Spaceships

All the covert machinations on Earth and industrialization efforts in space are the path for factions to build fleets of ships to protect and advance their interests. Once the factions unlock the early-game orbital shipbuilding tech, and the follow-on space dock project for their habs, they can build interplanetary spacecraft.

With the right modules, ships can prospect and found habitats, but the primary role for most ships is combat.

At any time, you can design ships out of the modules you've developed. Once you have a shipyard, you can build the ships themselves out of your space resources and, if necessary, boost and money.

Individual ships are constructed at habs at a space dock, shipyard, or spaceworks module. Ships may be built out of a mix of resources mined in space and material boosted from Earth. When construction is complete, ships are deployed docked at the hab that built them.

To save a ship design, it must have a drive, power plant, radiators, battery, armor materials (even with zero thickness), at least one propellant tank, and an assigned role. Specialty designs like colony ships must also have a utility module that allows them to perform the role's function.

Ship Performance
Ships have the following characteristics that need to be tracked:
 * Wet Mass: Wet Mass is the total mass of the ship when fully loaded with fuel. Mass influences the ship's maneuverability. Higher mass decreases Delta-V and turn rate. Hovering over it shows a breakdown with the origin of all Wet Mass.
 * Crew: How many personnel will serve aboard the ship.
 * Cruise Acceleration: How quickly the ship can change its velocity in the strategy layer. Higher cruise accelerations allow ships to overcome a space body's gravity and take more direct trajectories to its destination.
 * Combat Acceleration: How quickly the ship can change its velocity in the combat layer. Some drives are capable of short periods of higher acceleration in combat situations.
 * Turn Rate: How quickly the ship can change its orientation in combat. This value is dependent on the length and mass of the ship; shorter ships will turn faster all things being equal.
 * Heat Sink Capacity: Heat sinks serve as a temporary substitute for a ship's heat management while a its vulnerable radiators are retracted in combat. Higher values allow the ship to fight longer without extending its radiators.
 * Battery Capacity: The ship's batteries store power from its power plant for use by most weapon systems when the power plant is unavailable. More advanced batteries are able to recharge during combat.
 * Construction Cost: Resources required to build the ship. Boost and Money can be substituted for any resource that is lacking. This may increase build time as materials are delivered from Earth.
 * Construction Time: How long it will take to build the ship once all required materials are at the shipyard. Larger shipyards reduce build time.
 * Support: The monthly cost of supporting the ship. If support costs go unpaid the ship will be more vulnerable to other faction's attempts to seize the ship.
 * Cruise Delta-V Determines where the ship can go and how fast it can get there. More propellant increases Delta-V. More mass on the ship decreases it.
 * Ships with less than 8 kps Delta-V may have trouble reaching the Moon from an Earth orbit.
 * Ships with less than 30 kps Delta-V will not be able to reliably perform interplanetary transfers from Earth.
 * Ships with roughly 60 kps will be able to perform more extreme transfers such as transfering from Mercury to Saturn.

Hull
Designing a ship begins with selecting a hull. The type of hull determines the number of nose and hull weapon hard points, the number of utility modules, and the length of the hull.

Shorter ships will have a lower moment of inertia, meaning they will rotate faster than their longer counterparts. The weight required to armor a ship also increases with ship size. Steel armor has been used as a benchmark here, but see the Armor section below for information on lighter armors.

Role
Each ship has a role, which informs the game on whether the ship is a combatant or noncombatant, what range it should engage in during combat and how much propellant will it want. The role affects the autodesigner behavior and where the ship is placed in a combat formation.
 * Ships with Long strategic range will emphasize propellant for interplanetary operations
 * Ships with Short strategic range will limit propellant mass in favor of maneuverability

Power Plant
A ship's power plant provides energy to both the ship's drive and other ship systems. The mass of the power plant scales with the greater of the power requirement of the drive or the ship's systems. The power plant also produces waste heat that must be stored in heat sinks or expelled by radiators.

Note: Many drives require a certain class of power plant to function, and in some cases, a lower-tech power plant of the correct class may not be able to produce enough power to support an advanced drive.

