EXAMPLE SHIPS
These ships are meant as examples, to help you recognize ships that meet the design principles here. Adjust them to fit your playstyle. 🙂
If you would like to request a ship design that is not shown here, email me at me@pixelperfectguide.com with the strategy you want, along with ship level and type.
Many thanks to pixyship.com for their amazing ship-building tool. I’ve used it prior to every new ship design to try out new ideas.
Level 5 qtarian
Good about this build:
- Short lifts mean few bottlenecks.
- BT and SHL are well armored. Most rooms that have similar health have similar armor.
- Rooms are grouped by category, so that a crew repairing lasers never has to run far.
- Security gate is nicely positioned between reactors in case boarders try to roam between them. Also, security gates next to lifts are good since boarders can be killed while waiting for the lift.
Bad about this build:
- Engine only has one armor. (Engine should have power set to one when active craft are present, so that the AA can be fully powered.)
- AA only has three armor, and is next to a lift on one side. Most repairers will be coming from the right though, and can hide from opponent’s shots in the vent to the right of the AA.
Level 6 fed hangar
Good about this build:
- Armoring is fairly even.
- Rooms are grouped by type.
- Strategy seems good, centered around the hangar. PP removes shield so that your lasers and missiles can kill the AA before the craft die.
- Power is one over, 22/21. The sec gate and AA won’t be powered all the time, so this is fine.
Bad about this build:
- One lift may be a point of congestion, especially if the missiles or AA are focused and lots of repairers have to come from the top row to the bottom. To counter this, keep some crew with home rooms in the bottom row.
Level 7 pirate pen spam
Good about this build:
- All rooms are highly armored, especially the low-hp MML.
- Strategy is cohesive, there are no weapons that damage the opponent’s shield. AS and AA are defensive, to help keep you alive until the pens win you the game. The teleport can be used to disrupt the opponent’s strategy, since pens have no effect on room function.
Bad about this build:
- The AA is a bit far away from where the main crew will probably be. It will be hard to repair in a battle.
- Teleport would only be useful if you have many of the extra crew rooms, otherwise you’ll need all crew to stay on your ship and boost the MSL and MML firing rate.
Level 8 fed teleport
Good about this build:
- Short lifts mean quick travel times for repair crew.
- Crew won’t get stuck inside the shield room waiting for elevator and get shot, they can wait in the security gate.
- Strategy is good, centered around teleport with a whole collection of lasers to back it up.
- Armoring is reasonably even. If the MSL’s are getting shot more often, you can move armor from the top MLZ to better armor the MSL’s.
Bad about this build:
- MG and top MLZ are really far apart – a crew tasked with repairing lasers might have to go to either one. For a crew in the middle, either trip is not too bad. Make sure your crew with highest seniority for repairing lasers are in the plasma cannon because it’s equidistant.
- Bottom right security gate may be superfluous; it will be rare that an enemy crew will walk through there. Also, the ship is one power over so it may be better to just remove it.
Level 9 qtarian hangar and teleport
Good about this build:
- Power usage is perfect, 27/27. All rooms can be powered for the whole battle.
- Effective hybrid design using the hangar and the teleport. The PD helps get the enemy shield down quickly so that the opponent’s AA’s can be damaged, and then shoots each reactor to disable mines for the boarders. (see room AI tricks for “EMP every reactor”)
- Each room is very highly armored due to the room, armor, room, armor, room sandwich (referred to as “armor sandwich”).
Bad about this build:
- Lasers are very spread out, so repairing them may be difficult. By difficult, I mean a crew up on the top row may have seniority to repair the MLZ on the bottom first, and have a long trek down there to repair it.
- Lifts are three levels (and at this ship level are fairly slow) so there may be long wait times.
Level 10 pirate hangar
Variant: remove security gates and shift all three reactors and armor to the left by one. This also gives you more space on the right for bedrooms, since pirate ships are fairly limited in space.
Good about this build:
- Compact build with two lifts. Everything feels “close” and repair paths are short.
- Sec gates are positioned between reactors to slay boarders.
- Strategy is cohesive – hangar, AS, AA, and SB are all defensive rooms.
- Rooms with similar HP have similar amounts of armor – slightly more for shield rooms.
Bad about this build:
- There is not enough power for all rooms, using 39 out of 30 generated. Some rooms will need to be turned off when AA needs to be turned on. The sec gates will be on only some of the time, and the PP can be turned off once the enemy shield is down. That’s a number of rooms that won’t be used some of the time, but still need armor.
Level 11
Look at top players! Most right now are using the visiri hybrid, but other ships can be competitive.
Next: Intro to Room AI