Ship Assembly

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Ship Assembly

Ship Assembly turns component choices into a reusable ship blueprint. Saving a design does not construct ships: you build copies in Shipyard, then assign those available ships to missions through Fleet Operations. The Assembly game-section page is a quick reference for the design area, including the separate drone workflow.

Assembly sections and slots

The current Assembly interface has Active, Ship Assembly, Drone Assembly and Archive sections. Active lists current designs; Ship Assembly opens ship design; Drone Assembly designs defensive drones separately (a larger battery pack gives more firing rounds but costs more: about 6% extra for four rounds and 12% for five); Archive holds retired blueprints. Ship and drone designs use separate per-type active counts.

Each type currently has 3 base active blueprint slots plus your Assembly Engineering level. Creating or reactivating a design needs a free slot. These are design slots, not the fleet command slots used for missions or the shipyard's production queue spaces. Retiring a design releases its active slot without deleting the historical record.

Design a ship, step by step

1. Open Ship Assembly from Assembly and enter a blueprint name. Randomize can suggest a name; use one that helps you recognize the design's purpose later.
2. Choose one option in each component system. Locked options display their required research and level. Research determines which higher tiers can be saved; a preview of an option is not an unlock.
3. Watch the Prototype preview while changing components. It groups the combat profile, platform profile, construction values and resource costs. The With research toggle lets you compare the preview with research effects. Use it to compare designs rather than treating the base values as every player's final combat strength.
4. Check cargo, speed, mass, weapon types, protection, build time and the resource cost for the task you intend. A design that carries more or fights better can also cost more to build and fuel.
5. Press Assemble to save the blueprint. It becomes an active design if the component choices, research, name and available slot are valid. This action saves a blueprint; it does not deduct the resource cost of a fleet of newly built ships.

Assembly points and skeleton tiers

A ship skeleton provides assembly-point capacity and consumes zero AP itself. Engines, weapons, hull plating, shields, transport/extractor modules and tactical modules contribute their own AP costs. Skeletons still contribute resource cost, mass and build time; zero AP cost does not make the hull platform free to construct.

The current ship skeleton capacities are:

Tier	Skeleton	Available AP	Required Ship Skeleton research
T0	Nova Frigate	8	No research level required
T1	Sentinel Cruiser	18	Level 4
T2	Eclipse Destroyer	34	Level 8
T3	Titan Battleship	54	Level 12
T4	Colossus Dreadnought	95	Level 16
T5	Leviathan Starship	130	Level 20
T6	Behemoth Starship	180	Level 24

The T6 Behemoth is a new heavy platform. The existing T0–T5 capacities remain unchanged. Its higher capacity does not unlock component technologies automatically; each selected component still has its own research requirement.

Available AP is the skeleton's capacity; AP costs is the total used by the selected components. The prototype preview highlights the AP cost when it exceeds capacity. At present, an over-budget design is highlighted rather than blocked solely because of AP usage; treat the capacity as the intended design budget when comparing loadouts.

Tactical modules have no minimum skeleton tier. You can select one on a smaller skeleton if its research is unlocked, but its AP cost competes with engines, protection, weapons and cargo. Selecting a larger tactical or cargo module can therefore require downgrading other parts to stay within the design budget.

T6 loadout example

Four T6 combat components—projectile weapon, energy weapon, hull plating and energy shield—use 26 AP each. Together with the current maximum T5 engine at 26 AP, they use 130 AP, leaving 50 AP on the Behemoth.

• Add T3 transport at 32 AP and Charger at 22 AP: total usage becomes 184 AP, four above capacity. Downgrading one T6 combat component to T5 saves 8 AP, bringing usage to 176 AP.
• Use T4 transport at 64 AP with Charger: total usage becomes 216 AP, so substantially larger sacrifices are needed to stay within 180.

These are AP-budget examples, not complete combat comparisons. Inspect the resulting damage, protection, cargo, speed, mass and resource cost in the preview before choosing the tradeoff.

