Building

To get started with all of the objectives above, you're going to have to learn ship building. This requires a vessel other than your own that has an assembler installed, usually a station, that also needs to have an energy source, such as a matter reactor. Cargo space to hold things to put on your ship is not a complete necessity for going into build mode but obviously important unless you are just recoloring your paint job. Assemblers have a radius of operation that you have to enter before given the option to enter build mode, both as an onscreen button at the bottom center and on the side of the inventory bar if you have it open, marked by a yellow square with a crane claw.

Fortunateley for you, each fresh spawn includes a Homestead Station with some parts and materials to modify your Venture with before heading out into the vastness of the universe. Not enough to make a proper A-class frigate, of course, but enough to enhance and stylize your vessel in some useful or creative ways.

Build mode is broken into two main parts, and each of those another two. You have EDIT TILES which includes PLACE for adding/removing tiles, and PAINT for re-coloring hull plating. Then There is EDIT COMPONENTS which includes MOUNT for adding/removing the things that hold components and COMP. for adding/removing the desired components. You can also LOAD TEMPLATE or SAVE TEMPLATE to save and restore any type of vessel or object. At the top left you can name the vessel, which this will be used to auto-fill as the template name should you click save. Below the name you see some vital stats on the vessel updated in real time as you make changes, such as mass, storage, and the number of various types of mounts. Then there is a dropdown menu under "Change Size" that allows you to create larger ships, provided you install the requisite bridge mounts. The first of the small buttons above EDIT TILES is the symmetry button. use it to place anything on two sides of your ship opposite from each other with one click. The next button turns on and off the center of mass indicator, which can be very useful for building asymmetrical ships like the Sixiser's, or for just making sure your side-thrusters are going to work at their best efficiency by being equally spaced apart fore and aft of the CM. The following button turns on and off the grid overlay, not too complicated, and the final button turns on and off the colorations of the hull plating. It does not erase the paint, even if you exit building. Your custom paint job will be saved until you turn it back on and modify it some more.

PLACE Select a tile type on the right side inventory bar to begin placing tiles with left click, or click-hold. Tiles can be removed with right click, regardless of whether a tile type is stuck to your cursor.

PAINT You can only paint on the various types of hull platings, not raw materials like rock or plagistine. Select a color from the menu and left-click or click-hold to apply the color. Right-clicking will strip the paint and leave you with the unfinished hull color. What you paint on your ships is entirely up to you, will it be the mask of war or a rainbow of splendor?

MOUNTS Every component needs something to hold it, and the size of the mount is usually important to be able to fit the desired tool or utility. The size categories range from micro to small, medium, large, and finally gigantic. Hover over items in inventory to see what mounts you need. With the appropriate mount selected, place with left click or click-hold. Remove with right-click.

Weapon and Engine mounts are directional, and by default weapons face forward and engines backward. You can change the direction by hovering over a mount and pressing an arrow key, or by hovering and pressing R or SHIFT+R to rotate clockwise and counter-clockwise in 15 degree increments.

Mount Types include: REACTOR

SHIELD

WEAPON

BRIDGE

CARGO BAY

ENGINE

LAB

ASSEMBLER

COMPONENTS Components are what makes your ships function, like with whooshing sounds and pew-pew laser bolts and stuff. The quality of those components is going to affect its function as much, if not more than their quantity. You'll notice that some components have a "Mk." system of grading where higher marks are better quality, while other types of component's quality is related to its size or mass, such as the "Compact Large Cargo Bay", which is a relatively spacious cargo hold that is very lightweight.

Add and remove components in build mode the same way you would do mounts, with the exception that click-holding does not work. You will get a buzzer sound if trying to place a component in the wrong type or size of mount. Hover over your components to make sure of what type of accommodations they require.

TEMPLATES Templates are plans for vessels or objects that can be constructed with the assembler in build mode. When you hit save, it will autofill the template name with the vessel name as it appears in the main build screen on the top left. When loading, you will see a preview of the vessel or object on the right, with a small button in the corner to toggle component view on/off. When selecting a template the game will remind you that it must clear the grid before assembling if there are any tiles already present. Everything being cleared goes into the assembler vessel's cargo holds and if there is'nt enough space the items will be dropped into space around the building area, so watch out! If you try to load a template that the assembler vessel does not have the parts for, the game will tell you which tiles, mounts or components are missing.

Save your ship template often and save newer versions of it whenever you make some upgrades. This can be helpful if you have to start over for some reason, because of a destroyed vessel or just starting a new Universe. You also might want to make a clearing template for collecting all the useful bits of a ship you just incapacitated and leaving behind a little calling card which can also tell you for sure you visited that region already if you happen to wander back again. You could also have a template for shunting off a bunch of tritanium hull and then shooting it to bits if you need tritanium sheets instead of hull tiles. You'll probably have a template for a repair station in there too, one which has enough cargo room to hold everything on your ship as well as in it if you want hassle-free repair jobs, which I will explain both ways to do it below:

REPAIRING Repairing Manually Take your assembler vessel and make sure it has at least some hull tiles and whichever components and mounts you might need to replace. Go into build mode and remove any tiles that are partly broken and then replace all the tiles you need and add the mounts/components as necessary. New tiles will have to be repainted.

Repairing by template Start with an assembler vessel that has ample storage and go into build mode. First remove your cargo bays so that now all your inventory is in the assembler vessel. Next load a clearing template so that all of your ship, or what was left of it anyway, is now also in the assembler vessel. Finally, reload the latest version of your ship template.

Alternate method: Start by putting the material for your clearing template into the assembler vessel. Go into build, load the clearing template, then the new ship.

Super Quick Repair Method You can eliminate the clearing template step by simply having enough materials to build a second copy of your ship. Just remove bays and load.