binky! God, I love your _Sunk Cost __-Fallacy-__ Galaxy_ series. You're certainly a legend in my book, mister!
Ahhhh shipbuilding.. It’s a ton of fun to modify the vanilla ships to fit your needs. Like turning the sevastapol into a missile aircraft carrier. or the Varyag so it can use all 4 guns, and be even beefier (love my Varyag MK-2) Or try and make some vanilla type ships, but with your own design focuses. Also you may have been told already or figured it out, but you can right-click on parts to select all parts attached to it, very good for when chunks get disconnected and you need to reattach say.. a radar mast without clicking a ton.
Good point, I didn't think about that at the time. I am nervous about doing so as AP is quite scary but I will give it a try and see if there is any real improvement :)
Awesome, I am glad you liked it! This ship was pretty good at the time though the game has moved on a bit. My Audacity build video has a little more up to date build info if you are looking for more!
I was certain not having enough crew quarters made the ship less effective. Guns don't fire as well, a little slower reacting, that sort of thing. Is that just crew itself and not their quarters? Overall I love the look of the "Thunder". I was a bit skeptical when it was just the reinforced hull, but the added armor makes it look proper. With the added benefit that it gives you loads more survivability without baiting AP rounds from the AI. That's what I'd call a win.
I have some reworks to the 'Thunder' to do before it is deployed based on feedback from comments so it should be even better. I always thought it was generator loss that reduced gun reload/tracking speed. Maybe they both have an effect?
The 'ol Yars is 3000 in missiles and 3900 in misc parts, no sensors, nothing else special. I often buy them in mercenary cities to strip out the missiles and immediately sell the ship. Missiles can be put on any vessel (usually a strategic one) using only two medium hull blocks. After realizing this, the Yars and Yars Mk2 became completely useless ships to me. Of course, any ship works as the base for a complete rebuild, so in that sense it's nothing to do with what you're doing here. I feel your end product probably suffered from a bit of feature creep, 6 guns is a supreme amount of firepower but it would work with 4, armor and hull layer is neat but a double-sized hull layer might do the same thing for less weight, but in the end you have a very mobile ship that rivals light cruisers and can power through any fleet, so I am looking forward to seeing it in action and hoping that it does not run afoul of the retreat button.
Thank you for the feedback. I actually bought our original Yars (the great evil king) simply for the fact it was a cheap 'bridge' module. There is a very high chance if the Thunder 2.0 (upgraded based on feedback from the video) is a success then it will also be reconfigured.
Ah the Thunder. A good ship, but a little too expensive. If you haven't seen my build for The Audacity it has turned out to be a fantastic ship. Needs a few little tweaks for 1.1.5 but in my latest playthrough video one Audacity took out a whole garrison including an Archangel on it's own.
Since the tip top of the ship is elevated , and empty, you could probably add 1 more layer of small hull there and then mount one of the radar modules (edit: btw any of the radars that show contacts on the map are fire control radars, so the sev's radar is also fire control), so that way this + skylark has all the sensors. Edit: on the other hand, this is signficantly slower than the skylark and lightning, It might be worth looking at refiting one of the skylarks to be a tanker for this by making it double wide to both hold more fuel, and also mount a radar. and if you have speed / weight to spare, a missile since youd already be putting a fire control radar on it.
@@Phrosphor So while waiting for your next episodes, I watched a few other videos, and found out that the yars is competently unnecessary for carrying missiles, its only advatage is that it is armored against enemy missile strikes. All you need to hold stragegic missiles are 2 medium hull, 1 over the other, and thats it, you put the missile in, and it turns it into a tube. So you could easily strap 2 medium hull parts on each side of the skylarks fuel tank, and build a horizontal mast for the fire control radar, and put a100s on it, and you have a combination support ship
Hi ! I've been watching your series from the start, and just started my own campaign, where your insight were more than helpful. So,thanks for that! I missed your last two episodes as of yet, and I'm really sorry to hear about the loss of the "Zero Sum". (A minute of silence, guys, if you please!) But at least it's sacrifice brought us this great shipbuilding episode! By the way, there are some things I would like to point out: The 1.13 patch made armor 30% heavier. When looking for weights of parts, you can calculate them by looking at the "mass" stat, of the ship, witch now updates after every change you make to your design. When in the docks in the game, while rebuilding ships, you can not move the bridge from it's original position, you have to bulid around it. You should consider that for your final build. And I could not but notice you puting the flares outside of the armor when the fresh layer blocked them, but like the "Palash", flare launchers also can fire trough armor, at least the diagonal parts of it. When you flip a flare launcher around, you'll see some of the green positioning markers appear (seemingly) in the armor itself. Those are the spots!
