TL;DL: Many shipbuilding components are worse or even completely obsolete compared to others. Here a list of all the oddities of ship construction and their potential solutions that will be updated over time.
First a list of what is currently in game:
1a. Hull plates:
LHP 4t 10g -10% DR 12 AL + 1 HE
BHP 9t 8g 0% DR 12 AL + 1 HE + 1 STL / RE
RHP 10t 11g 10% DR 12 AL + 1 HE + 4 TI / RE
HHP 10t 13g 15% DR 12 AL + 1 HE + 4 AST / ALR
AHP 10t 15g 30% DR 8 AL + 1 HE + 10 FET / 12 AL + 1 HE + 4 WRH
- LHP is the standard plate: light, cheap, good enough for basically all use cases
- BHP is more than twice as heavy, has a lower g rating and is more expensive compared to LHP
- AHP is heavy and expensive but has high damage reduction and the highest g rating but it can be hard to actually get that acceleration with engines and is generally not considered worth it because of the higher weight and with it fuel consumption.
- RHP and HHP are completely obsolete because AHP weights the same but offers more and there is no need for a middle ground.
1b. g-rating:
BGS: +5g
AGS: +12g
=> a LHP + BGS offers the same g-rating as AHP but at not even half the weight.
1c. Proposal for plates and g-rating:
- different g-ratings for crew (seats and bridge) and ship (hull) with the lower one of the two counting, this will lead to situations where the middle plates will be preferable because they will have the needed g-rating
- the weight and other stats are pretty much all over the place, BHP even have less g than LHP, so:
- BHP weight wise closer to LHP and the g-ratting switched (LHP 8g, BHP 10g
- current AHP becomes HHP (HHP andd RHP fill the same role)
- new AHP are made out of ALR: light, some damage reduction and decent g-rating
New example stats:
LHP 4t 8g -10% DR 12 AL + 1 HE
BHP 6t 10g 0% DR 12 AL + 1 HE + 1 STL / RE
RHP 8t 14g 10% DR 12 AL + 1 HE + 4 TI / RE
HHP 10t 20g 30% DR 8 AL + 1 HE + 10 FET / 12 AL + 1 HE + 4 WRH
AHP 6t 12g 10% DR X ALR + 1 HE (maybe AL too)
maybe a new “advanced hardened plate” using WRH with 8t, 20g and 30% DR
- note: g-ratings are higher because of the idea before part
BRS 8g (optimized for STL travel)
BR1 6g (buget bridge that is good enough for everything)
BR2 8g (well equipped for evereything)
BGS +5g
AGS +12g
- note: this part depends on the philosophy, there could also be new seats / interior components to modify the crew g-rating further or even other aspects of the crew / ship.
2a. STL Engines
Engine force fuel efficiency
GEN 50k 1
FSE 100k 4
ENG 125k 2,5
AEN 250k 3,75
HTE 450k 4,5
-
note: flights are pretty long so fuel efficiency is what matters most, fuel efficiency means fuel consumed for the same amount of thrust
-
GEN is extremely cheap and easy to manufacture, but thirsty. A niche engine for early universe and budget ships that don’t see much use
-
FSE is the champion for most use cases because of its cheap price and very high fuel efficiency
-
ENG plays in the same class as FSE but is completely overshadowed by its sibling because it only has a bit more thrust but drinks almost twice the fuel
-
AEN is on about the same level as FSE but better for short range trips and can be worse on long trips while costing over twice as much
-
HTE is the champion in everything, especially that highest price. To effectively use its big force many ships need special equipment (seats) while at the same time a half filled LHP HCB already uses the full force at the 10g limit
-
note: HTE and AEN on a STL ship need a BR2 instead of a BRS which makes it heavier (and slower) than a FTL ship with a light reactor (QCR/RCT) that only needs a BR1
2b. Engine Improvements:
- GEN is fine in its niche
- FSE is the base line with little thrust
- ENG needs a thrust improvement to be worth it over FSE
- Same with AEN
- HTE needs a thrust improvement too to be able to move big ships effectively and make it worth using more than LHP
- overall because of the long distances the thrust needs to be increased to make the thrust a relevant parameter compared to the fuel efficiency (FSE could be nerved to the fuel efficiency of AEN too)
New example stats:
Engine force fuel efficiency
GEN 50k 1
FSE 100k 4 (or even 3,75 but that could be too much)
ENG 150k 2,5
AEN 300k 3,75
HTE 600k 4,5
- note: 600k is enough to get a full LHP HCB to ~8,5g, so not even the current LHP limit with the best engine that is in the game
3. FTL Reactors:
QCR 2000GW 10x
RCT 2400GW 2x
HPR 4800GW 15x
HYR 7200GW 30x
- QCR and RCT are basically the same, QCR saves <4 min per jump while RCT has a bigger overcharged max speed
- the charging benefit compared to QCR for HPR and HYR is <30s per jump so negligable
- note: QCR can’t power HCBs with LSL
=> the charge time is pretty much irrelevant, even at a 3d trip with 20 jumps you only get ~1h advantage out of an QCR compared to an RCT, and “least FTL distance” is always better than “least jumps” by a fair bit.
A solution to make them more destinct would be to increase thee charge time significantly while reducing the power output of QCR which would mean that it can’t power HCBs compared to only HCBs with LSL currently. A side effect would be thata it makes FTL travel more time intensive and thus increases the incentive to produce locally instead of just shipping the ressources back to the core to process them there.
4. Fuel tanks
SSL: 1500 SF
MSL: 3500 SF
LSL: 8000 SF
SFL: 300 FF
MFL: 800 FF
LFL: 2000 FF
new tanks:
TSL: 600 SF because even that is enough for multiple trips on econ ships
HFL: 5000 FF because a HCB with a big reactor can drink a lot FF when overcharged
5. Crew Quarters / Bridges
Crew Quarters: do their job
Bridges:
BRS: STL only ships
BR1: FTL ships with a small reactor (QCR, RCT)
BR2: FTL ships with a medium or big reactor (HPR, HYR) and for some reason STL ships with AEN and HTE which should be fixed because it makes them unviable (BR2 weights more thaan the BR1+reactor so it is worse to build a STL ship than just building a FTL ship)
6. Shields
They are fine but there just aren’t enough dangerous trips to make them viable.
Heat shielding: The amount of HSE planets people settle on are limited, maybe with incetives for specialization and regional concentration (you want to produce mostly in your quarter of the galaxy) the viability will increase.
Whipple shielding: they provide some benefit in most systems but the amount of systems with a high micro meteorite density are limited and even they don’t deal much damage on normal FTL travels. Their viability is already there for STL travel in these systems but the problem is that FTLing out of a system and back in is often faster and cheaper than just using STL to further away targets. If that would be fixed they and STL travel in general would become more commonly used.
Radiation shielding: Well … I know exactly one system in my quarter of the galaxy that has high radiation, and when looking around I found exactly 3 more in the rest of the galaxy far away from the core.
The amount of systems with radiation would need to be higher to make them viable.