Why? You start a new game with a race, and select the button called designer. It will allow you to design new ships based on your current technology. The main menu ship designer is not activated at the moment.

Until the Designer on the main menu is enabled you can use unlock and resources to access everything in the in-game designer.  Just remember when you actually play test the game the ship will not show up till you do the proper research for anything you installed on it.

Finally a true monster, dreadnaught class of ship BD-Kingdom.  I used the trick described by parrottmath to get the coloration.

So I finally had time to get into the beta and make a ship I like. Pretty much on cloud nine

I too enjoyed experimenting with the color/texture flip. This is a cruiser-class frigate (medium) intended for balanced weapons/defense as well as speed.

Top (front facing down)

Side (front facing right)

Bottom (front facing down)

Front

Back

Angle

A couple more tiny hull designs.

front view

Two new escort ships.

I love the new ships, guys. I really think the graphics improvements as well as the option to toggle the color/texture has really added a lot to the designer--and I think the new designs reflect these improvements.

A huge dreadnaught, I'm right proud of this one.

Ed, that, IMO, is your best ship yet. Very cool.

Thanks trumpeter87  A bit smaller for this one, A Destroyer of the Thorn Class.

Nice ships.  Be nice going back to my StarTrek vessels.

Malkuth, I have always thought the Mirandas were so cool,  because of the overhead mount.  Well done it now, I gotta go watch Kahn.

Ed, I like the little arrowhead motif you've got going on

Here is my latest--a cargo hull that is presently being used as a sensor array.

Top:

Side:

Bottom:

Front:

Back:

Angle:

I truly like the ship editor

parrottmath, amen on the editor.  Thanks to the Iridium I have a ton of pointy choices.  It started out as a tribute to Warhammer 40k ships and I liked the effect.

Love that cargo hull, would the cargo bays be detachable and delivered to the planet?

I think that would certainly be one option, Ed, though my primary consideration was making a sleek hull and a variety of interchangeable cargo sections. In terms of function, I was thinking something like a space version of the modern tractor trailer. In other words, instead of a ship with permanently affixed cargo sections that would be filled and emptied, you'd simply leave the entire container at the dock and pick up another.

I think I'll make a couple more versions from this design in the future...

Even smaller, this time a tiny fighter. 

A new corvette - CRV-Nagina

I´m new to all this, so can you tell me what exactly you mean with "you can use unlock and resources to access everything in the in-game designer."?

thx

As Monty Python says, "Now, for something completely different..."

Here is a new ship with minimum parts and a touch of animation.  Imagine a large yo-yo.  Replace the string with a sword or lawnmower blade, with the blade's base attached to the yo-yo's axle.  Set the blade sweeping menacingly around and around.  That is what this thing is doing.  I call the base version Star Sword.  When I equip it, it becomes a "Slicer" named after the base ship, "Cutter".  

I have two approaches to equipping this ship.  One is to shrink and hide all equipment.  The other, which I often take in-game, is to be lazy, double click the equipment I want, and let the automatic placement routines take over.  I think this sort of ship design gives the placement routines headaches.  They seem to be searching for symmetries that aren't there. Personally, I like it.  I subscribe to the theory that alien design concepts do not have to make sense to us humans.  Who cares how it looks if it is slicing your fleet into little pieces?

A note for the devs.  The long blade looks really cool in the ship designer.  Especially if you change the angle around so the sweeping blade reaches into the foreground at you.  The lighting routines give the blade that iconic slashing blade bright highlight flash.  Very effective.  It would be great cheesy perspective fun on a 3D monitor. 

In the main screen, it seems to be in a resting place off center in the hex. The long blade reaches into neighboring tiles.  It can then pseudo-slice through another ship by overlapping the graphics.  This is very bad for any attempt at immersion.   I cal this screenshot "Swooord Fiiights iiin Spaaace!" Note the interesting placement of equipment on the Slicer.

Worse yet is one of these Slicers inside an Altarian Space Port.  The blade keeps passing harmlessly through the rotating rings.  I can think of several clever and broken-looking things to do in this situation.  I strongly advise disabling all animation on ships under construction.  After all, they are under construction and systems aren't energized yet.  It will help limit my ability to make silly things happen on the screen.  (Besides my lame attempts at strategy, I mean.)

The only real way to see it is to have a video.  Is there a way to upload a ship file and have it shown off in the dev stream?  There are several other submissions in this thread that deserve serious ogling, too.

You need to do all the relevant research in the tech tree to unlock everything in the game. There is no cheat for this right now. Sending survey ships out to galaxy map to search out anomalies will get you tech bonuses toward research and planet improvements.

Your just have to play through and do as much research for techs as you can to unlock everything. If you want to get everything on the tech tree do not destroy all the AI Races as this will end the game. Leave at least one AI race and your player race on the map and continue doing research. Do not invade last AI Races planets, exploit this for gaining more research time. You can control them from attacking you by destroying their shipyards and ships.

Hope this answers your question. Happy Gaming!

I am working too on warhammer 40k ships designs. it is possible, the imperium battle ships are very bulky so that will work out.

Here are two new ship designs from the Beta 0.40 ship designer I did.

USS Vanguard NCC-61411 Vanguard Class Heavy Destroyer.

USS Aurora NCC-40337 Aurora Class Heavy Cruiser.

Comments always welcome.

Sweet stuff as always Rand--I especially like the Aurora.