Thank you so much for watching, and the for the great advice. I have a rework of this ship in progress for when it finally hits the campaign with the notes about the flares and a rework of some of the unnecessary heavy hull based on your points!
I was waiting for the shipbuilding episode since it was announced early in the run regarding the Sevastopol at the time. I can't say this one is a surprise since it was mentioned in the last part, but a welcome one nonetheless. When I tackled new patch meta I run into problem with armour piercing rounds since my builds were heavily armoured. I did not see the benefit of mixed designs. I'll try this approach - enough armour to keep vital components alive and not enough to prod the AI to use AP. I wish you luck in the present and future wars. May Ishu keep us from special ammo types.
In all honestly I was really nervous to post a Svestapol rebuild video because there are so many ship building experts out there who would have a 'better' way to do it. But I think I will just go for it. I haven't tried this design in the campaign yet. I am worried it hasn't got enough fuel, but it is so hard to test that except in a fight. Hopefully it doesn't drop out of the sky. I am not a fan of using armor, as for me speed is life - but adding the armor sections to this ship really made a big difference, it's definitely worth testing to see if it is going to play out.
@@Phrosphor Please do post your Sevastopol refit video. Other people may have spent lots of hours in the shipworks designing ships but from what I saw on videos and discord there are few big ship designs that have speed in high priority. I. e. I haven't seen any built according to your doctrine. I find playing the speedy-dodgy way is really satisfying, both in tactical and strategic aspect. Please pardon me for my playing with the highfleet lore, but I believe that the quoda of Grand Duke Phrosphor's family would start with the words "Blessed be he who dodgeth, and smitheth his foes with speed and fury" Blessed be he who dodgeth!
Any game where you can edit a ship ends up being hours and hours playing with designs. I enjoyed a lot "From the Depths" and I enjoy a lot creating smaller specialized cheap boats to be used in a team. Not that I'm good at the game, mind. The combat music sounds and I panic.
@@Phrosphor I did know about elevating the guns. I thought that was the only thing it was good for. Now I'm thinking about trying to use it for missiles and escape pods.
Do you have any RNG fail states for play throughs? I have just had a run with some weird city bugs like hidden cities spawning on trade routes and the first two save points being one city apart
I haven't seen that yet myself but I have been reading about more bugs like this since the patch. I would definitely have been frustrated to find a hidden city on a trade route and that would easily approach being a game ender for me.
you wont need many suppressors if you protect your tanks from splash damage. I use modified glad (270 degree armor plus reinforced hull coating on top) with 2 suppressors and it suffice on hard campaign. also if you coat your ship first with armor then r hull, it protects against AP shell. proxy will tear it down eventually but you wont get splash damage that much and hence less fuel tank fire . Also i dont get why people even try 100mm ever. this thing can work against small corvettes but does almost nothing to armored ship. it has no penetration even with AP and terrible dispersion at long range with makes it a big NO against strike groups and things like glads. if you are rich you can even use laser guided and just murder anything at long range before they even come to range. because if you are in AP range so are them. last thing 4 fixed d30s gives you big vertical thrust but when you need to dive to evade which you will eventually need you only have nk's thrust. the thing that I most liked about this was no doubt your aesthetic concern and I also name Thunder heavily modified lightnings. the things that i just said are my opinions i didnt mean to sound like a highfleet guru or some sort english is not my mother tongue so I might not convey the things that i want to say in a way that i want to say. really liked your video. another thing. you can replace 2 molots with 37s to protect you against missiles and especially against AP rounds the latter is a bit tricky though. it reduces your alpha by 33% but being able to shoot down incoming missiles and shells gives you less things to evade which increase your longevity big time by being ready to move when you want where you want. it allows also to stay in a good firing position and save your fuel. i dont know how many times i got showered by proxies and APs while succesfully dodging missiles and missing my shots.
