47:12 "The target area is only two meters wide. It's a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station. Only a precise hit will set off a chain reaction. The shaft is ray-shielded, so you'll have to use proton torpedoes."
I do like how all of aavak's ships are starting to take the same shape, which is a sword of sorts, very long with outcroppings at the bottom. Makes the fleet look like an actual fleet.
Try out the missile production inside the FireAnt, feeding the rocket launchers and put them adjacent (missile factory adjacent to another missile factory) for 25% bonus in production instead of using storage for missiles. Sulfur+Iron nets you way more missiles per slot.
That requires a lot more crew though. It's pretty easy to just get one quarters of 6 loading each launcher with 2 operators like he has. If you add factory with ammo production in then you need crew bringing supplies to it and keeping it running. I've tested a few setups and found with 2 HE Factories feeding 4 Launchers for non-stop firing it takes 8 Crew quarters plus the 8 Operators on the guns. There is also the size issue as several factories for all those launchers and the cargo area to store the raw goods is gonna take up a lot of space. Overall it's easier to just have HE Ammo stored in the area. Unless your getting in some really long fights it's probably a bit of over kill. Though when possible I do think having a factory onboard is a good idea so the ship can refill it's own HE Ammo in between battles as well as slowly produce some during the fight to keep the ship going if things do get a bit long.
Funny I just did this calculation: Factory ---- Ore(Fe+S) storage 2 tiles, 100 parts Parts store 3 tiles, 30 parts Machinery 4 tiles, 0 parts Total: 130 parts/9 tiles = 14.444 parts/tile Parts storage ---- Missile parts storage 90 parts, 9 tiles Total: 90 parts/9 tiles = 10 parts/tile The factory is always more space efficient, assuming you can fit a 3x3 into your design.
@@hexlat Yeah the issue though is more Alpha Strike ability. See NPC ships have several advantages and disadvantages player ships don't. First off they are limited by cost for a specific level range so they have to pick the cheaper options, which is storage instead of factories. Second is they don't have to worry about surviving and long fights. Most NPC designs are setup to have 20-30 missiles per launcher which is typically more than enough to finish any fight of which they will only be expected to have 1 of vs the player. Lastly having a few cargo spots of ammo storage means the ship is smaller and thus can fit more launchers in a smaller space. And you don't need additional crew running the factories so less quarters. The result is more missiles being launched to overwhelm enemy PD even if they can't sustain it over long fights. But yeah overall the game is setup so Ammo takes up more space than it's raw materials so factories to any ammo weapon is more effective storage. It's just you'll need crew running those factories and fitting them in to supply all your launchers could get pricey.
Since Aavak isn't building mega ships that take up the whole grid, size isn't an issue. The biggest limiting factor he is constantly running up against is crew limits. So while using factories vs storage would be more space efficient, it requires more crew. Crew is the limiting factor, so storage is the way to go. As far as combat damage, Scarab typically pulls the majority of the aggro so far so being more damage resistant hasn't been an issue either, so storing ammo is fairly safe. Also, it doesn't require crew to add armor and bulkheads to limit destruction for ammo magazines going off.
What I took from this is your cat got mad at you for not giving her ENOUGH pets, went out and learned how to get humansick, then passed it on to Shelab, then you to hide the fact and blame Shelab instead. Cats are tricky like this. Adorable, but cunning. Either that or the old adage; when it rains, it chucks it down.
To improve missile accuracy, it may be a good idea to to only designate targets for the Fire Ant once it has stopped moving. It appears a lot of the time, they keep the acceleration from being launched while the fire ant is boosting into a fire position, which causes them to overshoot their targets, especially if they are too close to properly adjust.
Might want to shoehorn in a tractor beam on the scarab it helps either push or hold an enemy at a distance. If they get too close switch the beam to push them away until the desired distance then switch it back to hold them in position. I have one on my capital ship and I'm wondering why I didn't use it earlier. Loving the designs of the ships and colour schemes.
I've been watching this and thinking about some interesting ideas. 1) A ship with two configurations: One standard, the other diagonal. The idea is that this ship is relatively small with just enough storage to hold all the parts for the other form with one form maybe being combat while the other is for mining asteroids for the Hercules. 2) This one is an idea for the far, far future. Divide the fleet into three: Hunter Fleet (Scarab, Fire Ant, any any more ships you want to make for it), Gatherer Fleet (Modified Hercules with a rail cannon and any other ships you want to make for it, like the idea 1 ship), and the Hive (A large, almost space station-style ship that you park in a safe area and exists to be the big storehouse for parts as well as the main factory). You might be wondering 'Why put a large rail cannon on the Hercules'? Well, that's because it will then be able to delete any turrets guarding asteroid fields or ship graveyards without needing to wait for the Hunter Fleet.
the idea of a ship with multiple forms is awesome. i think the second idea may be a long way off, considering crewing just the three ships is proving to be a challenge.
So good to hear that the household is doing better! We're all getting everything we didn't catch in the previous 2 years, so this winter is going to be rough. Great design and gameplay, the Fire Ant has evolved into an Ant Lion now! I saw that name suggested and I too think that's fitting.
I know you don't like embedding engines inside the ship, but a design pattern that looks *really* good is to have a fore and aft pointing engine facing each other so the thrust patterns overlap, and then covering the outside edge of it with relatively thin armor. Sometimes I mix it with structure pieces for a "ducted" engine look. My fabrication ship, for example, has roughly hammerhead shapes at both front and back, with fore and aft pointing engines in each. This makes it feel balanced, since if an enemy wrecks my thrusters at either the front or back of the ship, there's a straight shot through the engine room and into the "ducted" thruster. Whether or not you end up ever using it, you should give it a try in the designer.
great episode! i can definitely sympathise feeling under the weather, this week was a difficult one for me too, but it's all coming together to make next week look like a great week. i have been dearly missing your cosmoteer videos, and i have loved the respective journeys of every ship in the fleet: the fire ant finding its identity as a missile spewing flanker, the scarab going from a long ranged artillery platform to a heavily defended brawler, and the hercules being the giant upon which shoulders the overheads of the fleet. thank you so much!
