Building a vessel in Airmen means balancing many conflicting requirements. There is no perfect ship for everything - which is one of the charms of the game in my opinion.
This guide to help you improve your ship building techniques and to advise you on how to build better vessels. You should already be familiar with the basics of ship building and have constructed an airworthy ship before. If not I'd recommend reading Cristal's Ship building Tutorial first.
Do not consider this guide as the ultimate truth, there are many ways to build your ship and you might find a better one. If you do, please feel free to let me know so I can update the guide.

All vehicles in Airmen are classified as following:

• Airship if lift >= mass
  
• Watercraft if lift+buoyancy >= mass (but lift < mass)
  
• Submarines are not a separate type, but counted as watercrafts.
  
• Landship if your vessel has at least one leg or wheel

Airships and watercraft are mutually exclusive, landship is combinable with the first. In the latter case the second class is not shown on the hangar's black board though.
This classification determines where you can spawn and redeploy to. Your vessels actual capabilities might differ however, e.g. with sufficient ballasts an airship can dive and a watercraft can fly.

Before starting to build, you should have an idea where you want to place lift, engines, weapons and the bridge.
Where and how to place weapons depends very much on the type of armament you are using and will be covered in that section. The bridge (containing the primary steering wheel) should have the best possible view of the surroundings.
Bear in mind that weapons as well engines' exhausts need to be above the waterline in order to function. If you are building a watercraft or a submarine this of course means that they need to be in the upper part of the vessel. However, for airship I'd recommend this as well, since through battle damage or otherwise you might end up in the ocean. If all your exhausts are facing downwards you could then be stuck, even if the rest of your ship is still airworthy. I have already had to rescue many players' ships from such a situation. In summary: Airships should have at least some engines' exhaust above the balloons' centre line.

This however might conflict with another requirement: stability. For a vessel to be stable, its centre of lift (CoL, yellow line in the build mode) needs to be above the centre of mass (CoM, blue line in the build mode). You do have some leeway here, if the CoM is only slightly above the CoL (around 1 m) your vessel is still considered stable. You can check this in the middle black board in the build mode.
The good news is, that all other parts do not need to be anywhere high. Keeping in mind that two heavy part groups (engines and weapons) are placed relatively high, this means that other heavy parts should be in the lower part of the ship. This includes e.g. magdrives, wells and ballasts. Propellers can be placed low, however in order to achieve good manoeuvrability, they will usually occupy the far corners of the ship.

Another fundamental question is the length vs the width and height of the vessel. A cubical ship might have the shortest paths between different locations on board, as well as the best surface are to volume ratio. However, in order for a ship to have a good turn speed, the rudders need to be placed far in the front or back of the ship, which leads to most designs you see in game being longer than wide or high, usually by a factor of around 2.5.

Next you should consider how open or enclosed you want a ship to be. This refers to how much of the space the crew usually needs to access is outside or inside. In its most extreme forms, an open ship will not have any enclosed space at all, with even the steering wheel and respawn chambers standing on an open deck. An enclosed ship on the other hand will have all important parts within a protective hull, which can be repaired from the inside.
In practise most ships will be somewhere in between, since even open ships tend to have a protected crew compartment and bridge, whereas on the other end it's difficult to put parts like propellers and most weapons within the hull.

Which one you choose is thus a matter of preference:

• Open ships allow the crew to see the surrounding and react faster e.g. to boarders or board themselves, if the chance arises. The downside is that many vital parts as well as the crew are unprotected, allowing an enemy to shoot at them immediately. These ships tend to be bigger and more spread out, meaning the enemy can't shoot too many important parts at once, especially with piercing weapons.
  
• Enclosed ships on the other hand protect its crew and vital parts with a hull, requiring an enemy to cut through it first. Boarders will also have to find a way in first. The crew toiling inside will have less information on how the battle is going though. These ships are more compact, with all most important parts being inside the protective hull.

Larger crews tend to fare better on open ships, smaller crews on enclosed ones. The typical boarding vessel is a tiny open airship with several crew members.