This is a great post - some really useful info! Something I am asked a lot about is why I am not 'over' armoring my ships and it really just comes down to speed. I want these strike craft to top out at ~500kph and armor really messes with that. I like to dodge in combat, it also makes for more exciting videos if the ships are getting shredded. That said, it is well overdue time to change that strategy for this playthrough. The 100mm plays into that as well. It's all about burst fire/projectile speed. I actually settle on 130 for this ship in the campaign, as it is pretty perfect for my playstyle. 180 for me tracks too slowly and the projectile speed it too low for a fast ship. In the campaign this was built for, I had a huge stockpile of 100mm ammo I wanted to use up, but in the end it wasn't powerful enough for what I needed for. I really which I had those 37mms.
This was very fun to watch, is it at all worth it to have a mix gun setup? Like dropping 2 guns for like 30-50mm somethings to use for anti-missile duty?
Yeah this was for version 1.13 and since then a lot of changes have been made sadly. The ship itself wasn't actually very good in practice but I did learn a lot from the creation.
Using reinforced hull as armor really does have that problem of constantly being set on fire. I never liked that tactic, personally I think the game is balanced extremely well to where you at least need *some* armor for a real brawling corvette or frigate, but armoring the whole thing requires either building a full blown cruiser or being reliant on support ships for range and utility.
Space and weight primarily. You need a hull part per gun, power for the gun, ammo for the gun.. it's a lot cheaper in terms of components to mount flares and dodge. On a bigger ship I would mount multiple 37 or 57mm ciws.
@@wei270 I don't at the moment no. I am currently releasing videos for my custom ships for my new hard-mode campaign. @Trifler on Steam has a great guide for upgrading all the vanilla ships. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2568066216
It is extremely frustrating, but it does mean that you have limitations in building. It's like DND, a character with a negative stat or too is way more interesting to play than one with all 18's. I like overcoming and dealing with flaws.
The thing you described with the cycle of adding engines, and stuff to support said engines , has a name actually: Tyranny of the rocket equasion
It spirals out of control very quickly. Interesting to see it has a real world equivalent!
@@Phrosphor im not sure but it's probably quite common when designing rockets, since if you want to flight further you need more fuel but that fuel makes the rocket heavier so you need even more fuel, this is the main reason why most of the fuel for a rocket just gets burned to make it out of the atmosphere
so yeah if you ever play kerbal space program you will know exactly what i mean
In practice, in spaceflight the available total size of booster is fixed to some existing vehicle, so what rapidly gets lost is available payload. Effectively instead of rockets getting bigger and bigger, the probes you launch get smaller and smaller as you need them to go faster. Of course when enough money is available, they do use very large rockets, but they're generally very limited.
This was a thing long before rockets. To cross the desert you need water. To carry the water you need more men and/or beasts of burden. The more men/animals you bring, the more water you need.
Everytime I get to ship building I'm like "this time I'm going to have it all: armored with 6, no, 10 guns! And FAST and SMALL and I'm going to sudden strike every city and every SG and then I'm going to win ez". 3hrs later I leave bittersweet: impressed about how ship building is so very well balanced and sad because it felt so close. Good job by the way.
I have definitely fallen down this hole several times. I also got totally obsessed with building the 'ultimate lightning'. Maybe I need to try that again.
Just put a 37mm on top and switch the AKs for D-80s, add a layer of reinforced hull all over and you are pretty close to a perfect lightning: The extra weight is balanced by the 20% maneuver buff + you are able to shoot missiles(saves fuel) or deal close in finishing blows with the secondary. I mod them on-the-go because of immerson.
As for the Gladiator, i also prefer a CWIS and 3 D-80s. strip the missiles, add some armor and a 3rd D30S and both ships are easily holding their own till the endgame, just leave their skylarks at the perimeter ;)
"We're going to use this ship as a basis for the new ship" - 5 mins in, completely dismantles ship and starts from scratch.