When trying to kite backwards like with the scarab I find it easier to use move command with that + looking button. Because when you use that the ship maintains it's current rotation, thus it will fly backwards if you pick a spot behind in. If you then click the rotation button and pick and enemy you will keep looking at that enemy while moving to the location. For targeting enemy system if you just right click on them it puts you into attack mode which stops the move order. You need to instead select the weapons individually and order them to attack. It helps to put them in a hotkey group, CNTRL+#. Then when you want to pick a target simply press whatever number you assigned the weapons to. Also I group weapons on side of my ship separately so when attacked by groups I can have weapons on the port side attack enemies over there and weapons on starboard attack enemies on that side. Also when sniping with your Railgun for the base it didn't seem like it was targeting the part you selected. Do you have the railgun set to Fire At Target or Fire At Will? FaW the RG will shoot as soon as any part of the enemy ship is in line of fire. Where as FaT will fire only when the selected part is in line of fire.
Crew limits will stop it but you need a close-mid cannon ship designed to soak damage and do point defense. It would let the Scarab stay at optimal range and the Fire Ant to maneuver with less worry of possibly disabling your other ships.
Your Fire Ant design reminds me a lot of that one frigate I built for fun and then became a staple of my fleet due to being too angry to die and drawing firepower away from my artillery ships
If your after additional rare resources they can also be found within the damage area of the star. You will need a dedicated ship with 6-7 large shields mounted on the front and a couple of tractor beams to pull the asteroids back out of the danger area so they can be mined safely.
An interesting idea for a missile ship would be to overload it with missiles of all varieties and make it very mobile. Most of the crew would be operating missiles, and logistical personnel can be undercrewed. The idea of this ship is that you engage an enemy and unload everything, then hopefully you can kill them outright with the barage. But in case you don't, you disengage. All of the reloading gets done out of combat, and you should never have a prolonged fight. Sort of like torpedo vessel or a bomber. Certainly a superiority craft. Sort of the opposite way if thinking. But it rides heavily on being able to kill in one barage. If it's not able, you'll just waste time, instead of gaining it. No need for storage, point defense etc. At which point: You don't really need a lot of defenses!
I often find my crew trying to bring stuff between modules, because I'm not good at setting up crew orders, but otherwise.... Modular is much bulkier and tend to be more durable design-wise. It also tends to be more costly. I prefer my modular builds, but I couldn't tell you if they're any better. You could also probably do with testing out your ship in creative against other designs to see how it reacts, that might uncover certain weaknesses you may have not previously noticed. I'd tell you to add a railgun-spine down the middle of your fire-ant, but I'm not 100% on whether that old design-strategy is as good as it used to be. If you DO add a railgun, I'd advise you put a couple horns on the front of your ship. As in two massive pieces of armor that defend the very valuable gun. Especially if it's a particularly large one. I think the horns on your Fire-Ant might be big enough as is, considering its size. Just be sure to add shields, you don't want to lose that rail just 'cause your opponent had shields and you didn't. Anyways, I hope this helps you on your journey towards bigger guns.
One thing that I note is that you seem to take the time to take out all of the weapons in every encounter. Sometime, the fastest way to eliminate the threat is to just go directly to the cockpit or the reactor. You have to consider how long it is going to take to take out all of those weapons versus just punching straight through the armor and completely taking out the threat.
4:27 - I recommend opening up creative mode and loading the ship and crew designations of the ship you encountered. It helps to see what other designers have done.
Honestly, you did a really good job in that three ship fight! those are not easy ships to fight and your designs really paid off, especially with the redundant defenses and distributed structure!
I refuse to watch any other people play this game poorly and since I don't play games anymore I require your videos to experience this one. Thanks for finally posting, and I guess I will be visiting your other Channel to watch the other videos to get my fix.
One thing I have noticed in your designs is that you will often set a crew quarter for one very specific task that is rarely done (looking at you porters assigned only to hyperdrives.) If you create some fall-through logic for roles, you can have crew do more and idle less. For instance, if you make a 'gunner' role you could have them operate guns and then feed ammo / power to guns. If operate has a higher priority then feed ammo, they will never get off the gun to load, but you don't need to micro them at all. This means you don't need separate bunks for operators and logistics. One of the things I do is have all roles set to 9 on hyperdrive power/supply as well as EVA tasks as these are tasks very easily manual controlled. These can superseded even their primary tasks because you don't need gun operators while charging the hyperdrive as you don't hyperjump while in combat and you don't need crew manning the engine room or guns while you are EVA looting as you aren't moving and you would recall before doing any more combat. There are pros and cons to some of the jobs that might get abandoned like shields needing to be fully recharged before coming online when a ship jumps you during an EVA if it took too long and not being able to repower engines if you ER is unstaff (put doors to the thrusters and have thruster fueling priority higher then EVA to side step this one.) Also, when placing crew quarters, Bunks that would house operators can be ANYWHERE on the ship because they will walk there pre-combat, it is only rapid demand suppliers that need to be near their jobs (think energy suppliers and shield recharges.) Utilizing this shield can be recharged before they fall during burst damage or weapons reloaded when they don't fire continuously (very important in ion emitter chains.)
42:34 If you didn't have a door to that engine, it wouldn't have caught fire. It's on fire currently because it spread there from the engine room through the door.
Love the Fireant design! Just a suggestion on your railgun useage to set it to fire at a specific target instead - you can usually have it punch out the cockpits while your other weapons focus on 'defanging' a target. Also if you blow off all their engines (and it might also be weapons required too I can't quite recall) then it will count the ship as disabled. Can help a lot with the materials rare materials recovered/salvaged - especially if you're after uranium or processors (but you might not care by this stage with the Hercules able to mine and manufacture everything you need!)
Hello Aavak ! I very much like how you take time to expose your thoughts, so it's really fine by me. If you want advices and look for space efficiency, you should build missile factory instead of some of the cargo. Because sulfur and iron ore are really much more efficient. 1 sulfur + 1 iron = 20 missiles, so 1 stack of sulfur + 1 stack of iron give 5 stacks of missile. 1 factory produced enough missile for 2 launchers.