During an expedition you and your ship will be encountering enemies, which will be shooting at you. Thus you should take into account, that your ship will take damage. Make sure that there isn't any single part, whose destruction will lead the loss of your ship. Medium and large ships should have multiple redundancies.
In order to reach an extraction point under own steam you'll usually need lift, propellers, an engine and a steering wheel.

The hangar is a cube of 49 m side length, however you usually don't need that much space. All parts' connections have to inside this cube, non-connecting parts, of e.g. the domestic mechaladon may extend beyond it though.
The rest of the guide is roughly sorted in the order I'd recommend you to build your ships.

Several of the following categories will include a table of their respective parts. To help you choose amongst them, the tables include an efficiency number, which calculates how much that part provides, divided by its mass. For parts which use pressure (mainly movement and weapons) proportionate mass of a (flask) engine providing it is taken into account as well.
Please note that these are relative numbers that can only be compared within each category.

Selecting balloons is one of the major choices you will have to make when building an airship. You can choose between speed, armour, size or auto repaired hull and read the corresponding paragraphs below.

1) Speed
Airships get slower as their mass and drag increase. For a given mass, the other tweak is thus to minimise drag. The balloon with the lowest drag is the (Large) Balloon Sphere. For optimising speed it is thus the preferred choice, however it is rather unwieldy. The (Small) Balloon Cone has the next lowest drag, followed by the (Large) Balloon Cap and the (Small) Balloon Rod.

2) Armour
All balloons have relatively high points. Most however do not have any damage reduction and armouring them is difficult considering their size. There are seven different armoured balloons though, which come with a damage reduction of 10 (or even 15 in one case). The downside of the larger ones is that all of them have rather high drag, leading to a slower ship. The armoured small balloons however are a good all-around choice.

3) Size
Float Stones Brick or Shards offer the best lift to volume ratio, having several times as much lift as balloons. Thus if your goal is to minimise the size of your airship they are the best choice. However, float stone also has a high drag, slowing down your ship.

4) Auto repaired hull
Box balloons have by far the most connections of any part in game. By mounting auto hammers onto them, you can cover a huge number of parts as seen in the picture below. Box balloons also offer a relatively good compromise in terms of speed and size.

The Dreadnought, a 30k ship with almost all parts covered by only six auto hammers, each attached to a box balloon

There are also three balloons which have built-in ballasts, however they have high drag and no damage reduction, thus I'd recommend not to use them and install ballasts separately instead.

Based on ships seen in game, armoured balloons are most common for heavier ships, whereas lighter ones tend to favour speed. Float stone is used rather rarely. Personally I like building ships with auto repaired hull as seen above, however this might be my own quirk.
Your lift may not exceed 150% of your mass. However since more balloons mean higher drag and slower speed, you generally want your lift to be only slightly higher than your mass.

Cargo
For airships your lift should exceed your mass, so that your ship stays in the air on its own.
When carrying cargo or dragoons, it will make your ship heavier, which lead to it not flying on its own anymore. However, if you have sufficient vertical thrust (ballasts) you can compensate for this, best in combination with an altitude maintainer.

If you are building a watercraft or a submarine instead, the choice should be much easier, since there are only two pontoons and three submersibles, as well as the Domestic Mechaladon to choose from.
Unlike balloons there is no limit to the number of pontoons and submersibles. Since they do not cause drag (?) you can and should have extra buoyancy and take cargo into account as well.
The buoyancy of each part goes from 0 to 100% over 2 m of depth from the centre of each buoyant part. The more pontoons/submersibles you have the higher you ship will be in the water, which might be helpful depending on where your weapons and engines are located.

Due to its length, the parts' table for this section is in annex 1 at the end.

Avoid confusing engines and propellers. Engines generate pressure, propellers move your ship.

Place at least some engines' exhaust higher than the centre of your balloons. That way even if you land on the water (accidentally or on purpose) you won't lose all pressure.
Keep in mind where you want your cockpit, so that the steam does not obfuscate your view, especially if you are going to aim heavy weapons from the helm.
The max. draw (calculated by adding movement and weapons' draw and also shown on the black board) should be less than 100%.