Component systems and research

• Chassis Skeleton selects the hull platform. Higher choices require Ship Skeleton.
• Engine affects movement; higher engine choices require Engine Engineering.
• Transport Module adds carrying capacity; higher choices require Ship Skeleton. The first non-empty module requires level 2.
• Extractor Module enables debris recovery and adds capacity; its first non-empty choice requires Ship Skeleton level 3. Transport and extractor modules cannot be fitted together on one ship.
• Projectile Weapon and Energy Weapon provide separate damage types. Their higher options require Weapon Research; the first upgraded projectile option requires level 2 and the first upgraded energy option level 3.
• Hull Plating and Energy Shield provide physical and energy protection. Higher options require Chassis Integrity, with different requirements for the two systems.
• Tactical Module changes a ship's role and relevant performance; higher choices require Tactical Modules. Inspect its description and preview for tradeoffs before selecting it.

Energy Research, Photonic Computing and Assembly Engineering form part of the route to Ship Skeleton; see Beginner's Guide for the early sequence. Higher tiers have their own levels shown in the option tooltip, so one research unlock does not make every component available.

Unarmed transport and extractor designs serve different jobs from armed combat designs. Adding cargo/extractor modules to an armed design makes it a raider with different capacity tradeoffs; do not assume it carries as much as the comparable civilian design. The role badge and actual preview help you compare it. Only extractor-equipped ships can be selected together for a debris extraction fleet.

Manage saved blueprints

Active cards link to Edit blueprint and Upgrade blueprint. Edit shows built/lost/scrapped totals and the locations of existing copies; renaming costs the displayed G.E.L.D. amount. It is not a free component-redesign form.

Upgrade lets you choose a new component configuration together with a higher Mark, spending the displayed Combat Data Points. Marks run through I, II and III and cannot be lowered. The current upgrade action requires advancing the Mark; saving component-only changes at the same Mark is not supported. Existing ships referencing the blueprint use its updated design, so review the change before applying it rather than assuming it affects only future builds.

Retire moves a blueprint out of the active set, and Reactivate in Archive restores it if a slot is free. Retirement does not scrap existing ships. However, the composer and new shipyard orders list active designs, so reactivate a retired design when you need to dispatch its local copies or build more.

Build physical ships in the Shipyard

1. Select the colony where the ships should be built. It needs Planetary Shipyard level 1 or higher. The building has no catalog prerequisites, but construction and ship orders still need the local resources.
2. Open Shipyard and choose an active ship blueprint. Inspect the design's costs, build duration, locally available count and maximum affordable quantity.
3. Enter the quantity and submit the build order. The entire order's Aslit, Crlit, Iopla and SEM cost is checked and deducted from that colony when queued. Saving a blueprint elsewhere does not transfer resources to this colony.
4. Follow the production queue. Current capacity is 10 active orders per colony. Orders run in sequence; completed units are added to that colony as production advances, so a batch need not finish before its first completed ship exists.
5. Return to Fleet Operations when ships are available. Choose the same colony as the origin and assign the quantities you want to send. A design in the blueprint list with no completed local ships cannot be dispatched.

Chassis classes C0–C2 are built at the Planetary Shipyard. Classes C3–C6 also require an Orbital Shipyard on the colony, and each Orbital Shipyard level shortens their construction time by 10%; for these chassis only the Orbital Shipyard level counts. Higher shipyard levels and relevant Robot Assembly infrastructure affect build duration for the others; inspect the time shown for the current colony rather than assuming the prototype's construction time is the final queue duration.

Cancellation, retrofit and scrapping

Cancelling an ordinary ship order applies the refund shown in-game. Current settings refund 80% for waiting orders and 60% of the unproduced portion of the current order. Already completed ships stay built. Cancelling is not a full resource refund, and an order that has completed cannot be cancelled.

Shipyard also provides Retrofit and Scrapyard. Retrofit converts eligible existing ships into another eligible active design, requires Retrofit research and the supported matching tier-zero chassis, charges resource differences and takes queue time. A retrofit order cannot be cancelled. It is a separate operation from upgrading the shared blueprint's Mark.

Scrapyard removes selected locally available ships for the displayed resource return and charges G.E.L.D.; inspect both figures before confirming. Ships away on a mission are not local stock available for scrapping or assigning to a second fleet.

Compose and launch a fleet · Assembly section reference · Shipyard section reference · Back to the wiki home

Resource references: Aslit · Crlit · Iopla · SEM · G.E.L.D. · Resource overview