Starsector Ship Loadout Guide 0.8a

This guide is meant to be a basic starting point to help you design your ship loadouts. The design considerations are a baseline that even the AI can use well. The key factors involved for creating effective designs are Flux Management, Speed and Range. Weapons are balanced against these factors.

For most ships to be effective it must win the flux battle against it's opponent, either through superior flux, weapon stats, systems, or by not having punishable hull and armor which allows the ship to drop its shields. Ships under AI control will typically back off if they feel they are not winning the flux battle, and since the AI is generally poor at venting to reset the fight, it can end up in a risky situation where it can't effectively do damage and is prone to taking damage. This also causes certain unwanted behaviors in the AI such as not capitalizing on an overloading ship

Speed and range are the next considerations. The divisions between frigate-destroyer-cruiser-capital all typically come with trade-offs between speed and range due to hull mods/base stats. Essentially the only advantages lower tier ships gain over upper tier ships is their speed, ignoring maintenance and deployment costs. Speed and range are two sides of the same coin. Both deal with time on target and the weapons envelope. The longer a target spends within your range the higher likelihood you will end up with a kill, with the same being true for your enemy.
The more range you have, the less likely you are going to get punished, and the more speed you have, will allow you to bring higher dps weapons faster to bear, while also allowing you to escape easier. The main point for speed is that it is relative. As long as if you're faster than the person your engaging/pursuing/running from you have the initiative to decide the encounter.
An important point to consider is that generally, longer range weapons do less dps than shorter range weapons and higher dps weapons are less flux efficient than lower dps weapons. This holds true for weapons within the same class of small, medium or large.

The general flow for creating an effective ship loadout
1. Choose a role and decide on weapons
2. Apply flux vents accordingly
3. Apply vital hull mods to fulfill role
4. Apply base flux capacitors/armor
5. Apply additional hull mods
6. reorganize hull mods/weapons/vents/caps
7. dump rest of ordnance points (OP) into capacitors

Remember Ordnance Points are King! Always consider the opportunity costs for using or not using certain weapons or hull mods.


WEAPONS AND RANGE
First decide on your ship role. Choose the weapons and the range you want to engage at to meet this role. Do you want your ship punching up or punching down? Should it have strong first strike capabilities or sustained damage? Do you want your ship to tank everything or be a glass cannon? Do you want this ship to mainly focus on shields? or mixed? missiles only? Or just choose the weapons that you find fun since you can be relatively effective following any semi-coherent logic in this game.

When designing loadouts, especially for beginners and the AI, it is generally better to match your weapon ranges to the engagement range of your choice. This allows you to build consistent designs that don't waste points on flux vents that you don't use for half the battle or take 5-10 seconds before bringing your full load on the target. This also allows ships to exploit the zero flux speed boost until the very last second (Note: 0flux speed boost is more important to consider for your ship then for the AI, unless they have Helmsmanship3, as the AI will often put shields up as soon as they get close to the enemies weapon range).

Mixing 700 and 600 ranges is fine for the most part for frigates/destroyers but if you have integrated targeting unit +60% weapon range on a capital, that difference becomes
  700*1.6-600*1.6 = 160u
where, for a 40 speed capital, even closing in on a stationary target will take 160/40 = 4 seconds.
Try to take into consideration where the weapon mount is actually located on a ship, as some ships are long enough that your effective range on some mounts are actually 100u off or more.

There are exceptions of course so feel free to experiment. If you are going to mix and match ranges, then either have them player controlled, or under aggressive officers ships, so that they can adequately exploit whatever setup you have. Another tip if mixing and matching, is that it can be very effective to place kinetic damage weapons with long range and leave shorter range weapons to energy/explosive/emp/frag damage, so that by the time you close the distance between you and your enemy, their shields will have hopefully reached a critical point and you can unload with your other weaponry to maximize the damage.

Generally speaking if you want your ship to be effective at picking off weaker targets, then it must be as fast or faster than it's targets which is why safety overrides(SO) and unstable injectors(UI) are a good choice (Note: SO and to a lesser degree unstable injectors for AI can be hit and miss sometimes and is generally better for the player). Exceptions to this exist and usually involve bringing enough dps to slag a ship before it can escape your engagement range.

If you want your ship to be able to handle larger targets than range is usually necessary since larger ships will almost always win a head to head flux battle, but range plus inherent speed of a smaller ship can allow ships to harass or even destroy larger ships. You can also choose to go the other route which is to leverage speed (SO and UI) for hit and run type attacks, though this is slightly more risky. Ship systems are vital to take into consideration and can allow some ships to punch way above their weight. For player controlled ships specifically, you're mostly limited by peak performance, dps, and your own skill when it comes to taking larger ships with a frigate/destroyer and range is less of a consideration. There are many popular builds, for example, that take advantage of SO and high burst damage to vaporize your target before they can break your shields. Emp damage is also very effective for punching up.