As you can see from the table above, flask engines have the best mass efficiency (pressure to mass ratio) and are thus the recommended choice. They also have five connections (or four for the angled version), allowing you to mount them easily.
Box engines on the other hand have the best space efficiency, using only one third of space of flask engines while providing the same pressure.


The big well stores 10 times as much pressure as small wells, thus the former are more mass efficient. Their volume is around 16 times higher though, so if space is scant you might opt for the small ones after all.

In case you are wondering about the numbers listed here compared to those in game: Pressure costs are calculated 50 times a second and in game this is displayed accordingly. Divided into seconds they provide 40,000 and 400,000 pressure seconds respectively.

Any vessel should have pressure wells, I'd recommend at least one small well per auto hammer (or a big one for 10) to make sure you have enough pressure to run them until empty. (If you have crew refilling them during battle you could use more though.) Wells are charged and discharged with preference from left to right, then bottom to top, then back to front.

Engine Propellers both provide and use pressure, the number above is the sum of both.
Dragon tails also provide 700 turn force when mounted vertically.
Walker and Mech Legs do not provide thrust, but support 5,000 mass each instead.

Dragon tails are the most efficient propulsion and they are also the only ones which do make any noise, allowing for a stealthy approach. However they are also huge, limiting where they can be mounted as well as making them get damaged easily.
Second to dragon tails the next most efficient choices are the Fan Propeller Leaf, followed closely by the Single Propeller Short and the Heavy Propeller Short. Which one of these you use depends mainly on where you mount them and how much space you have.

Mounting
All propellers and the dragon tail which are mounted front or aft facing and will generate 100% thrust going forward and 50% thrust going backwards. In order to maximise turn speed, propellers should be mounted as far as possible to the sides (port/starboard) of the ship.
By mounting propellers facing up/down or sideways you can also use them to change your altitude or heading. Neither is recommended though, since ballasts and rudders respectively can achieve the same more efficiently. To show them in comparison I've included ballasts in the table above.

Speed
The horizontal thrust required for maximum speed is mass * 0.36.
You should have sufficient propulsion on your vessel to maximise its speed. If you are not sure, try adding another propeller. If your speed increases you need more, if it decreases or stays the same you have sufficient. However you can consider having some redundancy here.

Sails and tank tracks are not covered by this guide yet.

For normal manoeuvrability you should have at least one ballast per 1,000 mass.
Each vertical thrust lifts around three times its mass, e.g. one ballast (150 thrust) lifts approximately 450 mass. Thus if you have more than 2.2 ballasts per 1,000 mass, your ship can fly even without any lift from balloons or float stone.
Your ballasts should be spread out equally to the mass of your ship. If you want to use a tilt module you should place them mostly at the front and back of the ship.


The differences between the rudder types are rather small, you should mainly focus on which rudder fits on the part you want to mount it on. E.g. the front rudder (50 mass) might look worse than than the tall rudder (30 mass). However, if you need a beam (30 mass) in order to mount the latter, the former one becomes the better choice after all. Rudders should be mounted as far forward or aft as possible to maximise their effect.
Side-ways movement can be achieved with propellers as well, however rudders are usually better and more efficient.

For more details on rudder placement you can consult Doomvortex' guide:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1907561285

Stabilisers decrease the time a ships to stop from a turn. On small ships they are recommended, on larger ones they are usually not necessary. Square rudders come with built-in stabilisers.

Magdrives need 30 seconds to charge, during which time they consume 2,000 pressure, which sums up to 60,000 pressure seconds. To put this in perspective: charging one magdrives requires the stored pressure from 1.5 small wells. While charging your magdrives, your ship can only move at around one quarter of its normal speed. Afterwards it propels the ship at speeds ranging from around 17 (for a massive 30k vessel) to 20 (for a nimble one). For light vessel the relative speed benefit is usually not that big, thus I recommend magdrives mainly on medium and heavy ships. Each magdrive supports a mass of up to 12,500. However, exceeding this mass merely reduces your speed when magdriving a bit. E.g. on a 30k vessel your speed with three magdrives is 17.6, whereas with two it still reaches 16.5. Using just one your magdrive speed will only be 14 though.