Drive
Drives expel propellant from the tail of the ship to make the ship go places. Drives come in a variety of forms, but are rated by two common values: thrust and exhaust velocity. High-thrust drives can achieve higher velocities more quickly, and high-exhaust velocity drives use less propellant to do so. Together these values determine the power required by the ship's power plant. Adding 100-ton propellant tanks to the ship increases the ship's Delta-V, or how much it can change its speed.

Note: Many drives require a certain class of power plant to function, and in some cases, a lower-tech power plant of the correct class may not be able to produce enough power to support an advanced drive.

 * Rounded

Propellant
Each ship must have one or more 100-ton propellant tanks. The number of propellant tanks determines the ship's Delta-V value. There is no hard limit to the number that can be placed on a ship. However, each tank of propellant adds mass to the ship, which reduces its acceleration and gives diminishing returns for delta-V. The resources used to make propellant is determined by the drive.

Radiator
Radiators remove waste heat produced by the ship's power plant. They scale in mass based on the power plant's output and efficiency. Because these are highly vulnerable in combat, they can be retracted if the ship has heat sinks in one or more utility slots. However, once the ship's heat sink fills up, the radiators must be extended again to protect the lives of the crew.

Battery
The ship's primary battery stores energy from the power plant and provides it to weapons, life support, and other key systems when the main power plant is unable to do so, either due to damage or when the drive is operating on ships that don't have an independently powered drive. High-power weapons can drain the battery quickly in combat. Improved batteries will have a larger capacity or a faster recharge rate. You may add additional batteries of the same type in utility module slots for greater capacity.

Armor
Armor plating on the ship will absorb incoming weapons fire, preventing damage to internal components. Each point of armor will absorb 20 Megajoules of energy at a single location on the hull before vaporizing. Different armor types require a different thickness and mass to absorb a particular amount of damage. In the below table, the mass required per point is given as a percentage of the mass of steel armour (so for example, a steel plate that weighs 1000 tons would instead weigh 230 tons if it were made of composite armour).

Note that a point of lateral armor is much more massive than nose and tail armor, because it has a greater surface area to cover. The exact ratio depends on the hull used, but side armor will always be 10-20x heavier per point than nose/tail armour.

Utility Modules
Utility Modules perform a variety of functions to widen a spacecraft's capabilities. Extra batteries may also be put in utility module slots.

Drive Enhancement Module
Drive Enhancement Modules requires a certain type of Drive to be used.

Heat Sink
Heat sinks are important modules for combat ship so they may avoid exposing their vulnerable radiators to enemy fire.

Kit
Kits allow creation of a small hab with a construction module. Can be replenished by repairing the ship at a dock or shipyard.

Weapons
Weapons systems are either mounted on the ship's nose or on the hull. Nose weapons are typically more powerful than hull weapons of a similar size, but they have a limited field of fire. Hull weapons can fire in any direction around the ship. Weapons also come in various sizes; larger weapon systems are generally more powerful but will take up multiple weapon slots.

Certain weapons may only be used offensively against enemy ships and hab modules; others may only be used defensively to shoot down incoming projectiles and missiles, and still others can be used against both types of targets. Weapons can have up to four different possible fire modes:
 * Focus Fire: Will fire at primary target only.
 * Attack: Will fire at primary target if it is in range, otherwise will attack the nearest available target.
 * Guardian: Will fire at incoming projectiles and missiles before targeting enemy ships.
 * Defense: Will fire at incoming projectiles and missiles; will not target ships.

All weapons have a cooldown, and some weapons fire in salvos. If a weapon does not have a salvo listed, it will fire once every time the cooldown timer is up. For example, the Light Railgun Battery Mk1 has a cooldown of 30s and does not have a salvo listed; once in range, it will fire one shot every 30 seconds. If a weapon has a salvo listed of X shots / Y s, it will fire one shot every Y seconds X number of times, and then will go on cooldown, after which it will fire another salvo. For example, the Krait Missile Bay has a salvo of 2 shots / 5 s and a cooldown of 60 seconds; once in range, it will fire one shot, wait 5 seconds, fire a second shot, and then will go on cooldown for 60 seconds.

