Building a spaceship is one of the core aspects of Avorion gameplay. This guide will give a short overview on necessary knowledge for building. This guide explains the basic steps to get a functional space craft after the spawn in the start sector.
A short note on building
Avorions build mode can be confusing at the beginning. It is important to be aware of the fact that blocks will not influence each other. That means for example, that thrusters and engines may be covered from any side without any effect on their function.
First Steps
In singleplayer the starting sector will always contain one large asteroid with no mine on it, that can be claimed by the player and be sold to a faction for a significant amount of credits. This offers great start capital to build a ship. The sector will also contain asteroids with Iron (and sometimes Titanium) that can be mined.
Before building a ship it is recommended to fly near a station with the drone to make the crew hiring easier after the building is done.
Materials
At the very beginning of the game there are two resources available to the player: Iron and Titanium .
The choice of the material (or the combination of both) is up to the player, even though certain blocks are only available in certain materials, like the Generator, which can not be build of iron, or the Inertia Dampener, which can only be build of Iron or Avorion.
It is important to point out, that Iron is a much heavier material than Titanium, resulting in the need for more thrusters to compensate for that and using Iron to build the ship will allow for larger ships due to the cheap price and the commonness of its occurence.
Blocks
Avorions build mode allows for almost unlimited creativity of the player, allthough there are specific blocks required on any ship. These are:
Furthermore there are some blocks that are not a necessity, but will still be of great use on almost all ships. These are:
- A Power source (Generator, Solar Panel)
- Integrity field generator
Note that there are many more blocks such as the shield generator or cargo space, that are usefull in many situations. These are not listed here, because they are either not available at the very start of the game or not necessary for a basic ship.
Crew quarters are used to keep the morale of the crew up and thus prevent them from leaving the ship, while thrusters and engines are simply needed to move the ship (take a look at the thrusters page to learn more about the direction of thrust). Note that a power source is not necessary for very small crafts, as any ship will have a default energy production of 500 MW.
Stats
The stats of the ship are always visible on the right side of the screen while in build mode. The game will highlight unsufficient stats in yellow or red color. Note that those stats that affect speed and thrust depend on the crew of the ship in addition to the blocks, which means that yellow stats are fine on a ship without crew.
A value that should recieve more attention than others is the energy production, which should at least be twice the ships energy consumption to allow for boosting and acceptable hyperspace cooldowns. Note that a ships energy production can also be increased by the use of an Generator Upgrade.
Equipment
The inventory of the player in any newly generated singleplayer galaxy will contain two chaingun turrets as well as two mining turrets. Note that a ship without any system upgrades has only three weapon slots aviable (one armed, one unarmed, one for both). These turrets can be equipped in the build mode, but will require crew to work.
Additional turrets as well as system upgrades can be bought at the equipment dock in the starting sector, allthough their cost will exceed the players financial capabilltiies in most cases.
Crew
A Crew can be hired at any station. It is up to the player whether the crew should consist of default crewmen, specialists or a mix of both.