Revision as of 07:18, 3 December 2013

Xanya's Guide to Designing Spacecrafts

In this guide I will show you what steps I take when I create a new spaceship type for otherspace. I'll show you all the steps from start to finish including some examples to give you an idea of what could be possible. Please note that there are a diversity of ships that have already been created and can be bought in game without having to go through the process as listed below. So before you go further please think to yourself if you want to make a completely new type of ship and take your time to create it from scratch, or if you want to be fast and buy an already existing ship type.

Step 1: the idea

First I try to think of what I want to do with the ship I want to make. You can do this by answering one or more of the following questions. • What does the ship have to do? • Where do I want to use the ship for? • Am I the only one that will use it or not?

You can of course think of other questions to ask yourself as long as you get a general idea of your new ship. Below some examples.

Example 1: A fighter style spaceship to help out with protecting larger spacecraft like other ships or stations.

Example 2: A big science vessel to use for medical and scientific purposes.

Step 2: Interior of the ship

Now that you got an idea of what you want the next step I always take is deciding what you want to have inside your ship. With this you can create a small list of rooms you want to have. Always make sure you have at least a cockpit or bridge and an airlock or docking bay in this list. These two are needed because without a cockpit or bridge your ships can't fly and without an airlock or docking bay no one can enter your ship. Every other room will depend on what kind of ship you want. You don't have to make descriptions for each room just yet. Just a few short words so you know what each room's function will be. Write down all the options you can think of and consider there usefulness for your ship.

Small fighter example

In my example of the Fighter style ship, all you might need is one room which is the cockpit that can also function as a sort of airlock. Example 1: Cockpit Example 2: Cockpit, Airlock

Science ship example

With the example of the science ship. I would add a room which I will label as a cargo bay which can be directly attached to the room with the airlock. Depending on the size of the ship and how many decks you're going to give it, you might want to consider some form of elevator to help characters move between different decks. If the ship has a crew, you might also want to consider adding a place for them to stay during long trips as well as a room for them to eat, drink and socialize and/or entertain themselves during those long trips. Also useful could be a medical bay. Example : Cockpit(or bridge), Airlock/exit ramp, cargo bay's, engineering, crew quarters, Medical bay, Mess-hall, Research Laboratory.

Step 3: Ship Size

Now that you know what you want on the inside of the ship. You can decide on how big your ship will become. Currently there 3 ship sizes you can choose from. Each size comes with it's on limitations take your time to consider each option.

• Small Hull Prototype
• Medium Hull Prototype
• Large Hull Prototype

Small fighter example

In case of the Fighter style ship I'll go with the Small Hull Prototype. My reason for this choice is that the fighter has but one room and with the Small Hull Prototype you can have 4 rooms.

Science ship example

With the cargo ship I made a list containing 8 rooms. This matches the 8 rooms of the Medium Hull Prototype. I could have gone for the Large Hull Prototype which has a 16 rooms but the problem with large ships is that they cannot land on planets. and with my cargo ship I want to be able to land on a planet or in a docking bay of a station. That's why I'm picking the medium Hull prototype. Now if I didn't mind the landing limitation I could easily have gone for the Large Hull Prototype and add a smaller ship to fly from and too the large ship. But do keep in mind that a large ship needs a lot more materials to build then the medium hull prototype.

Step 4: The ships systems

A ship is not a ship without the systems to fly it and now that you have made a decision on your ships size you can move on to the systems that will make your ship fly, to boldly go where no one has gone before. You can't just put the best of the best in your ship. Each hull prototype has its limitations on what it systems it can have. This limitation is shown by the number of build points each hull prototype. For the Small Hull Prototype this is 20 build points, for the Medium Hull Prototype it's 40 build points and with the Large Hull Prototype it is 100 build points. With this limitation known you can go look at what ship systems are available. You have a choice between 5 different ship systems: Engine, FTL, Sensor, Shield and Thrusters.

The Engines, FTL, Shields and Thrusters have 10 prototype options. and for the Sensors you have a total of 6 options. All options are listed in Items Required For Starship Prototype Construction. Go through all the options and see how much they cost then think of which will work best for your ship and pick one option from each of the 5 systems(Engine, FTL, Sensor, Shield and Thrusters).