You can check the minimum distance at which it is worth to use the magdrive in the table in annex 1.

Hint: Dropping of cargo you are delivering takes 1 second per parcel, thus if you want to use the magdrive to get to the next destination you can start charging it when there are 30 parcels left.

Due to the extend of the part covering weapons exceeding size limitations for Steam guides, I've split it off into a separate one.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2081522298

Airmen offers two materials for building your fuselage, wooden hull plates and synthest armour plating. Both have a large number of different pieces, thus I'm only going to list three exemplary ones:


Hull has the advantage of being cheaper, requiring wood which is easily available instead of the scarce synthest. It also connects well with all other pieces in game: Its sides link up with other hull (yellow), cargo (blue) may placed on top of it and using a hull root you can connect to beams (green).

Armour plating on the other hand offers a higher damage reduction, while weighing only half as much as hull. However, they may only be placed onto hull pieces, thus you will have two layers of protection in those places. The underlying hull layer doesn't have extend all the beneath the armour plating though, allowing you to save mass there. Based on this I also built my armoured boxes (pictured above) without exceeding the mass limit.

These are the only parts where it might sense to keep an eye on your resources, i.e. using hull plates instead of armour plating if you don't have that much synthest or don't to risk losing it.

In general, if you have some mass to fill (either to reach the firepower or due to lift requirements) it's recommended to use it to provide more protection to critical parts.

Each ship may have up to three steering wheels and I recommend to make full use of this limit on any but the smallest ships. They are very important sturdy parts, having high hit points for their mass and the best damage reduction of all parts. Having reserve wheels thus comes in very handy, since without a wheel every ship is unusable.


If your ship uses adjustable weapons you will need gunner wheels. Otherwise you can use the standard steering wheel or lever steering wheel. For most ships I recommend the standard one as main and a lever as one of the backups. Should you lose some propellers during battle, the lever steering wheel still allows you to fly straight.

The bridge (containing the main wheel) should have the best possible view of the surroundings, that is a 360° view around the ship and as much vertical view as possible. As captain you will be spending most of your time on the bridge, thus you can put some extra effort and parts into it to make sure you are not surprised by an enemy appearing out of nowhere.
A backup wheel should be placed somewhere else on the ship, with reasonable good view, allowing you to pilot from here should your main wheel be destroyed. Even though they are quite sturdy wheels can be destroyed and having only a single one or all of them close to each other could easily leave you stranded.
The third steering wheel can be placed on a tertiary bridge (recommended), next to one of the other two (especially if you want to use both standard and lever versions alternatingly) or even inside the ship (if you are not using it to aim guns).
In general all wheels should be in enclosed areas (using windows to provide view) so that boarders can't access them without breaking through some part first.

Side note: The gunner wheel as well as the control station have a control range of 30, i.e. the guns they control can't be more than 30 m away. With most ships being shorter than 30 m in total, this should usually not be an issue.

The explanation of the wheels' pointers are found it in the Various tips section.

Auto hammers repair damaged parts up to four parts away from themselves. They can be a powerful tool to increase your endurance if mounted well, or a waste of pressure if mounted badly.
Each auto hammer consume 200 pressure when active but not repairing, this increases to 800 when repairing. They hold 40 scrap, which they consume at a rate of one per two seconds. Based on these numbers I recommend to have at least one small well for each auto hammer, to ensure you have enough pressure during battle.
Consider which parts are crucial in battle and likely to be hit, those are the ones which should be covered by at least auto hammer. By mounting them onto parts with lots of connections, you can minimise the number of auto hammers necessary. In the 'Lift' section above you can see a 30k ship with almost all parts covered by merely six auto hammers.