Great video though, good thoughts on the latest patch. I like how you explain your thoughts on how to build.
Hah, yes, it was pretty dramatic. I should have maybe said that the only reason we have a Yars is that is one of the cheapest ways to get a new bridge module, which is the only way to add a new ship to your fleet during the campaign!
It isn't a perfect build by any means, but it will hopefully get the job done as we edge closer to Khiva.
@@Phrosphor It seems there is a lot of penetration through reinforced hull even with normal rounds or proxfuse rounds. I noticed this particularly where your fuel tanks kept catching fire even though the reinforced hull sections were still there (though they were damaged). They seem to let a lot more damage through. That leads me to think that armor still has a lot of value even after the update. I do think AP rounds being nerfed a little bit would bring things into balance more.
22:30 - I cannot confirm this, but I have been told by other players that having crew below 100%, either to start with or because crew died, decreases XP gain. So if you have 80% crew you'll gain 80% of the XP you would have gotten in a given fight if you'd had 100% crew. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't.
If I was the Dev, I would have made it so that the ship's maneuverability actually decreases with the percentage of the crew. :)
If that is the case then I am not too worried. Thanks for confirming :)
@@Phrosphor Ah, but I said I cannot confirm. :)
@@Trifler500 I'd like to imagine that the crew stops by the local Макдоналдс (McDonald's) every time your ships reach a city.
I mean, you gotta produce and store all that methane somehow, amirite?? _... heh, fart jokes..._
@@Lowkeh Fantastic explanation for “pressured methane” 💨💨🤣
"Lets make the bridge as protected as possible!" [surrounds it by explosives]
8:58 - If you add a thin strip through the middle like this, I find that it's very easy to have the bottom half of the ship simply fall off. What you can do to avoid this is to stagger the 2x1 sections and the 2x2 squares, so one up, one down, one up, one down. Then if a 2x1 is destroyed, the 2x2 square will hold the ship together. It's not perfect, but it does work better.
EDIT: You ended up fixing this during the course of your design anyway. :)
Good catch, it's a weak point for sure, alternating sections is a better way to ensure stability like you say. Thanks for pointing it out!
So, one thing I've been meaning to say for a while. I think most of your problems simply boil down to trying to fight everything with one ship.
Honestly, I was totally confused when I bought the game after watching your playthrough (about half of where you are now) and doing the tutorial. I tried to solo ship win the tutorial/opening mission to take Ur, because I had only seen people on youtube do fights with a single ship. It was brutal. But in the tutorial you have a big damn fleet (I guess I also didn't realize that nothing of the tutorial stuff carries over... So losing the starting garbage ships didnt' matter which I only learned after two hours of trying to do it without losing a ship haha) Fact is, you are supposed to use, and retreat ships as they get damaged. I still soloed most things to about the 40 % of campaign mark, but after that... just bring more ships. (I realize you can't NOW, do to losses. but A couple times you lost lightnings, you were getting beaten down/discouraged, which seems to have led to the hitting "retreat" occurances, on fights that 2 lightnings could have won easily.) After about the second save point city, I don't think single ship attack groups is viable. I try to transition to strike groups of 2 lightnings w/ a skylark fairly early, rotating the solo attacker when it is still viable to keep morale high.
This solves two issues, first and obvious one, fuel. you run out of fuel on your lightnings trying to chew through some of those larger fleets (or fleets with beefy boys like Gladiators). With two lightnings, just retreat when it hits 20% fuel or less, and number two comes in and cleans up.
Second problem. You keep saying, NO ARMOR I don't want to get ganked by AP. Easy, I have never seen the enemy use AP, but I have a modified Paladin 2 with lots of armor which I have been going head to head against Strike groups with. Why no AP? I think the enemy has the same rules as player. I start with two lightnings, third ship to fight is the Pally. They just tickle it with Prox fuse after I do what damage I can flying the lightnings and waste a bunch of their missiles. You are trying to make super one size fits all combat ship. But this isn't a one ship game, you have a FLEET, fight as a fleet. (It may also just be that the AI is dumb and just uses prox fuse always because it is the "Best" due to being most expensive? I need to keep playing and find out I guess lol)
Finally... I'm sorry to say it, but I think Zero Sum (may she rest in peace) was a boondoggle from the start. I think lightnings are about right, and about as much as you want to put into a glass cannon. Any more money on a ship that is so fragile just seems like a good way to get a lot of expensive shit destroyed. Further, what can a ship twice the size of a lightning do, with twice the guns and expense, that one lightning, followed by a second or third lightning tagging in NOT do?
