Ships question

Yes, you need to design your own ships, there aren't all the many core ships. There is another core ship higher up the missle chain called the "corvette" which has a 6 missle attack if I remember correctly.

It's a shame they don't let you edit the core ships then save to another name: I suck at ship design, and the core ships LOOK cooler than the base hulls I use. I'd rather upgun a defender to defender2, for instance, than slap together my own mish-mash of a ship.

If you don't like to do the ship design one simple fix is to just click on the parts you want to use.

Butt ugly, but can make a ship in 20 seconds.

a great Idea to design new ships is to simply add as few items on it as possible, becuse when you add to much stuff on they look clutered.

Thanks for the replies.

Also, how do u increase levels of my ships? I've got level 0, while I see other races with levels of 9 and 10, do you click on upgrade button? When I do, all I can do is upgrade to a different type of ship. Help?

Well I'm pretty sure the enemy labels it's ships with progressing numbers as it makes newer and newer versions. I can't tell by your question if you are referring to the name of the ship or it's actual level of experience when you examine it. If it is the latter, your ships earn experience and level up (gain hit points, etc.) through combat. Hope this helps.

I'm referring to that level # in the upper right corner of the ship info, so I think yes that was the experience level.
It just that I was battling Yor race and their heavy fighters are all like level 10 and they destroy my ships with single shots!

Well you can level up your ship in combat against minor races, or build larger ships with more HPs and defenses so that they are more likely to live and thus more likely level up. Most likely those damn Yor got all that experience beating another race or two into submission, then you came up against them

While ship design isnt strictly necessary, it definitely gives you the edge in all areas of the game.

For a start, you really want to upgrade your coloniser/constructors to make use of new engine designs. You can design highly specialised ships such as mass sensor arrays to act as border patrols. In fact, the possibilities in ship design really make this game special - and that's really without worrying if your ships look cool.

Remember, if you take the time to design a ship and like the outcome, dont put any engines, weapons, defenses or other modules on it.... just save it as a (Class name) with the description as "barebones fighter" or whatever. Then you can upgrade it from the shipyard, whack new techs on it and save it as MK1 (Class Name).... then the next time you have some new techs, do the same again and call it MK2 (Class Name).

In the next game with that race, these will natually unlock for you as you research new techs. Thus, the inital time you invest pays off in the long term - you have MUCH better ships than the stock ones with a highly specialised task and you dont even need to do any more design as they just appear ready to be built with new tech discoveries.

I honestly dont know how anyone could play the game without at least dabbling in ship design!