Considerations for taking out targets who are in the same tier as your ship follows more of a rock paper scissors. If you follow the basics and you're not fighting your direct counter, you should be fine for both you and your AI fleet at least one-on-one. If your ship can take out higher tier targets then it can probably take out equivalent tier targets, though maybe not as quickly. And if your ship can take out lower tier targets quickly then it can probably take out equivalent tier ships, though maybe not as safely

Weapon types are important, but don't neglect dps as well.
    energy         100% armor 100% shield 100% hull
    kinetic         50% armor 200% shield 100% hull
    high explosive 200% armor 50% shield 100% hull
    fragmentation   25% armor 25% shield 100% hull

Emp damage ignores armor and acts as if you applied the full damage to weapons and engines near the impact point without reducing hull or armor points. Emp can cause minor actual damage to the ship as systems malfunction. As far as I am aware, all emp damage can arc at sufficiently high enemy flux levels, causing emp damage to other areas other than the impact point and through shields. The Ion Beam and Tachyon Lance are quite proficient at this. Hard flux damage seems to increase the chance of this happening compared to soft flux.

Don't underestimate frag weapons, they often have better or equal flux:damage ratios against all defense types compared to energy weapons and are superior for hull damage generally. Their main drawback is range and usability and the fact that most ships don't have the hull points for frag weapons to truly shine.

There is no set rule for how much kinetic/explosive damage you should bring since it's very ship/faction dependent. Against low tech you want to be more explosive focused. Against high tech you should be more kinetic focused.
In my experience it's better to have loadouts where you apply kinetic and explosive damage simultaneously and have appropriate flux vents to accommodate both, rather than to manually shoot kinetic weapons until shields drop then switch to explosive damage for armor. The reason for this is that the enemy AI at high flux levels will toggle on and off shields to clear hard flux and can react quicker than a human can to your changing damage types. You miss out on some potential hull damage as well.

Energy weapons are usually less flux efficient then their ballistics counterparts but often offer higher dps. On ships with mixed techs, energy weapons tend to be more niche due to their range and flux, and you often end up building around them.
Beams, love em or hate em, some people are incredibly fond of them while others think they're a waste of a weapon slot. Beams will be covered more in depth after explaining flux management

Winning the flux war is extremely important but not being able to punish ships for dropping their shields will get you killed. Newbies will often make the mistake of over committing. They'll have sufficient dps to win the flux war and close in on their opponent, whereby the enemy quickly drops shields first and then continues firing at full pace. The newb will manage to do some damage and maybe even destroy most of the hull before they realize that their flux is way too high and the enemy just launched their entire missile payload and either forced an overload or caused major hull damage. There are a few ways to avoid this mistake simply by loadout design
    You can pump capacitor and vent stats until you outclass the opponent
    You can brawl it out with enough dps that you take their main weapon systems offline, making it safe to drop your own shields.
    You can use emp weapons to disable their ship
    You can tank the damage with armor
    You can send a reaper/torpedo/missile of your choice into their face

Missiles/Torpedoes are extremely valuable weapon slots and allow lower tier ships to remain significant threats to much larger ships. The fact that they don't use flux is balanced by their ammo count. Choose missiles that complement your main weapons or make up for a ships weakness. I find that what often gets ships killed, or decides a killing blow are usually missiles, especially for ships without adequate Point Defense (PD).

It isn't necessary to fill all weapon slots. Your ships venting capabilities or OP are usually the limiting factor, not the weapon slots. PD is important, so don't neglect it unless you have ways to make up for it, like fielding more interceptors. Unfortunately many PD systems are not that good, refer to various weapon guides for recommendations on what to use.


FLUX MANAGEMENT
Flux is an interesting topic and some players like to play very differently with their flux capacitor and vent allocations which can be somewhat confusing for new players. This is some general information to help you make informed choices about how many vents or caps you want.