Usually respawn chambers and cabinets are placed together in crew compartments, protected areas where you can spawn and equip yourself.
You should have at least two of important tool boxes (grappling gun, repair hammer, a melee and a ranged weapon) in different places of your ship. For more details regarding tools you can check out this guide:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1607031613
Don't be stingy with respawn chambers, they are quite cheap and you should install a few spare ones. For heavy ships I'd recommend six or more and even light ones should have at least two. This way you will still be able to respawn even if one gets destroyed in battle, by a boarder or even a treacherous crew member.

Considering the contract requirements, I generally recommend a cargo capacity of 192 parcels for bigger ships. This allows you to fill up on the most profitable delivery contracts (48 parcels) or take up to three of the biggest ones (64 parcels). Even a light ship can carry 192 cargo, e.g. the 5.6k Cargo Duckling. Some players do not put any cargo pads on their combat ships, however without them you lose quite some flexibility during an expedition. In case you defeat an AI vessel carrying cargo you'd lose the opportunity to loot it. Thus, even on a combat focused ship I recommend at least 64 cargo capacity, which is sufficient for almost all AI ships and stations you might defeat. Additionally you can casually run some deliveries.
A few players prefer to protect their cargo, by putting it in cargo cages and/or armouring it. Personally however I think that losing cargo is one of the lesser worries, compared to other parts. Thus, I prefer to use cargo pads which are lighter and I even use them as secondary armour on sides which usually don't get hit, e.g. the bottom of a watercraft. If you plan on looting ships, they should be easily accessible and if inside the ship allow you to reach outside with a grappler, e.g. through hatches. On several of my ships, the cargo pads are at the very bottom of the ship and can be loaded through holes in the floor, e.g.:




When loading cargo, your ships mass will increase: With normal cargo pads or cages your mass increases by 30 per parcel, using float stone cargo racks it only increases by 10. When your airship exceeds its lift, it will slowly start sinking, requiring you to use ballasts to counter this.
When accepting delivery contracts the cargo is loaded from left to right, then bottom to top, then back to front. Loading cargo does not change the centre of mass of your ship though.

Each ship can carry a total of up to six dragoons. The following types are available:


To unlock a dragoon you need 6,000 reputation at the respective fort and then interact with it there.
To get the Black Knight Dragoon you need complete the ghost hunting quests instead.
As the maximum speed of ships is 18.33 (or ~20 using magdrives), even the slowest dragoons are significantly faster than any ship.

Dragoons can be placed on any top surface where they have sufficient space. Bear in mind that all of them are relatively fragile, even the armoured dragoons have less hit points than the long hull plate they are probably standing on.
Thus, I recommend to house them in a hangar aboard your ship. It should have hatches leading outside (preferable the angled ones), however you do not need to open them to fly through, since dragoons treat closed hatches like they are open. The dragoons should face outward in the builder, you can also land them the other away around though and they'll be turned automatically.
The hangar should include some tools cabinets so you can equip yourself here before leaving the ship. You can also combine it with the cargo bay as in this picture:

A combined hangar and cargo bay. You can reach the cargo pads through the holes in the floor.
(The staggered arrangement allows for two dragoons in a 9 m wide hangar.)

Airborne dragoons don't work underwater. They can float up, but you can't pilot them while under water.

Dragoons have three dials:

• The big one in the centre shows the speed. (The dial is not calibrated the same as ships' dials though, on dragoons a full revolution means a speed of more than 27.)
  
• The left one displays the distance from the mother ship, at 1,200 m (within the red area) the dragoon will self-destruct.
  
• The right one shows the relative health of the dragoon.

Dragoons walkers do work under water. Their weapons cannot shoot while submerged though.

One tip for submarines: Through enemy action or inadvertence it might happen, that your submarine runs out of pressure while under water. Without pressure you will not be able to bring it back up to the surface. For this case I recommend to carry a dragoon in an enclosed space aboard your submarine. Should you be hopelessly stuck on the ocean floor, board the dragoon and let it float freely. Its buoyancy should be sufficient to slowly bring you back up to the surface where your engines can start running again.

