hxc's School of Ship Designing

Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 11:25 am

So, a lot of people send me messages saying “hxc, how do you win battles so awesomely?” And I respond usually that its because I’m awesome. But really, its about the designs and their effectiveness with my commanders. So, I’ve decided to make a really awesome post on designing ships, for the benefit of all you players who are confused.

First off, there is no such thing as the perfect design for every race. Each race has specific commanders, and they’ve all got their strengths and weaknesses. This means that in order to do a guide that would accommodate every race, it would be very long and very tedious to make. So, in the light of that fact, these are all just basic designs to give you an idea on what to use. Keep in mind these are all going to be Doomstar designs, and then I’ll give some advice on using smaller ships.

The Most Important Part – The Walls.
Walls are the most important part to any race’s armada. Their purpose is to deal out a lot of damage to start with, gain the “threat” of the enemy fleets, and then keep that threat. In order to do this, you want to make sure your walls kill enough stuff in the initial hit, keep firing fast enough to keep the enemy’s attention, and then be able to take all the damage so your other ships don’t get fired on. That’s a lot for one type of design to do, but if made correctly, will save an entire armada.

So, what weapons do I want on my walls?
The first weapon you want on your walls is Homing Black Hole. The God of High Damage and High Cooling Time. This effectively will make your walls kill at least a couple of the enemy ships in one shot and grab the enemy’s attention first. It also has a high range for getting a good first shot. But, we’re going to do something with it that you won’t be doing on other designs, mixing weapon types. In order to keep the interest of the enemy, its important to have the fleet continue firing, or the enemies will basically get bored with it and fire on other things, which would cause them to die. So, on the last slot of the design, throw on some Auto-Fire Gauss Cannons. These have the lowest cooling time in the game, and will easily keep the enemy’s attention just where you want it.

Alright, I’ve got my wall weapons down. What different types of walls are there?
In the spirit of keeping things interesting, there are 3 different types of walls. Shield Walls, DR walls, and HP Buffing walls. Each of them uses a different armor, and each has its benefits for their race.

Shield Walls are used highly by one race, while others have the option to use them. Dementians are the ones in the game that use Shielding and only shielding. The races which have the option to shield are Jinchou Tennou, Thatloque, Cochehua and Mactabillis. Shields are strongest against missiles, but rather weak against ballistics and Phasor. Shields use Wall of Klein armor.

DR Walls do not mean Damage Reduction walls! They’re the second type of walls, and the most widely used. Every race except for Dementians have a commander that can be geared toward using DR walls. DR walls work by making the enemy’s ships miss. If you’ve ever played any dice based RPG, imagine it like a Dice Roll for attack and a Dice Roll for defense. In order for the enemy’s fleets to hit you, they need to roll a certain number or higher, and if they fail, they miss. Except we’re dealing with thousands of dice. DR Walls use Eternium armor.

There is a simple calculation for overall defense rate, which is important to know in order to design things:

(armor defense rate + mobility defense rate) * (computer defense rate + morale + fleet experience) = total DR

HP Buffing Walls are the least used. They can be used by Karakiri, Celebrus Opes, Thatloque and Mactabillis. They rely on using commanders and devices to gain as much Impenetrable Armor as possible, effectively making the ships uncritable. You can relate this to stacking Resilience in World of Warcraft. Although I’m going to explain how to make such a wall, I’m going to say that its only for experienced players to try. These walls aren’t particularly strong against anything, but aren’t weak against anything. These kinds of walls use Energy-Organic Crystal armor.

So, what devices for each wall type?

For Shield walls, you want to work on making the shields as strong as possible, because as their hp goes down, the ships get weaker, obviously. The main devices for these are Force Field Generator, Amplifying Chip, and Shield Capacitor. But, since Doomstars have 5 device slots, you can choose 2 of the following to fill up the others: Coprocessor, Ablative Coating, Reinforced Hull. I’d suggest using Ablative Coating since it will help out against crits, which could happen when facing an enemy with Time Wake Homing Missiles or Nahodoom Ray Launcher. So, the other device is between Coprocessor or Reinforced Hull, which is entirely up to you.