Me and my friend both got a head cold last weekend off of a sick kitten she rescued, so if it was the stuffy head and sore throat but not fever sort of cold, can confirm you can get that from cats.
Capacitors are great for prestocking pointdefense. They will be idle most of the time, but when they are needed they get much needed energy. It makes the long routes more bearable. However minor explosions. But what do we care? They already penetrated the defense so it was doomed from the start!!
YES THE FIRE ANT LOOKS SO COOL! Also to comment on the side-facing thrusters, I'd say keep them because being further towards the back and being so large, will make the turning speed faster allowing you to keep the ships broadside facing the target at all times, and being able to quickly swing around to advance/retreat/relocate
Glad Tilly and her two humans are feeling better was a fun Ep Aavak as for possible tips on Missiles you did what I was going to suggest and Hot grp 'em but might I suggest a tweek?, Try splitting them into 2/4 groups, Port and starboard so you can control the engagements maybe even For/ Port and Aft Port so 4 groups thus can save on missiles when you just need a couple to pop a section or 4 targets in one volley. I have been doing this on my Gun boats to moderate success.
one trick is to put weapons only on one side of the ship and giving the ship an extra constant forward engine and 2 extra sideways engines to add one constant slow spin and then to just orbit the target as fast as possible. this focusses offense on the side, shields on the front ant trhusters on the back and whatever needs no protection on the other side of the weapons. with such a one-sided ship your stratgy is to fly quickly in an orbit around your targets. th extra speed allows for more evasion and a fleet of them can do guerilla tactics. Such an orbiter can function at any range, but works better for long range weaponry. it more likely surrounds a target and more likely hits a weaker spot or confuses the ai targeting priority, failing to focus on a single of your ships, so no critical damage is done to a single of your ships. with agility of fast orbiters comes a lot of flexibility and tactics, and you can use fast orbiters more efficiently to do missions and mining. BUT one SIDE of your ship sure lacks offensive capability in favor of the other side having more of that. missiles in the back-side is almost always a waste of resources, as those missiles are likely wasted or intercepted or hitting poorly. putting a sideways raygun longest range weapon on a fast orbiter, and lots of thrusters on the long side of the raygun, seems to be superior to even crystal lasers, because crystal lasers more quickly fill the field than orbiting rayguns, that CAN surround a target at long distance, hitting from all sides.
I don't know if you already did this or not but if you need crew you can always go to already visitid star systems and get new crew from the stations there. Your fame level is higher than before the last time you were there so you should be able to hire more people now i think. Sorry for my English I'm not a native speaker.
This is an interesting idea; though I think it might not work. From what I've seen, the fame limit isn't per crew person, but rather the total amount of crew I can have is limited by the fame. If that's the case, then it won't matter where I hire them from, it only matters how many crew I'm already controlling. But I will check this out when I visit old systems off camera!
@@Aavak stations have limited crew like any other resource. If you hire until you don't even see the red unhireable crew then you probably just emptied the station. They seem to replenish quickly though. But your total limit is what it is. System doesn't matter. Enjoying your videos quite a bit.
@@Aavak He means that stations have a limited number of crew to hire regardless of your fame, and when the stations run out, it doesn't matter if you have enough fame or not as you won't be able to hire. Back in past systems, when your fame wasn't high enough, you left behind many dozens of potential crew you can still go back to hire!
Also regarding the amount of fire youd like the fire ant to lay down you could tell it to cease fire a bit before your target is battered down to the level you like as your new reload speed means there will always be an overkill amount of missiles in the air if you wait untill a ship is nearly fully defeated to give the cease fire order (or if you just wait for the target to die and the fire ant to stop on its own.
Arm FIREANT with EMP missiles and possibly NUKE. But EMP is a must, also add more armor to scarab, A-LOT more, and more Point Defence points, it Doesn't require crew to operate. Maybe buid Tractor Beam to keep enemy at bay
Heaviest combat yet! The Fire Ant does its job very well, but the Scarab is most certainly in need of some kind of revision. _Or_ you just need a very large gunboat to bolster your fleet.
11:50 We already know that 1 square of room space is 50% slower for a fact, so effectively, the shortest path from the crew room to the missile bay is at least six squares, and there's nothing to do to improve that.
it makes me sad that there are so few likes on some of his best videos, like really this is one of my fav things you've done on your channel please keep doing it
can i just say you are going to want shields on the fire ant, with the newfound presence of railguns of decent size, one well placed shot from them would annihilate the fire ant, and the fire ant is just a massive bomb with thrusters, 80 crew and half a ship is not something you want to replace
Fire extinguisher placement In the side engine pods are interesting, as should anything catch fire it likely is caused by something having gone though that area already.
there are 2 mods in the workshop which alters the crew/storage arrow lines each to thin lines. very good for better reading in bigger ships. sorry for bad english. i dont know the names, if interested i will add them later.
Missiles in particular do not have the capability to Target modules even if you specifically try to, missiles will always Target the center mass of a ship and they have a slippery travel AI.
Commander, a message from one of our managers on the Hercules. Apparently the cargo bay crew is forming an union. they say they are understaffed and they want dental insurance and a 2 weeks holiday for christmas. She also wants a 10% payraise or she can't guarantee there wont be any strikes. Instructions?
... imagine living in a world where your staff being in a union, having social health care, and 38 days annual holiday leave (in excess of paid sick-leave) isn't the default! The horror!
I've tried the segmented type before, one issue i discovered is if you've done a salvage and crew jumps out to gather, the crew in engine sections may appear to be on board but then yeet out mid flight to go back to their engine sections.. just food for thought
It might be that the fire ant did some, maybe even most of the damage to the scarab. In some scenes you see that many he missiles hit side and front of the scarab. It may be better to not position both ships on opposite sides of the enemy.