Just my thoughts. Don't know if any of that is useful.
You are completely right - the Lightning plus Tanker strategy is incredibly effective for early game. I think I demonstrated that pretty well in this playthrough. Up until we took our first Fleet HQ I was able to cover a huge amount of ground, generate a lot of cash and build up a lot of intel very very quickly.
Now that we are running into hard garrisons I need to change my strategy. This is very evident and I am already compensating (after some nasty losses) by softening targets with air strikes before sweeping in.
Ideally I want to shift my doctrine to contain a 'sweeper' and a 'striker' at minimum. The sweeper is focused on either many rapid fire low caliber cannons (57mm or 100mm) or large caliber cannons with plenty of Prox Fuse ammo to quickly nail down and destroy corvettes and low armor frigates. Once the sky is clear of pests, I want to switch to something that can go toe to toe with the larger armored destroyers and cruisers, plenty of armor and AP rounds.
The 'Thunder' is an answer to a problem I created for myself where I currently don't have the funds or chassis available to instigate this strategy, so it's a little bit of an 'all in' model until I can pull my head above water.
I really appreciate your input and I do read all these comments, it means a lot to me that people are willing to spend their time and pass on their thoughts.
As to the No Armour issue, the times I have tried to deploy heavily armored ships (of screen) has been very similar to my on camera experience with unarmored ships, just instead of prox fuse imagine walls of AP rounds. I wonder why our experiences are so different!
Just make it the entire screen large, the ship spawns in the middle engulfs the others they crash get blown up and you win with giant holes in yours. How that one would react to a nuke I'd want to witness.
I love this idea, but I know for a fact my pc would not be able to handle it!
One of the things I remember from futzing around with ship builder, was that simply having engines (regardless of their orientation) counted towards the speed and thrust to weight ratio for the purposes of the tactical map game. For example, you could put two of the Skylark's non-gimbled engines pointing out the sides and it maintains it's speed and t2w. You said you wanted this ship to be more up-down dodging, perhaps consider putting two of those four DS30's on top to give you descent authority.
I am pretty certain, but I may be wrong, that sadly you can no longer rotate the static engines anymore (after patch 1.13). Please let me know if I am incorrect, because it would be a huge upgrade if I could still do that.
@@Phrosphor Hmm, perhaps a somewhat cheesy solution to this might be to have two versions of the game installed. One of them being your main (updated) version and the other kept at v1.12.
The latter would be used for building ships which are then transferred to your main version.
This way you could override the restrictions on rotating static engines.
Though, its completely understandable if you'd rather not do this
Oh shi-I just noticed your name and realized who you are, Binky!
God, I love your _Sunk Cost __-Fallacy-__ Galaxy_ series.
You're certainly a legend in my book, mister!
@@Lowkeh will that work
Your channel was recommended. You are doing something right. Keep up the good work!
Awesome, thank you! That is so crazy to hear that someone recommended it!
Ahhhh shipbuilding..
It’s a ton of fun to modify the vanilla ships to fit your needs. Like turning the sevastapol into a missile aircraft carrier. or the Varyag so it can use all 4 guns, and be even beefier (love my Varyag MK-2)
Or try and make some vanilla type ships, but with your own design focuses.
Also you may have been told already or figured it out, but you can right-click on parts to select all parts attached to it, very good for when chunks get disconnected and you need to reattach say.. a radar mast without clicking a ton.
Thanks for the right-click tip! And yeah ship building is awesome!
You might be able to cut weight by switching out the reinforced hull you have under the armor.
Good point, I didn't think about that at the time. I am nervous about doing so as AP is quite scary but I will give it a try and see if there is any real improvement :)
best video i have seen in a while and extremely helpful !
Awesome, I am glad you liked it! This ship was pretty good at the time though the game has moved on a bit. My Audacity build video has a little more up to date build info if you are looking for more!