For DR Walls, it all goes by buffing the devices that help give it mobility or more numbers into the DR Calculation shown above. Inertia Nullifier, ECM Jammer, Coprocessor, Booster Device. I like throwing Reinforced Hull on the design too, to give it a little extra HP.

For HP Buffing walls, its all about stacking HP and Impenetrable Armor. Ablative Coating and Reinforced Hull. Throw on Coprocessor too. The last device is your choice. You can go with a specialty device like Kwang-11, Gyro Deformator, or Crimson Figurehead, or try to throw on a DR device to give some extra to that.

Congratulations, if you followed this guide correctly so far, you’ve just designed a great Wall Doomstar.

Common Mistakes when Designing Ships

Some common mistakes I’ve seen when designing something is that people try to give bonuses to everything, effectively making the ship less powerful in the end. You do NOT want to try to mix weapon types on ships other than walls. You don’t want to try to make each ship a DR and Shield monster. Buffing both just ends up being a waste of space.

Fast Fire Weapons, And Why The World Revolves Around Them

Rarely is a battle ever won in the first shot of missiles. I’ve only ever seen it happen between Doomstars and Cruisers, and when that happens, its not pretty. So, in order to fill the space between when your missiles are firing, its important to have weapons that are powerful and fire fast. Over the course of the battle, the fast fire weapons will deal out a lot more damage than the walls. If you’ve ever played World of Warcraft, these are your DPS characters, and your Walls are your Tanks.

So, first and foremost, you have 2 different types of weapons that are used as fast fire. Beams and Ballistics, and they each have a commander type that they go with. Beams are used with Energy System Specialists, and Ballistics are used with Ballistic Experts. Pretty easy stuff to figure out.

But the big question here is how to design a good fast fire ship?

The ships are pretty much the same in their design, except for a couple of device changes. Both use Eternium armor, since it’s the most effective against fast fire.

The point when designing a good fast fire ship is to maximize the damage they deal, while lowering the cooling time. The devices you want to use to achieve this are numerous. Coprocessor, Amplifying Chip, Structural Analyzer, Ballistic Accelerator (only on Ballistics!), High Energy Focus (only on Beams!).. alright, I guess not so numerous.

Basically, a good basic fast fire design is Coprocessor, Reinforced Hull, Amplifying Chip, Structural Analyzer and Ballistic Accelerator/High Energy Focus. These devices create the most damage and least cooling time, and are the exact devices I use on my ships.

But what weapons to use?

For Ballistics, its pretty obvious to use Distortion Blaster. So, I won’t go into detail about other options. People claim that Auto-Fire Gauss is better, but if you use that, then it’ll fire faster than your walls, and the AFG will steal all the threat.

For Beams, it’s a bit trickier. Oscillation of Dissonance is regarded as the best widely-available Beam in the game, but you can’t leave out Phasor, which comes a close second. So, what to do? 2 slots of Phasor, the rest of OOD. This will make the fleet deal a good amount of damage to both shields (which OOD is weak against, but Phasor is very good against) and DR walls (which Phasor is weak against, and OOD is very good against.) For Mactabillis, simply replace OOD with Nahodoom Ray Launcher.

For almost every race, that’s the basics of designing ships. Build some of each, and put them in a formation of 5 in each row, all set on formation. Like this:

XXXXX
XXXXX
XXXXX
XXXXX

You can use 5 walls, 10 ballistics, 5 beams... or 5 walls, 5 ballistics, 10 beams.. or 10 walls, 5 ballistics, 5 beams, its really up to you.

But, now we get into the tricky part – using Psi weapons! (Hooray?)

Psi weapons are used mostly for beams. Psi Storm Launcher is a very effective weapon when used well. If you’re a Dementian or a Tetecuhtin, then it can create a devastating addition to your armada.

