How to Approach Hull Design

More about Hull Design

Playing Stars!

Develop a strategy for deciding when to create a new design. If you create a new design every time you successfully research a new piece of technology, chances are you'll have too many ships of similar design out in space at the same time. Try to leave room for at least one additional design, so that you can create a new design quickly without first deleting an existing design. You could also create a new design for an existing class of ship, such as a colonizer, when the existing design has outlived its usefulness.

Example Obsolescence Strategy
If you colonize everything within the reasonable range of your current colonizers, you may want to delete the old design and replace it with a new one.

Spend time in the Technology Browser (press F2) learning about the ship technology you think you'll want to research. Take ship design into account when you plan your research strategies. If possible, design new ships only when you gain the technology you need to make a significant advance over older designs.

Once you're ready to build, follow the steps for using the Ship Designer dialog:

Designing a New Hull from Scratch

Editing an Existing Hull Design