I was certain not having enough crew quarters made the ship less effective. Guns don't fire as well, a little slower reacting, that sort of thing. Is that just crew itself and not their quarters?
Overall I love the look of the "Thunder". I was a bit skeptical when it was just the reinforced hull, but the added armor makes it look proper. With the added benefit that it gives you loads more survivability without baiting AP rounds from the AI. That's what I'd call a win.
I have some reworks to the 'Thunder' to do before it is deployed based on feedback from comments so it should be even better. I always thought it was generator loss that reduced gun reload/tracking speed. Maybe they both have an effect?
The 'ol Yars is 3000 in missiles and 3900 in misc parts, no sensors, nothing else special. I often buy them in mercenary cities to strip out the missiles and immediately sell the ship. Missiles can be put on any vessel (usually a strategic one) using only two medium hull blocks. After realizing this, the Yars and Yars Mk2 became completely useless ships to me.
Of course, any ship works as the base for a complete rebuild, so in that sense it's nothing to do with what you're doing here. I feel your end product probably suffered from a bit of feature creep, 6 guns is a supreme amount of firepower but it would work with 4, armor and hull layer is neat but a double-sized hull layer might do the same thing for less weight, but in the end you have a very mobile ship that rivals light cruisers and can power through any fleet, so I am looking forward to seeing it in action and hoping that it does not run afoul of the retreat button.
Thank you for the feedback. I actually bought our original Yars (the great evil king) simply for the fact it was a cheap 'bridge' module. There is a very high chance if the Thunder 2.0 (upgraded based on feedback from the video) is a success then it will also be reconfigured.
Filled with exactly the kind of tips I needed to here.
TYVM!!!!
Happy to help. I need to make some more of these videos!
Thanks for the guide. Didn't knew about trusters + armor trick.
Ah the Thunder. A good ship, but a little too expensive. If you haven't seen my build for The Audacity it has turned out to be a fantastic ship. Needs a few little tweaks for 1.1.5 but in my latest playthrough video one Audacity took out a whole garrison including an Archangel on it's own.
Since the tip top of the ship is elevated , and empty, you could probably add 1 more layer of small hull there and then mount one of the radar modules (edit: btw any of the radars that show contacts on the map are fire control radars, so the sev's radar is also fire control), so that way this + skylark has all the sensors. Edit: on the other hand, this is signficantly slower than the skylark and lightning, It might be worth looking at refiting one of the skylarks to be a tanker for this by making it double wide to both hold more fuel, and also mount a radar. and if you have speed / weight to spare, a missile since youd already be putting a fire control radar on it.
Thats not a bad idea, it also means I would be able to mount sprints on it as well if I needed the option.
@@Phrosphor So while waiting for your next episodes, I watched a few other videos, and found out that the yars is competently unnecessary for carrying missiles, its only advatage is that it is armored against enemy missile strikes. All you need to hold stragegic missiles are 2 medium hull, 1 over the other, and thats it, you put the missile in, and it turns it into a tube. So you could easily strap 2 medium hull parts on each side of the skylarks fuel tank, and build a horizontal mast for the fire control radar, and put a100s on it, and you have a combination support ship
Hi ! I've been watching your series from the start, and just started my own campaign, where your insight were more than helpful. So,thanks for that!
I missed your last two episodes as of yet, and I'm really sorry to hear about the loss of the "Zero Sum". (A minute of silence, guys, if you please!)
But at least it's sacrifice brought us this great shipbuilding episode! By the way, there are some things I would like to point out: The 1.13 patch made armor 30% heavier.
When looking for weights of parts, you can calculate them by looking at the "mass" stat, of the ship, witch now updates after every change you make to your design.
When in the docks in the game, while rebuilding ships, you can not move the bridge from it's original position, you have to bulid around it. You should consider that for your final build.
And I could not but notice you puting the flares outside of the armor when the fresh layer blocked them, but like the "Palash", flare launchers also can fire trough armor, at least the diagonal parts of it. When you flip a flare launcher around, you'll see some of the green positioning markers appear (seemingly) in the armor itself. Those are the spots!
