Disclosures: LONG POST. Also, my enthusiasm could easily be mistaken as an argument for "the best" ship build. It isn't.
I'll be discussing lag a bit. Many of my comments may not apply to you as the lag is likely machine specific. In case you're curious I'm running a Win 7 partition on my early 2010 Macbook Pro: 2.4 GHz Intel Duo, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor.
Now to the good stuff:
First, I want to give a shout out to Soulstorm for creating my personal favorite ship of all time. I have not seen a ship online nor built one myself that I prefer playing in CS. My enthusiasm should be taken as an argument for "the best" ship in this case.
I've had a lot of things that I have wanted to add to this thread over the past couple of weeks, but wanted to wait till I could take out juliet guardians & ships with ease. I've finally made it!
I've tried a lot of build designs between CS & CJ and have noticed that successful themes in one don't often translate well to the other. This observation mixed with the accessibility of any module in CJ has lead me to my current design theme. While I see no significant way to improve upon Soulstorm's masterpiece in firepower and total defense, I find derivatives of it very difficult to play in CJ. It seems that CJ has much less tolerance for a player's total ship pieces (due to a more complex world?) and I lag frequently with much smaller ships.
Ships's Primary Theme: Be able to line up perfectly placed snipe shots to key enemy modules while taking sustained frontal fire. The overall goal is to destroy the enemy command module while leaving a maximum amount of modules functional. The ship has 100% of fire power coming from a single snipe launcher mounted front & center. All defense/structural modules are arranged to make this snipe impervious to damage. All propulsion mods arranged for accurate sniping and the core is made up of a series of chronogears. The goal with the chronos is to get the snipe laser's firing rate as fast as possible within a few constraints (discussed below).
Anyone can strap a snipe laser and chronogears to their ship, the tricky part comes from making the ship virtually indestructible as well as mobile enough to make very precise shots. I'm going to break the analysis up into several parts.
Without further rambling, my ship:
The Core:The core of the ship is created by chronogear arrangements that derive from NixPhenom's ship posted on the CF Wikia page:
This set up keeps the ship's mass concentrated around its center of gravity and allows for less propulsion mods dedicated to rotating. The compact design also prevents the ship from taking up too much screen space and leads to better defense from ships with off-screen laser ranges.
Many of you might squirm at the thought of an asymmetric ship, but the exact arrangement I use keeps the mass almost as well distributed as if it were symmetric. I've found that the ship usually only needs 1-2 extra uni or twin boosters on the left side to compensate. The current ship + a single twinbooster on the left exterior will go 100+ units on an axis before it's direction changes by a single degree.
On Compartmentalization:One thing is nearly certain, you WILL lose modules! But you will lose far fewer in a fire fight if you follow 2 principles:
1) Position each module to have minimal pieces attached to it.
2) Attach each module so that it has the shortest chain back to your secure core.
For centuries, the navies of the world have understood the importance of being able to lose sections of their ships and still maintain basic functionality. I now believe this to be the most important part of ship building. No one is surprised that the precise location of each piece is crucial, but I was surprised that WHERE YOU ATTACH is just as important. Compartmentalization of the exterior is necessary for the survival of the core and thus the rest of the ship. I built and lost 6 golf+ level ships before I began to fully comprehend the importance of this idea.
It is difficult to demonstrate visually how I have utilized compartmentalization in my current build, but take my word for it; the most that a single module on the front exterior can take with it is 1 other piece. The worst case scenario is for one of the blurst shield struts on a side to pop, which will cause me to lose about 1/5th of my exterior. All blurst shield chains originate at the core chronogears and terminate at the end of another blurst shield chain. Many of the blurst shields appear to be connected, but have an unobservable space between them.
I'm pretty sure that there are only 2 events (besides complete negligence) that can take out more than 1 piece at a time; getting ambushed by a fast moving Needler with a ramming spike or from pushing the physics engine mechanics to their limits (more on this later). In my first design I had a column of rear-facing chronos with the power routed to the front through a long line of exterior blurst shields. One of the side pieces popped and I lost 3/4ths of my exterior and all of my guns...
An astute observer will notice that I could take this concept a step further with my current ship. I have decided that it isn't necessary due to the sturdiness of higher tier blurst shields. An older version only used bravo blurst shields and had an additional compartment on each flank with no one exterior piece having more than 4 others in the chain.