For ships where the lift exceeds the mass (i.e. most airships), the limiting factor for the speed is the drag caused by the balloons. Without balloons or float stone your drag will be as if you had your lift equal to your mass times a 0.8 drag coefficient. By reducing the drag down to this level, you can thus speed up your ship. Using Balloon Spheres you could maximise your speed, however they are rather unwieldy. An alternative is thus to decrease the number of balloons.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1886667159
As an example, the Dreadnought missile ship has a mass of 30k, with only a lift of 21k. This speeds up the ship by 20% and additionally saves space. Bear in mind that this comes with some side effects though: Without ballasts such a ship only floats. Using a sufficient number of ballasts, the ship can still fly, however you will need to manually adjust the controls. It is recommended to use either a lever steering wheel or an altitude maintainer for such a ship. For these vessels it is even more important that your engines' exhausts are above your balloons.

If you are building it as an airship/landship or submarine/landship hybrid, assign your wheels and altitude maintainer to the same group.
When airborne or diving switch this group on and the wheels won't draw pressure and if you still want to change altitude you can just override it. When driving this group should of course be off.

• Use beams only where necessary to connect parts with beam connections (yellow). Beams might have similar hit points as hull, but lack their damage reduction. Should you need beam connections of 3 metres or more try to use rod ballasts or ram blade shafts instead.
  
• Attach important machinery (e.g. weapons and propellers) to parts with higher hit points. E.g. do not attach them to a 1x1 hull (300 HP), but a 3x1 hull (800 HP) instead.
  
• A connection between two parts is always the same strength, no matter whether they are linked at one point or a dozen. Thus it's usually a better idea to use the other points to connect other parts.
  
• Take into account that your ship might heel or even capsize and build accordingly. You should still be able to navigate the ship and reach important parts, e.g. by attaching ladders. Particularly make sure you can get from a respawn chamber to a steering wheel so you can right the ship again.
  
• Distances in game (especially the markers at the top of your screen) are given in metres.

To give you an idea of the possible speeds, all in metre per second (m/s):

• Jet stream speeds range from 26 to 30, depending on the ship's drag.
  
• Magnetic drive speeds range from 16 to 20, depending on the ship's drag. (Assuming you have enough magdrives, if not it can go down to 14.)
  
• Dragoons fly at 29 to 39, depending on the dragoon type.
  
• The maximum possible air speed using conventional propulsion (propellers, dragon tail and domestic mechaladon) is 18.33
  
• The heavier your ship and the higher the drag from balloons the slower you are going to be. Even for a 30k ship you should aim for an air speed of at least 7 though.
  
• The maximum speed of an airship using conventional propulsion is the air speed on the black board. Being (partially) submerged slows down your vessel, thus watercrafts and submarines tend to be 10-25% slower than shown on the board.
  
• Your ship flies slightly faster when following another vessel less than 500 m away, this effect maximises within 200 m where you will reach the pursuit speed as per the black board.
  
• On foot Airmen walk at 3.5.

Theoretically vessels of a given size without balloons or float stone can achieve the following speeds according to the black board and require approximately the thrust listed below:


The actual speed will usually be lower, since parts which provide lift and/or buoyancy will slow you down.


Your current speed, turn rate and the wind are shown on the steering wheel.

• The big pointer in the centre is the speed, each marking being 1 m/s. A full revolution thus shows 12 m/s.
  
• The smaller pointer in the centre shows then turn rate, each marking being 4.8 degrees per second. A ship with a turn speed of one would make a full turn in 75 seconds. A turn speed of 12 (one full revolution) would mean a full turn in 6.25 seconds.
  
• The outer pointer shows where the wind is coming from, this is only relevant for sailing ships.

The faster your ship turns, the better it will fare in combat, especially against other players. There are two turns:

• The rudder turn (pressing W/S and A/D) has a bigger turn radius
  
• The propeller turn (pressing only A/D) makes the ship turn on the spot

On most ships the rudder turn is significantly faster than the propeller turn.
Light ships should have a rudder turn rate of 7.5 or more (meaning a full turn in 10 seconds or less). Heavy ships generally turn slower, even on a 30k vessel you should aim for a rudder turn rate of at least 3 (resulting in a full turn in maximum 25 seconds).
By using short bursts of W/S while keeping A/D pressed you can combine the advantages of the two, resulting in a small turn radius at almost the same speed as the rudder turn.