Thank you so much for watching, and the for the great advice. I have a rework of this ship in progress for when it finally hits the campaign with the notes about the flares and a rework of some of the unnecessary heavy hull based on your points!
@@Phrosphor Your welcome! I do enjoy your playtrough! Good job!
I was waiting for the shipbuilding episode since it was announced early in the run regarding the Sevastopol at the time. I can't say this one is a surprise since it was mentioned in the last part, but a welcome one nonetheless.
When I tackled new patch meta I run into problem with armour piercing rounds since my builds were heavily armoured. I did not see the benefit of mixed designs. I'll try this approach - enough armour to keep vital components alive and not enough to prod the AI to use AP.
I wish you luck in the present and future wars. May Ishu keep us from special ammo types.
In all honestly I was really nervous to post a Svestapol rebuild video because there are so many ship building experts out there who would have a 'better' way to do it. But I think I will just go for it.
I haven't tried this design in the campaign yet. I am worried it hasn't got enough fuel, but it is so hard to test that except in a fight. Hopefully it doesn't drop out of the sky.
I am not a fan of using armor, as for me speed is life - but adding the armor sections to this ship really made a big difference, it's definitely worth testing to see if it is going to play out.
@@Phrosphor Please do post your Sevastopol refit video. Other people may have spent lots of hours in the shipworks designing ships but from what I saw on videos and discord there are few big ship designs that have speed in high priority.
I. e. I haven't seen any built according to your doctrine.
I find playing the speedy-dodgy way is really satisfying, both in tactical and strategic aspect.
Please pardon me for my playing with the highfleet lore, but I believe that the quoda of Grand Duke Phrosphor's family would start with the words "Blessed be he who dodgeth, and smitheth his foes with speed and fury"
Blessed be he who dodgeth!
Thanks for the guide!
No problem! This ship turned out to be pretty good but not ideal. Now that 1.15 is out though it is a little bit out of date.
Any game where you can edit a ship ends up being hours and hours playing with designs. I enjoyed a lot "From the Depths" and I enjoy a lot creating smaller specialized cheap boats to be used in a team. Not that I'm good at the game, mind. The combat music sounds and I panic.
Had a few people recommend me 'from the depths' I need to check it out.
The thunder is the size of a cruiser, but all small engines, and tanks, so maybe a light cruiser...
Ah the Thunder, I miss you brave little ship!
Yeah it probably was a little more like a pocket cruiser.
9:27 - That's really cool. Nice find with that trick. :)
It's a game changer for sure! You can even use it to elevate guns to shoot past the large fuel tanks.
@@Phrosphor I did know about elevating the guns. I thought that was the only thing it was good for. Now I'm thinking about trying to use it for missiles and escape pods.
Do you have any RNG fail states for play throughs? I have just had a run with some weird city bugs like hidden cities spawning on trade routes and the first two save points being one city apart
I haven't seen that yet myself but I have been reading about more bugs like this since the patch.
I would definitely have been frustrated to find a hidden city on a trade route and that would easily approach being a game ender for me.
@@Phrosphor would you also be willing to upload the ships save file somewhere so we could try them out/ muck around with that design our selves?
@@bigotedbill1546 yeah sure I can do that. I'll dig it out next time I'm at the machine with the game installed.
Can you still do the internal engines things, I can't seem to get it to work?
Sadly it got nerfed in the 1.15 patch. You can still do it, but it requires a LOT more elevation and ends up defeating the purpose.
I'm happy when I can get a design with a thrust to weight ratio above 4, meanwhile this guy's going "Oh it's only 8, I need more engines" lmao
Speed is life, life is speed!
you wont need many suppressors if you protect your tanks from splash damage. I use modified glad (270 degree armor plus reinforced hull coating on top) with 2 suppressors and it suffice on hard campaign. also if you coat your ship first with armor then r hull, it protects against AP shell. proxy will tear it down eventually but you wont get splash damage that much and hence less fuel tank fire . Also i dont get why people even try 100mm ever. this thing can work against small corvettes but does almost nothing to armored ship. it has no penetration even with AP and terrible dispersion at long range with makes it a big NO against strike groups and things like glads. if you are rich you can even use laser guided and just murder anything at long range before they even come to range. because if you are in AP range so are them. last thing 4 fixed d30s gives you big vertical thrust but when you need to dive to evade which you will eventually need you only have nk's thrust. the thing that I most liked about this was no doubt your aesthetic concern and I also name Thunder heavily modified lightnings. the things that i just said are my opinions i didnt mean to sound like a highfleet guru or some sort english is not my mother tongue so I might not convey the things that i want to say in a way that i want to say. really liked your video.