Flux usage per second(f/s) is directly linked to weapons dps and shield upkeep. Let's call your total f/s including all weapons and shields (fstotal)
Flux:Damage(f:d) ratio which typically ranges from 0.6-1.4 is another stat that is directly linked to both weapons and shields.
Flux capacity(fmax) is your total available flux.
Flux neutral means that your total vents=fstotal

It's easy to see that with a lower f:d your effective fmax for taking damage is higher
ie: 10000 fmax @ 0.6f:d = 10000/0.6 = 16666.67
And this is typically what people mean when they say a shield is more efficient or effective

But let's take a look at a few examples
Baseline example:
consider two ships, Ship1 has f:d=1 and Ship2 has f:d=1. They both have weapons that do 100dps @ 100f/s. They both have an fmax=5000. Assume they have just enough flux vents to cover their shield generator.
    if they both fire at each other then both of them will be building up 100 hard f/s and 100 soft f/s.
    At this rate they will both overload in 5000/(100+100) = 25seconds

Second example:
this time two ships, Ship1 has f:d=1.2 and Ship2 has f:d=1.
Ship1 has weapons that do 200dps @ 200f/s.
Ship2 has weapons 100dps @ 100f/s.
They both have an fmax=5000. Assume they have just enough flux vents to cover their shield generator.
    Ship1 will be building up 120 hard f/s and 200 soft f/s.
    Ship2 will be building up 200 hard f/s and 100 soft f/s.
    At this rate Ship1 will overload in 5000/(120+200) = 15.63s
    while Ship2 will overload in 5000/(200+100) = 16.67s

Final example:
this time two ships, Ship1 has f:d=1.2 and Ship2 has f:d=1.
Ship1 has weapons that do 500dps @ 500f/s.
Ship2 has weapons 100dps @ 100f/s.
They both have an fmax=5000. Assume they have just enough flux vents to cover their shield generator.
    Ship1 will be building up 120 hard f/s and 500 soft f/s.
    Ship2 will be building up 500 hard f/s and 100 soft f/s.
    At this rate Ship1 will overload in 5000/(120+500) = 8.07s
    while Ship2 will overload in 5000/(500+100) = 8.33s

You will notice of course that Ship1 will overload before Ship2 because of its higher f:d of 1.2, but also notice that as you increase Ship1's weapons to 500dps and 500f/s, the difference between the time to overload narrows considerably. For ships that have higher Flux:Damage ratios, floating more soft flux to do more damage will benefit them. In fact most ships are balanced around this as ships with higher f:d ratios tend to have higher flux capacities which might end up as defensively less effective health than strong shield ships, but offensively allow for higher soft flux caps.
The opposite holds true as well, in that ships with lower Flux:Damage ratios should float less soft flux, as you're essentially dealing more damage to yourself when you fire and have soft flux than when you receive fire. Another main takeaway is that these stats are relative and if Ship2 has f:d=1.4, then Ship2 is actually benefiting more from Ship1 floating more soft flux then if it had remained closer to flux neutral.

tldr; If you have shit shields, increase your dps even if it means you float a ton of soft flux, if you have good shields try to get closer to flux neutral.

All this is well and good but how many vents and capacitors should you get?
The following are suggestions that I follow and have found to work well for most ships. Exceptions exist, so feel free to experiment to find what feel good for you.
f:d = 0.6 => vents=(fstotal)
f:d = 0.8 => vents=(fstotal)/1.1
f:d = 1.0 => vents=(fstotal)/1.2
f:d = 1.2 => vents=(fstotal)/1.4
f:d = 1.4 => vents=(fstotal)/1.6

Don't be afraid of floating some soft flux, even for the AI. In order to win the flux battle or equip certain loadouts, it is often necessary to float soft flux.

As for capacitors it typically depends on the role of the ship, whether it's front-line or support or expected to take fire from multiple opponents, I try to raise it so that a reaper or sabot salvo won't overload at 50-75% shields or so as a baseline, before choosing nice to have hull mods, but not necessarily vital mods, then using it as a dump stat.
A quick reminder is that defensively, lower f:d benefit more from capacitors than higher f:d ships, but more health is still more health and can make the difference between winning the flux battle and losing.

A secondary consideration for the AI, that is difficult to replicate properly, is that at very high vent to capacitor ratios, the AI is much more willing to drop shields mid battle even if not close to overloading. High armor seems to increase the likelihood of this behavior. This can be both a boon and a curse as some ships will vent in the face of the opponent.

Back to beams. Since beam weapons trade soft flux for soft flux, that means that beam effectiveness is highly dependent on both your f:d ratio and your opponents as well as vent capacity.
For example trading at 0.6f:d to their 0.8f:d means that for tac lasers, you build 75 softflux to their 60 softflux
            your opponent is essentially doing the equivalent of 75/0.6 = 125 dps @ 60f/s beam damage
            trading at 1.0f:d to their 1.4f:d means that for tac lasers, you build 75 softflux to their 105 softflux
            your opponent is essentially doing the equivalent of 75/1 = 75 dps @ 105f/s beam damage

However even in the first example, it might be advantageous if you are flux neutral and gravitons are almost always beneficial in a flux war. Beams have a variety of advantages including range and sustained dps as well as armor penetration which is discussed in the next section. but if you are going to go with beams, make sure to stack them, as it is absolutely necessary to overcome your opponents vent capacity for beams to be effective in most cases.


