Ship Design Guide

The key to the ability to dominate in the PvP maps relies on your ship. Your ship is your home, and even if you are the captain or a guest, living in a ship that suits the needs required to loot and kill is a must. There are quite a few factors that you need to take into consideration when designing a powerful ship. This is what this Guide is for.

## **Basic Guide/Tips**

This section is for information on how to reconstruct your ship very early in-game, and is for beginners. For more advanced Guides, scroll down.

### Starter Item Placements

1. **Item Hatch Placement:** This is where items are dropped into your ship after you collect them from the maps after killing a red circle enemy or collecting remains of a destroyed ship. As items will keep emptying out into your ship if there is room in front of the Item Hatch, having the Item Hatch placed like so will cause items to continuously fall all over the place if the room is given. To prevent this, place the item hatch low to the floor or place a grey block 1 or 2 spaces under it. Keeping Item Hatches close to a fabricator will allow for quick transportation of metal and explosives from the item hatch to the fabricator. Keeping the item hatch in the same place as when you got it when your ship was first made is a recommendation unless that space is needed or you have a better place to put it
2. **Fabricator Placement:** Your fabricator is required to make any craftable item in Dredark. You may place this item wherever you wish, given you have the space to do so, however keeping a fabricator in the center of your ship or within quick reach is a good idea especially if you ship is large as you will minimize the time to get to the station and craft ammo or shield boosters. Having multiple fabricators once your expand your ship some more is a great idea as they can hold more metal and explosives that you collect from fighting and will allow you to craft multiple things at once
3. **Helm Placement:** The only pointer is to keep the helm within easy and very quick access from anywhere in your ship. If needed, place 2 or even more if the space is given to maximize accessibility. Don't worry, as all other helms won't work if one is in use, so others can't pilot the helms you're not using.
4. **RC Turret Placement:** Keeping one on the left and one on the right, until you get more, is the best way to use your RC turrets. For 360-degree equal coverage, try to have the same amount of RC turrets on all sides of your ship.

### Design Methods

1. **Storage Space:** Having a one-block tall space or a two-block tall space is a good place, for starters, to keep your items, like ammo, shield boosters, and other equipment. Keeping a small 1x1 or 1x2 space reserved for just a wrench and a shredder will keep things simple and easy, and you won't need to muck about your main storage to get those items. If you have the space, increasing the storage space to 4+ blocks in each direction isn't a bad idea, however, it can decrease mobility.
2. **Doors:** Doors are very useful, as not only can they restrict passage to certain ranks, but any act as a passable 2 block tall wall that only players can go through, and items cannot. Use this to your advantage, and make storage areas contained by doors, allowing you to simply walk through them to use your shredder and delete items, as you cannot use your shredder through doors. If you do this, you can simply walk into your storage space when it is empty, increasing mobility throughout your ship. This method's usefulness is limited as if you just need to collect items from your storage, you can simply reach through regular blocks and collect them.
3. **Turret Accessibility**: This is a big one. Try to have all your turrets within a very short walking distance to reload them, as this is critical, as in a battle, reloading is essential to be done quickly to maximize damage done. Once again, you can have a block or two in the way of your turrets as long as you can reach them, as you can place things through blocks. Allowing a 1x1 space for reserved ammo beside and for a specific turret is also useful.

## **Intermediate Guide/Tips**

**Trading**

NOTE- This is an optional part of the game. You don't *have* to trade with others, although it's suggested that you do. You can communicate with other traders/players using the Comms Station. If you want to trade, a cargo ejector is needed. Usually, the ejector is placed so it is facing the ship that is being traded with, so there is no movement needed.

**How to spot trading ships-**

*These are usually ships with LOTS of excess turrets and don't have some kind of battleship name. They "sell" these to others.*

Trading ships will usually have the name "(insert name) Trading Co." or something of that nature.

Trading ships usually accept almost *any* item as currency, as long as they make the trade fair.

Traders usually hang out in Freeport I or Freeport II.

**Good items to consider trading- (Buyers love these items.)**

* Slug Ammo (**MOST miners need slug ammo, so it's a good idea...)**
* Turrets (Burst Turret, Auto Turret) Auto turret especially, because of its high rate of fire. Both turrets, respectively, are good for solo or team use. RC turrets are always useful, so these are highly wanted.
* Metal/Explosives both are versatile materials, so they can be used for expansion, repairs, etc.
* Ammo (Scattershot, Sniper, ETC.)

**Bad items to consider trading- (You might make people mad.)**

* Trash Ammo (**It's an insult to offer trash ammo. You can't even EJECT it.**)
* Ship shrinkinators (The only times these would be useful to people is for miner ships.)
* Any starter objects. These can't be ejected from your ship.

## Advanced guide/Tips

**Building battleships**

This comes late in the game. Here are some things to have and some things to consider.

Things to have:

1. Make sure you have a moderate amount of RC's and thrusters.
2. If you want to make it automated, have flux, a good amount to start a basic auto would be at least 80 flux (5 stacks). Better designed ships can often surpass 200 flux and up to 1200 flux. Generally, a ship more expensive isn't likely to be used often.
3. Have at least 1 comms station to talk with other ships. (Not much of a requirement in modern ships)

Things to consider:

1. Speed - This is a BIG one, as since your battleship kills enemies, it will need speed as well. The max speed is 60. ship speed based on thrusters isn't linear.
2. An ammo making area - This way your ammo isn't likely to be mixed up with loot and other things, try to position this away from spawn points if you have a designated shield area. Not complying may result in shields getting into the ammo system.
3. OPTIONAL - Shield healing area - You could have your guests heal the ship when they join. Generally, clan ships would not have guest healing since they can usually get enough crew.

**Building storage ships**

This can come early OR late in the game. Make sure you have loads of expandos and at least 2 comms stations. You can trade, but this is optional. If you are going to trade, then have ejectors ready as well.

1. Try to have ladders and build in a column system or something of that nature.
2. Make sure you don't have to fight to get to certain areas on the ship.
3. Have an anchor somewhere to keep people from moving your ship into dangerous zones.

#### **Building Miner ships**

This is something that is mostly used in clans, but can be used for non-clan purposes. These are either 2x2 or 1x1 and have lots of RCs.

1. Make some Ship Shrinkinators. Use these to get the ship to get the ship to a 1x1 or 2x2 area.
2. Add RC Turrets. These are all around the ship, so fill up the sides with just RCs.
3. Make sure there is a spot for a Cargo Ejector, to transport your goods to the main ship.

Only invite trusted crew members and captains, and typically make all of the members captains