One major question is whether to optimise a ship for PvE (Player vs Environment, thus fighting the AI) or PvP (Player vs Player, thus fighting other humans). The tips in this guide are more geared towards PvE, however take PvP into account as well (e.g. for the APATs). Currently, PvE is still much more prevalent, the introduction of the pirate king in January 2020 has lead to more PvP already though.

Against AI ships you mainly have to bring sufficient fire power on a solid ship to win the engagement. They are relatively predictable and will only target a random choice of engines, weapons, propellers or balloons. During the battle you mainly need to protect (and repair if possible) the targeted part type, other parts are only going to receive damage if they are in the projectiles' way. Thus e.g. you and your steering wheel will not be targeted on purpose and should receive comparatively little damage. The AI however will always 'know' where the targeted parts are located, even if they are not visible to them.

Other players on the other hand might try to outmanoeuvre you if their ship is nimbler or board you. Putting your ship's essential parts behind hull/armour and hatches will slow down boarders. Having sufficient APATs can make boarders' lives difficult to impossible, but they cost firepower and installing them thus comes at the trade-off of fewer other weapons. Players will be targeting other parts than the AI. They won't know where parts are located without seeing them or their effects first, however they can target areas which the AI won't shoot at. Particularly players might aim at your crew or your bridge, in order to disable you at least for some time. This emphasises the importance of secondary (and if possible a tertiary) steering wheel.

AI gunners on player ships can get set to any of these four options above (engines, weapons, propellers or balloons), in addition they can also target deployables or crew. To choose hold Q and then select it. If the target does not exist (e.g. no crew on an AI ship or all propellers being destroyed already) the AI gunners will target engines instead.


If you aim to increase your hit points you should use the following parts:

• Balloons offer the most hit points per mass, especially the large balloons.
  
• The next best choice is the synthest armour plating.
  
• Wooden hull has the third most hit points per mass.

Since you can only have up to 1.5 your mass in lift, this limits the number of balloons you can install. Having excess balloons also slows down your airship. Thus to maximise your hit points you will mainly rely on armour and hull, depending on your budget.

The parts' tables do not list the resource costs, since they are usually a lesser concern when building ships. Your early ships tend to be light ships which cost barely more than the free allowance (see below). By the time you have sufficient gold to unlock medium and heavy ships you should also have enough of most resources to invest in proper parts. Usually it does not pay off to use cheaper parts instead.
Some resources however will stay scarce even later in the game, these being arcenite, synthest, demon flesh and ancient bone. The latter two are only used for two weapons and arcenite only for certain station/fortress parts, their usage thus being rather limited. Synthest however can be required in large quantities. Some of my ships use more than 1,500 and stations could potentially cost 5,000 synthest or more. Armour is thus the only part were it might make sense to go for a cheaper option (wooden hull) instead.


When building a ship you get a free allowance of resources as per this table. When exceeding them you are only charged the difference between the costs and the allowance.


For resources not listed here there is no free allowance.
When building a station or a ship flying a black flag there is no allowance.



The Domestic Mechaladon also provides 10,000 thrust and 1,500 turn force.


Read your magdrive speed at the top and your conventional speed on the left to find out the minimum distance from which using the magdrive will get you there faster:

A few basic parts are available immediately, the rest you'll need to unlock through research or quests.
The most important researches you will need are roughly in this order:

• Large Balloons
  
• Flask Engine
  
• Exploration Tools
  
• Precision Weaponry
  
• Pressure Storage
  
• Automated Control
  
• Harpoon Weaponry
  
• Tail Propulsion
  
• Medium Airships
  
• Longarms
  
• Magnetic Drive
  
• (Heavy weapons of your choice)

Should you have an older design, you can check against this list, which notable new parts have been introduced and which changes (in italics) have happened since then and consider whether it's necessary to make any updates to the ship.


Time period covered: May 2019 to Nov 2020