another thing. you can replace 2 molots with 37s to protect you against missiles and especially against AP rounds the latter is a bit tricky though. it reduces your alpha by 33% but being able to shoot down incoming missiles and shells gives you less things to evade which increase your longevity big time by being ready to move when you want where you want. it allows also to stay in a good firing position and save your fuel. i dont know how many times i got showered by proxies and APs while succesfully dodging missiles and missing my shots.
This is a great post - some really useful info!
Something I am asked a lot about is why I am not 'over' armoring my ships and it really just comes down to speed. I want these strike craft to top out at ~500kph and armor really messes with that. I like to dodge in combat, it also makes for more exciting videos if the ships are getting shredded. That said, it is well overdue time to change that strategy for this playthrough.
The 100mm plays into that as well. It's all about burst fire/projectile speed. I actually settle on 130 for this ship in the campaign, as it is pretty perfect for my playstyle. 180 for me tracks too slowly and the projectile speed it too low for a fast ship. In the campaign this was built for, I had a huge stockpile of 100mm ammo I wanted to use up, but in the end it wasn't powerful enough for what I needed for.
I really which I had those 37mms.
This was very fun to watch, is it at all worth it to have a mix gun setup? Like dropping 2 guns for like 30-50mm somethings to use for anti-missile duty?
I honestly struggle with a mixed gun setup, and like to keep my ships to a single type but I think it can be very successful if you can handle it.
How do you move entire group of parts together?
You need to drag select them and move them that way, though it is very fiddly.
I just retrofit in game. You come up with quirkier stuff that way
11:01 this appears to be patched out but I don't see it mentioned in the patch notes. Confirmation on that?
Yeah this was for version 1.13 and since then a lot of changes have been made sadly. The ship itself wasn't actually very good in practice but I did learn a lot from the creation.
@@Phrosphor That's probably good for the game tbh
The Zero Sum is dead now though, so landing gear isn't all it lacks!
will you share this?
I can put a link on the Highfleet Reddit?
Using reinforced hull as armor really does have that problem of constantly being set on fire. I never liked that tactic, personally I think the game is balanced extremely well to where you at least need *some* armor for a real brawling corvette or frigate, but armoring the whole thing requires either building a full blown cruiser or being reliant on support ships for range and utility.
Where can I get these downloadable blueprints?
As with the Sev blueprint, this is for an even older version and the ship just isn't viable these days.
Do you have a recommendation?
@@scottb5254 what are you trying to build?
Any reason not to use 37mm chainguns for missile defense?
Probably trying to avoid additional weight. Flairs are lighter and do a pretty good job
Space and weight primarily. You need a hull part per gun, power for the gun, ammo for the gun.. it's a lot cheaper in terms of components to mount flares and dodge. On a bigger ship I would mount multiple 37 or 57mm ciws.
_[AC/DC music intensifies]_ 👩🏻🎤
~thunder~
lol dude your small ship got real large at the end there.
I talk about this in my AAR after the campaign finishes! It is horrendously over-engineered!
@@Phrosphor do you have an video that show how to upgrade the lighting? for early game, this upgrade is more mid to late game
@@wei270 I don't at the moment no. I am currently releasing videos for my custom ships for my new hard-mode campaign.
@Trifler on Steam has a great guide for upgrading all the vanilla ships. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2568066216
@@Phrosphor thx alot
I take it this build is no longer up to date? engine trick won't work with the elevation.
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They should just remove this part elevations or other shit entirely, ship bulding is very bullshit.
It is extremely frustrating, but it does mean that you have limitations in building. It's like DND, a character with a negative stat or too is way more interesting to play than one with all 18's. I like overcoming and dealing with flaws.