Weapons can be classified in certain general types:
 * Guns: Use magazines, high ammo capacity. Cannot bombard. Low damage. Short range. Cheap.
 * Missiles: Use magazines, low ammo capacity. Limited bombard. High damage. Will chase the target. Very susceptible to point defense. Only available as hull weapons.
 * Magnetic Weapons: Use magazines, high ammo capacity. High damage, moderate accuracy. Susceptible to point defense. Can bombard.
 * Plasma Weapons: Use magazines. Cannot be targeted by point defense. Cannot bombard. Medium damage, high accuracy. Only available in large sizes.
 * Lasers: Use energy. Limited bombard. Never miss. More effective at close range.
 * Particle Weapons: Use energy. Cannot bombard. High damage. Never miss. Short range.

Guns
Guns are chemical slugthrowers with performance characteristics similar to modern naval weaponry. They are low-tech and cheap, but due to low muzzle velocity will have a hard time hitting anything at range and the projectiles can be targeted by point defense. They are quickly outclassed by magnetic weapons.

Magnetic Weapons
Magnetic weapons include railguns and coilguns that fire high-speed projectiles that do significant damage but can be shot down by point defense. Due to low muzzle velocity, railguns may have a difficult time hitting targets at range; coilguns have a significantly higher muzzle velocity and are more difficult to dodge. All magnetic weapons are capable of bombardment.

Missiles
Missile weapons (which include both missiles and torpedoes) do high damage and will chase the enemy, but are very susceptible to being shot down by point defense and are constrained by small magazines. Missiles will fire offensively only if an enemy ship or hab module has been set as a target. All missiles have a range of 1,000 km.

Missiles and torpedoes can have different types of warheads:
 * Fragmentation warheads do 50% damage to armor
 * Penetrator warheads do 60% damage to armor
 * Explosive warheads do 80% damage to armor
 * Nuclear warheads do 100% damage to armor
 * Shaped Nuclear warheads do 100% damage to armor in a 20-degree cone

Lasers
Laser weapons do not miss and are excellent at targeting enemy projectiles. However, laser weapons have difficulty penetrating armor unless they are at close range. Laser weapons for non-alien ships come in three different wavelengths: Infrared, Visible (Green), and Ultraviolet, from least powerful to most powerful. Additionally, laser weapons use one of three different beam types: Standard, Arc, and Phaser, from least powerful to most powerful. Each laser battery and cannon size comes in nine different configurations, corresponding to all the possible combinations of wavelength and beam type. The more powerful the wavelength and beam type, the better the laser is at penetrating armor.

Particle Weapons
Particle weapons are short-range weapons that can do severe damage to a ship's internal components if they penetrate a ship's armor. The point defense particle beam is also an effective point defense weapon. They unlock early in the tech tree, but they are quickly outclassed by lasers.

Plasma Weapons
Plasma weapons fire high-speed, low mass projectiles that cannot be targeted by enemy point defense. While their damage is not as high as some of the larger and more advanced magnetic weapons, the high muzzle velocity of plasma weapons make them significantly more likely to hit their target. Plasma weapons cannot bombard.

Refits
Factions may refit ships at habs with ship construction modules. Refitting is generally limited to replacing parts of a similar type.
 * Hull cannot change.
 * Power Plant can change, if the new Power Plant is of the same Class.
 * Drives can add or remove thrusters to current drive, or substitute a drive with the same Classification, required Power Plant, and Reaction Product.
 * Weapons can change if the new weapon is of the same Class and Mount. (so 1-hull laser can only be replaced by 1-hull lasers).
 * Armor can change freely.
 * Batteries can change to other batteries freely, but not change with other Utility modules.
 * Heat sinks can change freely, but not change with other Utility modules.
 * Radiators can change freely.
 * Utility modules that aren't batteries or heat sinks can change to other modules with the same Class.

Additional information
Various "Guides" are available that detail among other things ship module performance and functions.