39:25 you also did most of the damage yourself by firing whole barrages of rocktes directly into the scarab, specifically while moving the scarab along the fireant
There is an enemy ship that is always a pain, so I stole the idea and I started a new game. It's primarily a missile ship with speed to keep away, and I got a rail gun on it for sniping any ship that chases me. It takes next to 0 damage, and wrecks other ships. Can't wait to see how it fares against the original ship it was conceptualized from.
You need to turn your fire ant around. The missile section needs to be the butt, not the head, on account of how explosive it is. You should be producing the missiles as you use them instead of storing them. Put the factory right next to the launcher. Guns should always be on the back of your ship. Fire backwards as you fly away. Gain a negative turning radius and make them fly into your bullets. Railguns should almost always be twinned. Access them both from the middle between them. You should make a small ship whose entire job is to be bait. Fast, tiny, filled with shields and point defense. Goes in, pokes the bear, runs back to the fleet. Lead your shots with missiles. Aim at the front of the ship so your missiles will be swinging into its side and back instead of falling past it.
You might want to consider switching the fire mode of the rail-gun to "fire on target". This to allow sniping specific ship parts instead of it just firing when there is an enemy in sight.
Ah Aavak, you sneaky devil. Gone for a few days and than you upload when I let my guard down! Sorry to hear you got sick though, hope you feel at top performance soon enough.
I wonder if making different clusters would encourage crew to eject first and then pick up what item they are selling/transferring, or if they would just not worry about it.
The ammo thing is an inventory bug. I've expanded my hauler several time and it seems that every single time, there is some kind of issue with the inventory management. It is annoying as heck and something that needs to be corrected.
Honestly the lack of hallways just makes me worried as to what crew do when the stuff they're supposed to work gets wrecked but they survive... if they have nothing to do do they go to other sections of the ship?
Personally I don't think I will be going for a missile ship anytime soon. Missiles are inaccurate take lots of crew and need ammunition. And I think if the scarab hadn't turned around so much it could have taken out the enemies before the Fire Ant even got into firing position...
I'm kind of surprised you haven't made a ship called "Firefly." It doesn't have to be the same one from the show and movie. Personally, I would load it up with as many jets as possible and frontal armour. Then maybe have two ion diamonds focused on each other at the front and ram into targets at max speed. It would basically be a glass cannon striker ship.
A suggestion for a possible Fire Ant upgrade ... adding some PD to the front as well as at least a single Ion so that as it is in behind they can burn through
I wish you could manually shut down missiles mid-flight if the target has already been destroyed so you could collect them later. Without a feature like that idk if missiles are worth the cost.
im now addicted to this game. but i'm at a full redesign phase with my ships due to recent updates lol. i have 1 dedicated rail gun ship with an ammo barrage of cannons and to escort beam ships with a compliment of laser weapons.
I do not own this game as it is a Windows only game but it seems like TH-camrs I watch find more success with railguns when they are set to only fire on designated targets only
Hmm how did the tractor beam work? If it could be used to collect the floating debrie to fasten the salwage and transport of resources and keep the crew more safe is things go side ways sudently.
The missiles are great for reducing an enemy to dust & they have great range, but they seem rather chaotic & not very accurate. I think u launched a few full broadsides right into the Scarab. As long as u have friendly fire turned off it's not so bad but like u said everything about missiles is expensive. Have u thought about swapping the roles of the Fire Ant & the Scarab? Put shields & railgun on the Fire Ant with missiles all down the side as both missiles & railguns have greater range & have the Scarab circle around behind with the powerful Ion beams to snipe out the cockpit, engines or whatever else is in the rear of the enemy ship?
![SAFEPLANET - ดาวเคราะห์ [ THE PLANET ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4X1XL3I_k3c/mqdefault.jpg)
Keep in mind, jump drives do not need porters - you can just assign weapon porters to work them, since you only ever need to fuel them after a jump.
That both ships survived engaging with a half-powered Aavak at the helm is a testament to their design. I'd call this an unqualified success.
Some day I want to watch Aavak fleet and Lathrix fleet battle, I wonder which one would win in a battle.
Same
Once Lath is in the new house maybe we can convince these gentlemen to "Go at it" Rail guns at 500 Miles.
aavak, hes farther in and his designs are more efficient in nature, lathrix isnt as knowledgable on the game
Good idea
imagine if they did a coop series :o
> "Run away!"
I call that a Tactical Redeployment.
“Fore-thruster-cluster” is even more fun to say than just “thruster-cluster”. I highly approve.
It's quite a thruster-cluster-fore!
47:12 "The target area is only two meters wide. It's a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station. Only a precise hit will set off a chain reaction. The shaft is ray-shielded, so you'll have to use proton torpedoes."
I do like how all of aavak's ships are starting to take the same shape, which is a sword of sorts, very long with outcroppings at the bottom. Makes the fleet look like an actual fleet.
The Fire Ant is starting to look more like a Ant Lion
Looks like a cock and balls to me.
Appropriate, since it's an ambush predator.
It's a spam ranged flanker, but the name fits the design!
Fire Ant Leon (not a lobster)
Try out the missile production inside the FireAnt, feeding the rocket launchers and put them adjacent (missile factory adjacent to another missile factory) for 25% bonus in production instead of using storage for missiles. Sulfur+Iron nets you way more missiles per slot.
Seconded! A ship has to be very small for an ammo factory to not be preferable to central ammo storage.
That requires a lot more crew though. It's pretty easy to just get one quarters of 6 loading each launcher with 2 operators like he has. If you add factory with ammo production in then you need crew bringing supplies to it and keeping it running. I've tested a few setups and found with 2 HE Factories feeding 4 Launchers for non-stop firing it takes 8 Crew quarters plus the 8 Operators on the guns.
There is also the size issue as several factories for all those launchers and the cargo area to store the raw goods is gonna take up a lot of space.
Overall it's easier to just have HE Ammo stored in the area. Unless your getting in some really long fights it's probably a bit of over kill.
Though when possible I do think having a factory onboard is a good idea so the ship can refill it's own HE Ammo in between battles as well as slowly produce some during the fight to keep the ship going if things do get a bit long.