Basically, designing a good Psi ship is kind of the same as designing a Beam Fast Fire ship. High Energy Focus is your basis for it, and then throw on Psi Control System and Mind Tracker in order to buff the Psi attack. The other two devices should be Coprocessor and Reinforced Hull. Easy enough, right? Psi is generally meant to just be a flavor adder- use a couple fleets here and there, but don’t make your whole armada based on psi.

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed something that occurs in every one of my designs – 2 devices that keep repeating. Reinforced Hull and Coprocessor. I cannot stress enough how important these two devices are, they’re the best ones in the game. Adding more to the computer (Coprocessor) will boost your DR and your AR. Reinforced Hull is an extra 20% hp, which means your ships live 20% longer.

Specialty Devices!

Don’t worry, this guide is almost done. Specialty devices are designs that aren’t absolutely needed in an armada, but can give it that nice extra push to greatness. The devices that come under this category are Kwang 11, Crimson Figurehead, Insanity Field Generator (only available to Psi Races) and Gyro Deformator. You can throw these all on one design and make it your commander fleet, with Time Wake Homing missiles. A good general design for this would be Eternium, and the devices are the 3 mentioned above, and of course, Coprocessor and Reinforced Hull.

On to different ship sizes! Basically, use Reinforced Hull and Coprocessor on everything on cruisers, and put them on Dreads too, but with one of the devices based on the ship type that you’re using. Simple enough.
Now that you’ve read this guide, you’ve graduated from hxc’s school of Ship Designs. Congratulations. You’re now ready to battle!

Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 12:27 pm

hxc wrote:

Basically, a good basic fast fire design is Coprocessor, Reinforced Hull, Amplifying Chip, Self Concious Fleet and Ballistic Accelerator/High Energy Focus. These devices create the most damage and least cooling time, and are the exact devices I use on my ships.

I have to point out here than nobody knows how well SCF works, or even if it works (as intended anyway) at all. Other than that, very good guide, I hope some people read this, things might get more interesting.

Also, make sure these commanders are all leveled up, you can max out the fleet experience in 2 turns as well, which helps. Choose commanders with high defense if you expect an attack, and high offense if you are attacking. Remember that formula too, commanders with high mobility help.

PVT Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 76

Uh oh. HXC has graced us all with his awesomeness Smile

. Now we're all going to have to try to come up with ways to be even bigger and better. Now it's gonna be a commander fight.

PVT Joined: 22 Nov 2008 Posts: 11

This most probably the coolest guide ever. It totally goes against my personal favorites, but I guess I've never really just crunched the numbers.

Thanks!

SGT Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 322

Thanks for the guide hxc, but I have a serious inquiry.

As far as AGOD used to tell me, commanders are VERY important. The amount of benefits added to any ship design by devices pale in comparison to the overall bonuses gained from a commander, so I typically throw both survival devices onto my doomstar designs if I'm using particularly prized commanders that I don't want dead (e.g. ESS/AC Xerus with high Off/Def)

That being said, if you do end up using both survival devices, do you still recommend using two slots for Reinforced Hull and Coprocessor even if they don't complement the particular ship design as well as other devices would (like High Energy Focus and Amplifying Chip). If so, then which of the devices you recommended should take up the final slot? High Energy Focus for beams and Ballistic Accelerator for Projectiles, or Amp Chip to lower cooling rate, or what?

Thanks again man!

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:35 am

While theres still two devices for survival, only one of them really matters at a time, because now its Escape Pod and Advanced Escape pod, and they can't stack.

But to answer your question.. if your ships aren't strong enough to kill anything or hold of any fire, what point is the commander's survival? You're just going to keep building subpar ships while your commanders survive. I think survival devices should only be an afterthought.

PVT Joined: 23 Jun 2008 Posts: 4 Location: Singapore

spoken like a true armada destroyer!

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:43 am

bump because I made an edit.

PVT Joined: 13 Jul 2010 Posts: 36 Location: Boca Raton, FL

why always coprocessor? are tri and quad gliched?

PVT Joined: 15 May 2010 Posts: 11

this guide was written before triprocessor and quadprocessor were introduced. definitely use quadprocessor, if you have it