Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander – Starter Guide (+ Advance Guide)

Lets start from the simple thing “weapons”.

Weapons

Lazers

This is the most basic weapon in the game and right now it is out of meta. If u dont understand what out of meta means, its a way to say the weapon is weak. The lazer needs too much energy to run and the more reactors you have the ship will be more”volatile”.

So the lazer can be used as a great secondary weapon system but not as the main damage source of the ship.

Standard Cannon

Cannon 1

The standard cannon has pros and cons

  • Pros: high dps (damage per second), doesnt use alot of ammo, doesnt use alot of energy, but can penetrate blocks.
  • Cons: volatile, needs ammo to shoot, takes more space than the lazer.

The standard cannon has a shorter range than the large cannon and lower damage but needs much less ammo to shoot, In fact you can run 2 standard cannons on 1 ammo factory and they will keep shooting.

Standard cannons can be used as the ships main dmg source but they are weak against shields. Standard cannons explode when destroyed.

Large Cannon

Cannon 2

The large cannon is alot like the standard cannon, needs ammo to shoot, but unlike the standard cannon, the large cannon needs alot more ammo, about 1.5 ammo factory per large cannon, the large cannon is a high damage – slow shooter type of weapon, while not shooting alot, every shoot will do high damage and can penetrate a few layers.

The large cannon has a long range and will usually start shooting before the other weapons, but the large cannon shells are slow and will take some time to get to their taget. Large cannons explode when destroyed.

Electro Bolt

Electro bolt, or in short eb, is a fast shooting energy weapon with a high speed electro bolts called shots that drain energy from the part that has been hit. Eb are also the only weapons that can go through shields and while doing so will drain their energy. But electro bolt needs alot of energy to operate and will run out of power pretty fast. Eb are useful against ion beams, shields, lazers, thrusters, pd and other eb. Eb are used as a support weapons for the main damage source, disabling the shields and draining energy where ever they hit.

Ion Beams

The ion beam is a high damage beam that needs a ton of energy to run, usually when you use ion beams you should add some power storages behind them. Ion beams are the only weapons in the game that have no travel time, and that means if you aim at it, it takes damage instantaneously without a delay. Ion beams have a unique way to defend them by adding armor triangles in front of them like shown in the picture. this makes the ion beams much harder to attack while not disturb their damage, adding shields to this method is recommended.

Missile Launcher

Rockets

Missile launchers or in short rockets have the highest dps of all weapons in the game but can be countered by point defense systems, this unique mechanic allows ships to shoot down rockets that have been fired. Rockets are also the most expensive weapons om the vanilla game, and need missile factories to shoot. Both the missile factory and the missile launcher explode when destroyed. Rockets are used mainly for kiters, ships that fly backwards while shooting at their enemy. this method is hated by the community for its lack of hard counter meathods.

And now after we have covered all the weapons, lets talk about basic building.

First rule for building ships is reactor placement, reactors explode when destroyed much like rockets and cannons, unlike those, the reactor’s explosions have a bigger radius. When putting reactors in your ship, there are two main things to keep in mind, first, dont put them close to each otherin order to avoid chain reactions.

Second, how far they are from where the energy needs to be, the crew takes time walking from a place to another bringing energy and u want to minimize that travel time by putting reactors closer to where the energy needs to go, careful though because you might put them too close to the outter hull of the ship where they can get hit by the enemy weapons and explode. Also something i see alot of people doing is bringing the energy bar beyond the green line, this will make your ship cost more and be more explosive for no reason at all, it is way better to have the bar in between the red line and the green line.

Next up, defense parts…

Defense

Shields, they can block dmg and are the most over powerd block in the game, not to say they are unfair but because the game is balanced around having them, not having them in your ship makes it underpreform any other ship of the same price that has shields, when using shields keep in mind you will need a lot of energy so dont just spam them. I like adding power storages behind the shields for more energy coverage.

Armor, it has x4 times the hp of the normal corridor and cannons can not penetrate it. use armor as much as you can in your ships to block damage from spreading and to face tank some shots. I like to add armor around reactors, factories and command rooms.

Shields and Armor

Fire Exinguishers and Doors

These two are very important and no ship is complete with out them. Doors are the only way for crew to go into weapons, shields, thursters, control rooms and pd, but having too many doors will place your ship at a risk! Beacuse fire can only spread through doors, a common method to avoid this is to have modules in your ship and to not connect them with doors (modules are self sustaining parts including in them: crew, fire extinguishers and reactors).

Fire extinguishers or as most people call them fe are the only way to put out a fire. When the fires start the crew will run to the closest fe and take it with them to the fire. Therefore u should put the fe close to places you dont want to be on fire so the crew will take less time to bring them (putting them by control rooms, reactors and factories is recommeded). Fe can only be accessed from one side, so 3 sides are unaccessable so be careful when placing them and make sure u didnt block anything important.

Point Defense

Point defense or also known as pd can shoot down missiles while in space. Pd are very important for every ship because missiles are a very commonly used weapon. The only problem that comes to my mind right now when using pd is that you must place them in the outer layer of the ship, and that means you cant place armor where you had placed the pd, this can make your ship more vulnerable to non missile type weapons.

Now lets talk about thrusters, storages and crew rooms….

Thrusters, Storages and Crew Rooms

Thrusters

some might think thrusters are not the only part the can move your ship, they are the most efficient. There are two main methods to place thrusters: the first one is placing them at the outer layer of the ship. This method makes the thrusters more vulnerable to enemy attacks but will have an easier time turning the ship. The second method to placing thrusters is to place them inside the ship this will make the thrusters much harder to hit but it might have a harder time turning the ship (depends on the location) and this method takes up much more space then method 1. When placing thrusters, always keep in mind that you must place thrusters facing at least two directions. ships with only thrusters facing backwards will be very hard to control while fighting and flying.

Storage

There are two kind of storages:

  • Ammo storage and Missile storage are one kind an should not be used! They are the most underpowerd block in the game (while writing this).
  • The kind of storage u should use is energy storage unlike ammo and missiles storages this block is one of the most useful blocks in game. this block allows you to use the fast energy consuming parts more reliably (such as ion beams and shields) for example i would recommend placing 1-3 energy storage to the side of every shield and/or ion beam and placing 1 energy storage for every 3-4 big thrusters.

Crew

I dont have much to say about the crew part except for, place them close to where u want the crew to be most active at but always keep a path for the crew to walk through, beacuse crew walk slowly when passing each other or through modules.

Unique Parts

Unique parts are structure blocks and sensors. Structure blocks can be use to reduce the cost of the ship if used to connect parts. Sensors are used to extend the detection range farther the ships default range.

Helena Stamatina
About Helena Stamatina 1541 Articles
I love two things in life, games and sports. Although sports were my earliest interest, it was video games that got me completely addicted (in a good way). My first game was Crash Bandicoot (PS1) from the legendary studio Naughty Dog back in 1996. I turned my passion for gaming into a job back in 2019 when I transformed my geek blog (Re-actor) into the gaming website it is today.

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