Funny I just did this calculation:
Factory
----
Ore(Fe+S) storage 2 tiles, 100 parts
Parts store 3 tiles, 30 parts
Machinery 4 tiles, 0 parts
Total: 130 parts/9 tiles = 14.444 parts/tile
Parts storage
----
Missile parts storage 90 parts, 9 tiles
Total: 90 parts/9 tiles = 10 parts/tile
The factory is always more space efficient, assuming you can fit a 3x3 into your design.
@@hexlat Yeah the issue though is more Alpha Strike ability. See NPC ships have several advantages and disadvantages player ships don't.
First off they are limited by cost for a specific level range so they have to pick the cheaper options, which is storage instead of factories.
Second is they don't have to worry about surviving and long fights. Most NPC designs are setup to have 20-30 missiles per launcher which is typically more than enough to finish any fight of which they will only be expected to have 1 of vs the player.
Lastly having a few cargo spots of ammo storage means the ship is smaller and thus can fit more launchers in a smaller space. And you don't need additional crew running the factories so less quarters. The result is more missiles being launched to overwhelm enemy PD even if they can't sustain it over long fights.
But yeah overall the game is setup so Ammo takes up more space than it's raw materials so factories to any ammo weapon is more effective storage.
It's just you'll need crew running those factories and fitting them in to supply all your launchers could get pricey.
Since Aavak isn't building mega ships that take up the whole grid, size isn't an issue. The biggest limiting factor he is constantly running up against is crew limits. So while using factories vs storage would be more space efficient, it requires more crew. Crew is the limiting factor, so storage is the way to go.
As far as combat damage, Scarab typically pulls the majority of the aggro so far so being more damage resistant hasn't been an issue either, so storing ammo is fairly safe. Also, it doesn't require crew to add armor and bulkheads to limit destruction for ammo magazines going off.
a small improvement can come by making the launchers offset, so that they take the missile parts from different "heights" of the central spine/storage
That's a very interesting point!
What I took from this is your cat got mad at you for not giving her ENOUGH pets, went out and learned how to get humansick, then passed it on to Shelab, then you to hide the fact and blame Shelab instead. Cats are tricky like this. Adorable, but cunning.
Either that or the old adage; when it rains, it chucks it down.
Thank you for the video. I hope you start to feel better.
38:22 The Scarab got pincered... lol unintentional puns are the best puns
Amazing title to an amazing episode of an amazing series. You have my respect and interest.
Glad to hear you well! LOVED THE SHIP! It shows the amount of time you invested in this video! Thanks!
You can hire crew from the other ships docked at star bases and I’ve found most of the ships have a few crew to hire even if the stations says no
To improve missile accuracy, it may be a good idea to to only designate targets for the Fire Ant once it has stopped moving. It appears a lot of the time, they keep the acceleration from being launched while the fire ant is boosting into a fire position, which causes them to overshoot their targets, especially if they are too close to properly adjust.
Might want to shoehorn in a tractor beam on the scarab it helps either push or hold an enemy at a distance. If they get too close switch the beam to push them away until the desired distance then switch it back to hold them in position. I have one on my capital ship and I'm wondering why I didn't use it earlier. Loving the designs of the ships and colour schemes.
I have one on my Hauler/ Miner, I might add one to a Combat ship too, hate when they get into the wrong spot.
I've been watching this and thinking about some interesting ideas.
1) A ship with two configurations: One standard, the other diagonal. The idea is that this ship is relatively small with just enough storage to hold all the parts for the other form with one form maybe being combat while the other is for mining asteroids for the Hercules.
2) This one is an idea for the far, far future. Divide the fleet into three: Hunter Fleet (Scarab, Fire Ant, any any more ships you want to make for it), Gatherer Fleet (Modified Hercules with a rail cannon and any other ships you want to make for it, like the idea 1 ship), and the Hive (A large, almost space station-style ship that you park in a safe area and exists to be the big storehouse for parts as well as the main factory).
You might be wondering 'Why put a large rail cannon on the Hercules'? Well, that's because it will then be able to delete any turrets guarding asteroid fields or ship graveyards without needing to wait for the Hunter Fleet.
the idea of a ship with multiple forms is awesome. i think the second idea may be a long way off, considering crewing just the three ships is proving to be a challenge.
A railgun to self clear the asteroid and ship graveyards is a great idea. It doesn't need to be manned all the time, just turned on as needed.
So good to hear that the household is doing better!
We're all getting everything we didn't catch in the previous 2 years, so this winter is going to be rough.
Great design and gameplay, the Fire Ant has evolved into an Ant Lion now!
I saw that name suggested and I too think that's fitting.
"and this is why we have doors" (talking about the fire in an engine)
According to the tooltip, doors spread fires
I know you don't like embedding engines inside the ship, but a design pattern that looks *really* good is to have a fore and aft pointing engine facing each other so the thrust patterns overlap, and then covering the outside edge of it with relatively thin armor. Sometimes I mix it with structure pieces for a "ducted" engine look. My fabrication ship, for example, has roughly hammerhead shapes at both front and back, with fore and aft pointing engines in each.
This makes it feel balanced, since if an enemy wrecks my thrusters at either the front or back of the ship, there's a straight shot through the engine room and into the "ducted" thruster. Whether or not you end up ever using it, you should give it a try in the designer.
great episode! i can definitely sympathise feeling under the weather, this week was a difficult one for me too, but it's all coming together to make next week look like a great week. i have been dearly missing your cosmoteer videos, and i have loved the respective journeys of every ship in the fleet: the fire ant finding its identity as a missile spewing flanker, the scarab going from a long ranged artillery platform to a heavily defended brawler, and the hercules being the giant upon which shoulders the overheads of the fleet. thank you so much!
When trying to kite backwards like with the scarab I find it easier to use move command with that + looking button. Because when you use that the ship maintains it's current rotation, thus it will fly backwards if you pick a spot behind in. If you then click the rotation button and pick and enemy you will keep looking at that enemy while moving to the location.