Small fighter example

For the small fighter I'm limited to 20 build points. Since I am not expecting to go into FTL much I will keep this one to FTL I Prototype worth 2 build points. Since My fighter will need to stay close to a bigger ship I won't need a big sensor system either. so Sensor I Prototype worth another 2 build points, will do just fine. So far I have spend 4 of the 20 build points and have 16 left for the Engines, Thrusters and shield. Next I'll pick Engine III Prototype worth 6 Build points, Thruster II Prototype worth 4 build points and Shield III Prototype worth 6 build points. Bringing me at a total of 20 build points.

Science ship example

With the large ship I want to make sure I can travel fast if I need to. Meaning it will need a fast FTL drive. A good shield will also be required in case the ships ever gets into trouble. Sensors doesn't need to be that good since I am expecting to have exact coordinates most of the time and this ship will not be a scout ship anyway. With this in mind I went through the list and came up with the following ships systems.

• Engine IV Prototype worth 8 build points
• FTL VII Prototype Worth 14 build points
• Thruster II Prototype worth 4 build points
• Sensor II Prototype worth 6 build points
• Shield IV Prototype worth 8 build points

Since I want to also be able to go from one universe to another, I'll also add a Rift Modulator to the mix. This option does not take up any build points. But it can be very costly to create, so think very carefully if you want to add this option or not. If you have a crew of several players to join you on your ship, you can always think about having them share the expenses of making the new ship.

Step 6: Crafting

Now that you know what size ship you're going to make and what will go into your ship your next step is crafting every item you will need. You will need to craft the Hull Prototype of your choice, either small medium or large, You will need to make all 5 ships system prototypes which you choose in the previous step, as well as make a Vessel Room Prototype for each room you want in your ship. Each item that you will need to make, needs certain skills to be able to craft them. as well as different components before you can craft the item. If you don't have the skills for it you can ask around for someone who does have those skills and ask them to help you out.

Small fighter example

For the fighter example the list would be as followed.

• 1x Small Hull Prototype
• 1x FTL I Prototype
• 1x Sensor I Prototype
• 1x Engine III Prototype
• 1x Thruster II Prototype
• 1x Shield III Prototype
• 1x Vessel Room Prototype

Science ship example

For the Science ship example the list would be as followed.

• 1x Medium Hull Prototype
• 1x Engine IV Prototype
• 1x FTL VII Prototype
• 1x Thruster II Prototype
• 1x Sensor II Prototype
• 1x Shield IV Prototype
• 8x Vessel Room Prototype
• 1x Rift Modulator

Step 5: Making descriptions

Your getting closer and closer to getting your ship done. Next stop is making descriptions for each room in your ship. Making these description takes time and it will help give your ship a more personal feel to it. Go through all the rooms one by one and make a description of what that room looks like and what is in the room. If you have no idea of what you can do I'd advise you to look at ships that have already been created and see what others made for those room description and get inspiration for your own rooms.

Step 7: Getting your ships created

The final step is getting your ships created. You can do this by sending a +str and add all the info the staff will need to get your ship created. One more thing you need to know before you send out your Staff request. Make sure you have enough credits to pay for the creation of your new ship. Each Hull Prototype has a different cost that needs to you need to pay before your new ship type can be added to the grid. As you can see under the costs are as followed.

• Small Hull Prototype costs 250000 credits
• Medium Hull Prototype costs 500000 credits
• Large Hull Prototype costs 1-million credits

The costs mentioned above can be increased if you ask for special additions to be placed on your ship. For these costs I'd advise you to contact a member of the staff or Brody to see what your options are.

Final words

With this I end Xanya's guide to designing spacecrafts. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it. As I mentioned at the beginning of this guide I tried to show you all the steps I go through when I want to create a new ship type. The steps above are placed in this order since I think this is the easiest path to follow when creating a ship. You can of course follow the steps in a different order if you feel more convertible with that.

More in the series: Xanya's Guide to

• Xanya's Guide to Hekayti Credits
• Xanya's Guide to Saga Points
• Xanya's Guide to Flying Spacecraft
• Xanya's Guide to Organizations