Bugs in physics engine that can ruin you:The biggest issue by far comes from mixing chronogears and transrotators & locators
(abbreviated TR&L for the rest of this essay). Chronos DO effect these propulsion modules and the mechanics can lead to instant dismemberment/death. I'm no programmer, but from what I understand the TR&L mods "teleport" the ship a certain distance/degree with each frame. With enough chronos, this teleportation can and will lead to you teleporting right on top of another ship. If this ship fires it will hit your internal goodies, and you will be very surprised and very angry at the results. This game mechanic can also create game-ending lag on my computer. I guess the code doesn't like ships jumping several x-y coordinates in a single frame (yes, this is possible). I will discuss how to safely take advantage of this topic in "Propulsion" below.
The other issue/bug to keep in mind occurs when firing a laser with the tip in contact with another surface. It seems that the full damage from the laser shot gets applied to the laser module itself. Every laser I have encountered has damage equal to its hit points and will one-shot itself into oblivion. Asteroids, stations and enemy ships will all cause this issue. My ship is (overly?) designed to prevent this from happening under "normal" circumstances.
Main gun & Defense:I used to get incredibly frustrated with the CF series and my frequently laser-less ships. They are the easiest modules to lose, and the easiest to destroy on other ships. You may have already guessed that I'm a bit OCD about losing modules and this has lead to the ridiculously protected snipe laser on my ship.
-Gun is surrounded by a blurst shields on all sides and even has it going 2 units higher on the sides for extra protection.
-9 overlapping bubble shields to protect from enemies lining up direct shots.
-The bubble shields do not extend past the front of the ship. This is to prevent them from taking excessive fire so they can do their job of protecting the laser.
-The laser is sitting on a juliet repair module just in case. Probably worthless as the only thing that hits the laser are it's own shots reflected from enemy blurst shields. Glad I wrote this. Going to dispose of the extra weight the next time I log in.
Propulsion & Size:Propulsion is 2nd to compartmentalization in importance. It is the most time consuming aspect of this ship theme and comes from developing a comfortable balance between TR&L propulsion units and all the other types. Both are needed in my experience.
The need for balance is best illustrated by putting together a ship with 10 chronos & 10 juliet translocators. Take this ship and place it adjacent to a secured station. Then press and hold a thrust key towards this station. You will find that you are now in the middle of that station. Yes, the middle.
It lags the game terribly and I have seen it freeze the game for over a minute. Others have reported a full crash and loss of ship when guardians spawned on stations in CJ Alpha 1. Now imagine doing this next to an enemy and that enemy firing while inside your ship. I can't imagine a ship design that is both playable AND can handle enemies firing directly into its guts. Let me know if I've missed something.
You may be asking yourself; why bother with TR&L mods at all? When used in moderation they can safely triple the speed and rotation of your ship. I bother with the tedious and constant rearrangements because it leads to a ship that can out maneuver ships 1/5th its mass.
-I find that all you need are 3-5 translocators of a tier equal to your blurst shields. More are doable, but you will likely find enemies firing from inside your ship.
-The best way I have found to test for stability is to place a single small mod in space in front of your ship, back up and ram it at full speed, catch it with ship, coast for a few seconds, turn a few times and then stop as quickly as possible. Repeat this multiple times. You are good if the piece is constantly held in front by your blurst shields and/or bubble shields. You have over done it if the piece is in the middle of your ship and have complete overkill if you pass right through it.
After experimenting with builds from 4-20 chronos, I have concluded that a 6-7 chrono build yields the best balance between survivability, carnage and lag. Less gives you a snipe laser with questionable DPS and more (with TR&L mods) leads to lag and no real benefit.
Improvement?This is where you guys come in. I have blinders on at this point.
The most obvious thing to change would be to lighten most of the ship. I could loose ~250kg by scumming for less massive modules. Also, the mess on the back are back up modules and serve no real practical purpose. The repairs mods will likely never get used, but I still lose lasers from enemy blurst shield reflection and bubble shields due to a code issue.
Also, I have added 3 juliet prismatic lasers on each flank since completing my ship. Don't really need to scavenge parts now and shredding juliet guardians in under 3 seconds brings a huge smile to my face.