For targeting enemy system if you just right click on them it puts you into attack mode which stops the move order. You need to instead select the weapons individually and order them to attack. It helps to put them in a hotkey group, CNTRL+#. Then when you want to pick a target simply press whatever number you assigned the weapons to. Also I group weapons on side of my ship separately so when attacked by groups I can have weapons on the port side attack enemies over there and weapons on starboard attack enemies on that side.
Also when sniping with your Railgun for the base it didn't seem like it was targeting the part you selected. Do you have the railgun set to Fire At Target or Fire At Will? FaW the RG will shoot as soon as any part of the enemy ship is in line of fire. Where as FaT will fire only when the selected part is in line of fire.
Crew limits will stop it but you need a close-mid cannon ship designed to soak damage and do point defense. It would let the Scarab stay at optimal range and the Fire Ant to maneuver with less worry of possibly disabling your other ships.
Your Fire Ant design reminds me a lot of that one frigate I built for fun and then became a staple of my fleet due to being too angry to die and drawing firepower away from my artillery ships
If your after additional rare resources they can also be found within the damage area of the star. You will need a dedicated ship with 6-7 large shields mounted on the front and a couple of tractor beams to pull the asteroids back out of the danger area so they can be mined safely.
An interesting idea for a missile ship would be to overload it with missiles of all varieties and make it very mobile. Most of the crew would be operating missiles, and logistical personnel can be undercrewed.
The idea of this ship is that you engage an enemy and unload everything, then hopefully you can kill them outright with the barage. But in case you don't, you disengage. All of the reloading gets done out of combat, and you should never have a prolonged fight. Sort of like torpedo vessel or a bomber. Certainly a superiority craft.
Sort of the opposite way if thinking. But it rides heavily on being able to kill in one barage. If it's not able, you'll just waste time, instead of gaining it.
No need for storage, point defense etc.
At which point: You don't really need a lot of defenses!
I often find my crew trying to bring stuff between modules, because I'm not good at setting up crew orders, but otherwise.... Modular is much bulkier and tend to be more durable design-wise. It also tends to be more costly. I prefer my modular builds, but I couldn't tell you if they're any better.
You could also probably do with testing out your ship in creative against other designs to see how it reacts, that might uncover certain weaknesses you may have not previously noticed.
I'd tell you to add a railgun-spine down the middle of your fire-ant, but I'm not 100% on whether that old design-strategy is as good as it used to be.
If you DO add a railgun, I'd advise you put a couple horns on the front of your ship. As in two massive pieces of armor that defend the very valuable gun. Especially if it's a particularly large one. I think the horns on your Fire-Ant might be big enough as is, considering its size. Just be sure to add shields, you don't want to lose that rail just 'cause your opponent had shields and you didn't.
Anyways, I hope this helps you on your journey towards bigger guns.
One thing that I note is that you seem to take the time to take out all of the weapons in every encounter. Sometime, the fastest way to eliminate the threat is to just go directly to the cockpit or the reactor. You have to consider how long it is going to take to take out all of those weapons versus just punching straight through the armor and completely taking out the threat.
Aye, something I hope to get better at.
4:27 - I recommend opening up creative mode and loading the ship and crew designations of the ship you encountered. It helps to see what other designers have done.
Honestly, you did a really good job in that three ship fight! those are not easy ships to fight and your designs really paid off, especially with the redundant defenses and distributed structure!
0:45 So you could say that your household was... Down With The Sickness? :P Glad you're feeling better, Aavak!
I refuse to watch any other people play this game poorly and since I don't play games anymore I require your videos to experience this one. Thanks for finally posting, and I guess I will be visiting your other Channel to watch the other videos to get my fix.
One thing I have noticed in your designs is that you will often set a crew quarter for one very specific task that is rarely done (looking at you porters assigned only to hyperdrives.) If you create some fall-through logic for roles, you can have crew do more and idle less. For instance, if you make a 'gunner' role you could have them operate guns and then feed ammo / power to guns. If operate has a higher priority then feed ammo, they will never get off the gun to load, but you don't need to micro them at all. This means you don't need separate bunks for operators and logistics.
One of the things I do is have all roles set to 9 on hyperdrive power/supply as well as EVA tasks as these are tasks very easily manual controlled. These can superseded even their primary tasks because you don't need gun operators while charging the hyperdrive as you don't hyperjump while in combat and you don't need crew manning the engine room or guns while you are EVA looting as you aren't moving and you would recall before doing any more combat. There are pros and cons to some of the jobs that might get abandoned like shields needing to be fully recharged before coming online when a ship jumps you during an EVA if it took too long and not being able to repower engines if you ER is unstaff (put doors to the thrusters and have thruster fueling priority higher then EVA to side step this one.)
Also, when placing crew quarters, Bunks that would house operators can be ANYWHERE on the ship because they will walk there pre-combat, it is only rapid demand suppliers that need to be near their jobs (think energy suppliers and shield recharges.) Utilizing this shield can be recharged before they fall during burst damage or weapons reloaded when they don't fire continuously (very important in ion emitter chains.)
I usually run a dedicated capacitor that only feeds into each singular jump drive. Drastically improves time till jump I find
42:34 If you didn't have a door to that engine, it wouldn't have caught fire.
It's on fire currently because it spread there from the engine room through the door.
True, but these thrusters are exposed to incoming fire so they can just burn down from a single hit if you don't have doors.
Love the Fireant design!
Just a suggestion on your railgun useage to set it to fire at a specific target instead - you can usually have it punch out the cockpits while your other weapons focus on 'defanging' a target. Also if you blow off all their engines (and it might also be weapons required too I can't quite recall) then it will count the ship as disabled. Can help a lot with the materials rare materials recovered/salvaged - especially if you're after uranium or processors (but you might not care by this stage with the Hercules able to mine and manufacture everything you need!)
Hello Aavak ! I very much like how you take time to expose your thoughts, so it's really fine by me. If you want advices and look for space efficiency, you should build missile factory instead of some of the cargo. Because sulfur and iron ore are really much more efficient. 1 sulfur + 1 iron = 20 missiles, so 1 stack of sulfur + 1 stack of iron give 5 stacks of missile. 1 factory produced enough missile for 2 launchers.
