Birth of the Empires

When ships are designed, some ship chasis have different slots and so a transport has no space for weaponry. Thus one can't make a transport that can act like a freighter that can defend itself and do double duty by hauling troops and or resources.

But you should create such a freighter.

Ships have a number of Defenses and Offensive capability and it is not always more is better but a function of things like the kind of torpedo tubes and firing rate and charging rate of beam weapons.

There are multiple kinds of hulls and double hulls. There are types of armor. There are special weapons which effectively take out the engines.
These topics are found in the German wiki in the a-z topics and you pull all that stuff together to design ships.

Your manual should do this coincisely and not spoon feed them. Leave some of it mysterious so the smart ones spend the time to go through it all. It's complex. Explain it and their eyes glaze over, then they wish they had listened. They have to make it a priority to understand and take ten hours trying to comprehend it well enough to use the ship designer.

viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7300
I tried to demystify the process here for the players' use.

So it really helps the rest of players who are not tacticians and engineers, when you make better ships on advanced levels, so they have more choices and wise ones your configured.q

90% won't use the ship designer, but make what you configured.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... title=Beam
This explains the angle of the beam weapons and types.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... le=Torpedo
Similarly this explains torpedos. They are various complex and special torpedoes have various tactical use and so in a fleet you would want a varierty of torpedoes to best take out multiple enemies and not have everyone fire the same kinds.

Ablative armor
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... _Panzerung

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... ierbarkeit
Manueverability is a function of the preset chasis hulls of the major and minor races' technology.

If you preset these by advanced tech and designated ship designs, then it's one less thing the players have to do.

Double hulls and how they affect manueverability.
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... oppelhülle

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... ve_Schilde
Regenerative shields

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... -Erfahrung
Certain homesectors and colonies have infrastructure which can be built which trains the ships. The crew gain experience per turn they it there as if they do manuevers and drills to enhance their calm cool collected disciplined response while the whole place in under fire and their team is taking serious damage and having hull breaches and people sucked into space.

The maximum is 10,000 points and then they should move and have staging areas and create fleets of the most experienced ones acting as flagships especially with the command function. And that flagship is probably a dreadnought. And some are poorly configured with short range which makes no sense in late turns

That page is important as it has offense type attributes and ship type on there as designators.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... schlachten
The protocol of battle order and resolution and chance of a victorious outcome is on this page.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... er_Systeme
Space combat, bombardment, transport to surface, ground invasion.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... laggschiff
What is a flagship and why is it important. If you lose one, you pay a strong moral penalty as you are incompetent.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... larisation
Hull polarization.
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1227&p=17561&hilit ... ion#p17561

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... fsaufgaben
What are the functions of the various ship types?

.2 Assault ship (ship Assault) (1)
3 Blockade ship (2)
4th Command ship (3)
5 Combat Tractorbeam (4)
6 Melee Ship (Dogfighter) (5)
7th Anti-Melee Ship (Dogkiller ship) (6)
8th Patrol boat (Patrol ship) (7)
9 Corsair (8)
10 Research vessel (Science ship) (9)

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... le=Schilde
The operating characteristics and functions of shields

Take note of what stellar anomalies do regarding shields functioning.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... tle=Tarnen
Cloaking types

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... iffsdesign
Ship design

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... aumschiffe
A general overview of ship attributes and functions