ARMOR
For in depth details see http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Armor and the sources listed. Basically the way armor works is that the more you have of it, the better it is and conversely the more you damage armor, the less effective it becomes.  Armor reduction is inversely proportional to damage done. Also armor health is pooled together from surrounding areas where the impact occurs. Armor has a maximum armor reduction of %85 or 90% with skills, (Note: that going %85 to 90% is a 1.5x effective health increase for armor). Armor skills in the combat tree are extremely strong with high armor ships.

This implies that not only should you prioritize high single shot damage over dps when it comes to getting through armor, but the sooner you get a high damage shot in, the more dps you do to the armor and the surrounding area near armor. It also implies that on targets with crazy amounts of armor say > 1800, unless your per shot damage is greater then 200, it's better to focus on dps and not weapon type, at least when initially engaging the target.
A special note about beams here, armor reduction for beams is capped at 50%. This means that two or three tactical lasers can be doing significant damage against high armor targets when compared to the equivalent ballistics weapons worth of ordinance points.

Heavy Armor mods and similar hull mods are best reserved for cruiser or above tiers. While +100 armor on a frigate might mean it can take a few more small mount weapons fire, the same +100 armor on a cruiser or better could mean tens to hundreds of hits more of small mount weapons fire.


HULL MODS
Hull mods like weapons, are generally whatever you can find at the time through shops or salvage. Some mods can be relatively rare and you might not see them during a playthrough, so I'll just link the wiki and talk generally about some hull mods that are more vital to certain builds. http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Hullmods

Advanced Optics: Increase beam range and stacks with targeting hull mods. Essential for beam builds, mixed beam loadouts can get away without it. Typically does not synergize well with integrated point defense due to turn rate reduction.

Automated Repair unit: Speeds up engine/weapon repairs, very nice to have if armor tanking. You should have either this or Armored Weapon Mounts or both if you spend significant time up close with shields down. Also speeds up CR recovery and out of battle repair

Converted Hanger: Gives you a hanger for fighters. Currently very powerful mainly due to fighter OP cost. While not as good as regular hangers, converted hanger can essentially replace your PD with mobile versions that are far more effective than most PD systems. For PD, recommendations include Talons for 0 op cost, and Xyphos for cruisers and above as their AI doesn't suicide attack and will escort your fleet. Xyphos are extremely survivable because of this, eliminating the downsides of the converted hanger while giving more than the equivalent op's worth of weapons with zero flux.

Dedicated Targeting Core/Integrated Targeting Unit: Increases weapon range. ITU is a strict upgrade over DTC, if you can find it. Practically mandatory on anything that doesn't use safety overrides.

ECCM Package: Improves missile/torpedo tracking/speed. Great when stacked with missile skills. Debatable even for missile ships when not stacked. PD can vary widely on enemy ships from nonexistent to won't let even ECCM Package modded missiles through

Expanded Deck Crew: Reduces fighter crew losses and improves replacement rate. Mandatory for carriers.

Expanded Magazine: 50% ammo increase for ballistics/energy with magazines. Greatly increases dps for a handful of weapons.

Expanded Missile Racks: Doubles the number of missiles/torpedoes. Mandatory for missile ships/torp boats, can give more than the equivalent OP's worth of weapons, so can be worthwhile even on non missile ships/torp boats.

Hardened Subsystems: Increase peak performance time. As battles get larger and larger this becomes better and better for frigates/destroyers. Cruisers and above generally have enough ppt. The smaller your fleet, the greater the importance. Must have for safety override ships and your own ship if your fleet is useless and you need to solo everything

Heavy Armor: Increase armor at the cost of maneuverability. Very nice for high armor ships, but the same ships could usually benefit from more maneuverability. Depends on the role you want the ship to take.

Integrated Point Defence AI: Small mounts turn into point defense. Typically used along with tactical lasers. Synergizes well with Advanced Turret Gyros. May not be as OP efficient as simply fielding better pd.

Safety Overrides: Increases speed, permanent 0flux boost, doubles vents, range reduction, ppt reduction. Great for what it's meant to do, players can generally use this much more effectively than the AI can.

You can find rarer hull mods in military stores though you might need commission. Alternatively you can find rare weapons and mods by salvaging research stations (requires Salvaging3), or fighting [REDACTED] and factions/high level bounties.