Me and my friend both got a head cold last weekend off of a sick kitten she rescued, so if it was the stuffy head and sore throat but not fever sort of cold, can confirm you can get that from cats.
That's really interesting, as yeah, that's pretty much what we had following Tilly being ill.
Capacitors are great for prestocking pointdefense. They will be idle most of the time, but when they are needed they get much needed energy. It makes the long routes more bearable.
However minor explosions. But what do we care? They already penetrated the defense so it was doomed from the start!!
More content yay! Health is important so glad your doing better. I just finished burning through the other episodes yesterday so perfect timing!
YES THE FIRE ANT LOOKS SO COOL! Also to comment on the side-facing thrusters, I'd say keep them because being further towards the back and being so large, will make the turning speed faster allowing you to keep the ships broadside facing the target at all times, and being able to quickly swing around to advance/retreat/relocate
Glad Tilly and her two humans are feeling better was a fun Ep Aavak as for possible tips on Missiles you did what I was going to suggest and Hot grp 'em but might I suggest a tweek?,
Try splitting them into 2/4 groups, Port and starboard so you can control the engagements maybe even For/ Port and Aft Port so 4 groups thus can save on missiles when you just need a couple to pop a section or 4 targets in one volley. I have been doing this on my Gun boats to moderate success.
one trick is to put weapons only on one side of the ship and giving the ship an extra constant forward engine and 2 extra sideways engines to add one constant slow spin and then to just orbit the target as fast as possible. this focusses offense on the side, shields on the front ant trhusters on the back and whatever needs no protection on the other side of the weapons. with such a one-sided ship your stratgy is to fly quickly in an orbit around your targets. th extra speed allows for more evasion and a fleet of them can do guerilla tactics.
Such an orbiter can function at any range, but works better for long range weaponry. it more likely surrounds a target and more likely hits a weaker spot or confuses the ai targeting priority, failing to focus on a single of your ships, so no critical damage is done to a single of your ships.
with agility of fast orbiters comes a lot of flexibility and tactics, and you can use fast orbiters more efficiently to do missions and mining. BUT one SIDE of your ship sure lacks offensive capability in favor of the other side having more of that.
missiles in the back-side is almost always a waste of resources, as those missiles are likely wasted or intercepted or hitting poorly.
putting a sideways raygun longest range weapon on a fast orbiter, and lots of thrusters on the long side of the raygun, seems to be superior to even crystal lasers, because crystal lasers more quickly fill the field than orbiting rayguns, that CAN surround a target at long distance, hitting from all sides.
I don't know if you already did this or not but if you need crew you can always go to already visitid star systems and get new crew from the stations there. Your fame level is higher than before the last time you were there so you should be able to hire more people now i think. Sorry for my English I'm not a native speaker.
This is an interesting idea; though I think it might not work. From what I've seen, the fame limit isn't per crew person, but rather the total amount of crew I can have is limited by the fame.
If that's the case, then it won't matter where I hire them from, it only matters how many crew I'm already controlling. But I will check this out when I visit old systems off camera!
@@Aavak stations have limited crew like any other resource. If you hire until you don't even see the red unhireable crew then you probably just emptied the station. They seem to replenish quickly though. But your total limit is what it is. System doesn't matter. Enjoying your videos quite a bit.
Stations will get more crew each time an AI ship visits it, you can also hire crew from the ships themselves.
@@Aavak Just an fyi, your crew req is actually 163, not 110
@@Aavak He means that stations have a limited number of crew to hire regardless of your fame, and when the stations run out, it doesn't matter if you have enough fame or not as you won't be able to hire. Back in past systems, when your fame wasn't high enough, you left behind many dozens of potential crew you can still go back to hire!
Also regarding the amount of fire youd like the fire ant to lay down you could tell it to cease fire a bit before your target is battered down to the level you like as your new reload speed means there will always be an overkill amount of missiles in the air if you wait untill a ship is nearly fully defeated to give the cease fire order (or if you just wait for the target to die and the fire ant to stop on its own.
You can just hold Ctrl to target specific rooms without having to have the ship selected as a target.
Great episode as always Aavak! Love the look of the new Fire Ant.
Arm FIREANT with EMP missiles and possibly NUKE. But EMP is a must, also add more armor to scarab, A-LOT more, and more Point Defence points, it Doesn't require crew to operate. Maybe buid Tractor Beam to keep enemy at bay
Heaviest combat yet! The Fire Ant does its job very well, but the Scarab is most certainly in need of some kind of revision.
_Or_ you just need a very large gunboat to bolster your fleet.
The ant-lion's missiles are now thruster-cluster-busters.
Nice episode :) You are going to have a rude awakening when you move onto the next sectors in relation to armor of the Scarab.
11:50 We already know that 1 square of room space is 50% slower for a fact, so effectively, the shortest path from the crew room to the missile bay is at least six squares, and there's nothing to do to improve that.
it makes me sad that there are so few likes on some of his best videos, like really this is one of my fav things you've done on your channel please keep doing it
Thanks for the words of support, really glad you're enjoying the series :)
They were...... Down with the sickness, OH WA AH AH AH
can i just say you are going to want shields on the fire ant, with the newfound presence of railguns of decent size, one well placed shot from them would annihilate the fire ant, and the fire ant is just a massive bomb with thrusters, 80 crew and half a ship is not something you want to replace
Fire extinguisher placement In the side engine pods are interesting, as should anything catch fire it likely is caused by something having gone though that area already.
there are 2 mods in the workshop which alters the crew/storage arrow lines each to thin lines. very good for better reading in bigger ships. sorry for bad english. i dont know the names, if interested i will add them later.
The mods mentioned are: "Thin Crew Role Lines", and "Thin Supply Allocation Arrows"
Missiles in particular do not have the capability to Target modules even if you specifically try to, missiles will always Target the center mass of a ship and they have a slippery travel AI.
Commander, a message from one of our managers on the Hercules. Apparently the cargo bay crew is forming an union. they say they are understaffed and they want dental insurance and a 2 weeks holiday for christmas. She also wants a 10% payraise or she can't guarantee there wont be any strikes. Instructions?
... imagine living in a world where your staff being in a union, having social health care, and 38 days annual holiday leave (in excess of paid sick-leave) isn't the default! The horror!
@@Aavak alas.. more missiles are needed!
Thank you for the amazing episode after recovering, of course. Health first!
You definitely made the Worm from Tremors.
You have no idea how happy I am that a new cosmoteer video dropped
I've tried the segmented type before, one issue i discovered is if you've done a salvage and crew jumps out to gather, the crew in engine sections may appear to be on board but then yeet out mid flight to go back to their engine sections.. just food for thought
It might be that the fire ant did some, maybe even most of the damage to the scarab. In some scenes you see that many he missiles hit side and front of the scarab. It may be better to not position both ships on opposite sides of the enemy.
In my testing, you can power 10 huge thrusters with 2 engine rooms, as well as a large shield with a single medium reactor.
Fireart is starting to look like a Bloodletter of Khorne!
There's a skeleton crew and then there's the bone dust That got left in the Hercules
39:25 you also did most of the damage yourself by firing whole barrages of rocktes directly into the scarab, specifically while moving the scarab along the fireant
I didn't think friendly fire was on by default
i bolt 2 launchers onto a missile factory and a 4 slot cargo on to that for the mats. it saves so much walking and storage
ALL WILL THANK THE DAPPER LORD HIMSELF FOR THIS CONTENT!! Away way Get well soon!
There is an enemy ship that is always a pain, so I stole the idea and I started a new game. It's primarily a missile ship with speed to keep away, and I got a rail gun on it for sniping any ship that chases me. It takes next to 0 damage, and wrecks other ships. Can't wait to see how it fares against the original ship it was conceptualized from.
You need to turn your fire ant around. The missile section needs to be the butt, not the head, on account of how explosive it is.
You should be producing the missiles as you use them instead of storing them. Put the factory right next to the launcher.
Guns should always be on the back of your ship. Fire backwards as you fly away. Gain a negative turning radius and make them fly into your bullets.
Railguns should almost always be twinned. Access them both from the middle between them.
You should make a small ship whose entire job is to be bait. Fast, tiny, filled with shields and point defense. Goes in, pokes the bear, runs back to the fleet.
Lead your shots with missiles. Aim at the front of the ship so your missiles will be swinging into its side and back instead of falling past it.
Thanks for the tips :)
You might want to consider switching the fire mode of the rail-gun to "fire on target". This to allow sniping specific ship parts instead of it just firing when there is an enemy in sight.
I feel like ions are just ridiculously powerful lol. Great video!
Ah Aavak, you sneaky devil. Gone for a few days and than you upload when I let my guard down!
Sorry to hear you got sick though, hope you feel at top performance soon enough.
U make the best cosmoteer content
Thank you very much, that's a lovely thing to say :)
I wonder if making different clusters would encourage crew to eject first and then pick up what item they are selling/transferring, or if they would just not worry about it.
The ammo thing is an inventory bug. I've expanded my hauler several time and it seems that every single time, there is some kind of issue with the inventory management. It is annoying as heck and something that needs to be corrected.
Same thing here, every once in a while it randomly assigns a resource to the storages
Oh man I was jonesing for some new Avaak content. Especially cosmoteer!!
Honestly the lack of hallways just makes me worried as to what crew do when the stuff they're supposed to work gets wrecked but they survive... if they have nothing to do do they go to other sections of the ship?
Glad your well Aavak! Was getting worried about you
Personally I don't think I will be going for a missile ship anytime soon. Missiles are inaccurate take lots of crew and need ammunition.
And I think if the scarab hadn't turned around so much it could have taken out the enemies before the Fire Ant even got into firing position...
Great for the evening! Thank you
I'm kind of surprised you haven't made a ship called "Firefly." It doesn't have to be the same one from the show and movie. Personally, I would load it up with as many jets as possible and frontal armour. Then maybe have two ion diamonds focused on each other at the front and ram into targets at max speed. It would basically be a glass cannon striker ship.
A suggestion for a possible Fire Ant upgrade ... adding some PD to the front as well as at least a single Ion so that as it is in behind they can burn through
Glad you are feeling better mate. To St. Algorithmus!
Personally I call it a "Tactical Withdrawal" @33:30
Woo more cosmoteer, I bought the game in due part to your content but having been playing it the recent weeks.
You could add normal lasers as auxiliary weapons on the scarab
I wish you could manually shut down missiles mid-flight if the target has already been destroyed so you could collect them later. Without a feature like that idk if missiles are worth the cost.
Question. Is an EMP ship Disabler build possible? Cleanly disable thrusters and weapons, out-manoeuvre.
im now addicted to this game. but i'm at a full redesign phase with my ships due to recent updates lol. i have 1 dedicated rail gun ship with an ammo barrage of cannons and to escort beam ships with a compliment of laser weapons.
love the ships and redesign.
I dream of blotting out the Sun with HE Missiles, nukes, mines, and EMPs
I think missles don't aim at targeted blocks and just the target itself
I do not own this game as it is a Windows only game but it seems like TH-camrs I watch find more success with railguns when they are set to only fire on designated targets only
Hmm how did the tractor beam work? If it could be used to collect the floating debrie to fasten the salwage and transport of resources and keep the crew more safe is things go side ways sudently.
Afraid the tractor can't target items, only ships/salvage, etc.
@@Aavak hmm shame limits is usefullnes
The missiles are great for reducing an enemy to dust & they have great range, but they seem rather chaotic & not very accurate. I think u launched a few full broadsides right into the Scarab. As long as u have friendly fire turned off it's not so bad but like u said everything about missiles is expensive. Have u thought about swapping the roles of the Fire Ant & the Scarab? Put shields & railgun on the Fire Ant with missiles all down the side as both missiles & railguns have greater range & have the Scarab circle around behind with the powerful Ion beams to snipe out the cockpit, engines or whatever else is in the rear of the enemy ship?