"The temptation for an anti-flak essay has been huge but I prevailed" proud of you XD and yes that was an oversight on my part. probably due to my battleship-mentality to either outlast the enemy or reduce him to atoms before he gets close. But i also think that this strategy leaves little room for error, no? plus both shields and a bunch of engines scream "power issues" in my head. If you want to elaborate on that strategy further, i can pin this conversation so that others can see how to make the manouverability type work. like reccomended weapons, shipsize/form, maybe even examples from videos that you have seen from other people (you have my permission to post other peoples stuff in my comments. its for education, so i wont complain+ you have been a reliable source of information so i trust you to teach people correct things).

@@captaincaffeine First of all, thanks a lot for trusting me, it truly means a lot, your videos are truly phenomenal for both beginners and relatively advanced players. Secondly... Very well. The most basic type of ''survivability through maneuverability'' kind of ship is an avoider wall... Which after talking about it I honestly get why you'd not include them in a video going about fairly basic strategies. It mostly requires a lot of extensive direct control piloting and would not be compatible for career battles if you had more than one big ship, but it's still a really cool ship type that you can very freely use in Career but especially excels in player versus player combat. It is definitely a strategy that needs not to be underestimated, as with some basic maneuvers you can dominate. First of all, you can use your superior strafing and maneuverability to: 1. Very reliably dodge nukes and even DC shots. 2. Disengage at will. 3. Flank the enemy. 4. Use diagonal movement (Which is another advantage of avoider thrust/maneuverability-based ships) to both dodge and flank at the same time. 5. Tilt and/or slightly rotate your ship to spread enemy damage across your entire hull. About the shield part, maneuverability-based builds use a lot of usually small shields to very reliably spread damage across their entire hull and take no scratches on the hull as shields do all the work. This is especially effective against enemies with very little burst damage, *especially* ion beams, _even the big ones._ All this can be done at a relatively little cost if you know optimization well and can be accessed mid-game. Whilst against AI this won't be that game-changing as simple ram/kite can already easily and reliably best Cosmoteer's AI, but maybe it can become good after some substantial AI updates, which are on a pretty high priority on the official Roadmap store.steampowered.com/news/app/799600/view/3391799364882219760 _[First phase is meant to cover many AI changes as well. Not explicitly written in there, but the ''Career 2.0 takes in AI updates as well.'' Things such as enemy calling backup when kiting (Either from your back, or simply a backup of very fast ships that can catch up to you, to deter you from kiting and create a lot of trouble), enemies themselves flanking you and the such have been theorized and even confirmed by Walt himself as answers of several questions],_ and even if not, it's either a fun challenge to pose to yourself that can be brutally effective if done properly, or, yes indeed, can especially excel against other players, if you wish to get into the very competitively charged but mostly friendly and really fun PvP part of the game.

[God damn.. My original comment about links and recommendations got lost while I was typing in >:c. Whatever, will redo] Anyways... Recommendations: The most standard weapons for typical Avoider walls/strafers (Yeah, the more obscure and less used maneuverability-based build is something called ''a strafer.'' Wastes less on forwards and backwards thrust and goes *ALL IN* on strafe thrust) are: Heavy blasters, nukes (You can use avoider maneuvers to line up nukes into absolutely DEVASTATING volleys) and small or large (Larges are way rarer as their increased inaccuracy makes them unfavorable for these elegant movement-focused ships) cannons, but the more obscure solutions can work too, such as ions, Deck Cannons (They have awful projectile stats aside from damage, like their terrible range, inaccuracy and velocity, but you can use avoider movement to line them up, make them fling to a specific direction unaware to the enemy and/or give them your own momentum for increased range and velocity), short acceleratorless rails and even missiles, allowing you to use the asteroids as a tactical advantage, strafe-orbiting around them and flinging missiles from there. All that, maybe even wacky combinations of few of those weapons, together with the optional complementary of point defence (Or maybe even ✨FLAK✨), disruptors, maybe even EMPs and large shields on top of the small ones, allow for insane variety and versatility to the typically less-regarded and overshadowed strategic archetype of maneuverability-based builds, so go crazy :'>...

...As for shape, the most standard shape for a maneuverability ship is a long brick-shaped wall, relatively light, heavily focused on shielding and sometimes incredibly elegant and pretty. There are two ways to build an avoider [Which is once again, the most standard form of a maneuverability-based ship] in my eyes: The more basic and widespread, more compact but less cost-efficient way is to have large reactors on the front to power all the shields (And blasters+ disruptors if you go for the most standard armament), typically three and thruster modules powered by medium reactors on the bottom, typically also three. Usually one medium powers 4 Engine Room arrays. Engine clusters are cramped very closely to each other and they all use smaller thrusters to minimalize ramp-up time and allow for truly impressive maneuverability. The rarer, more advanced and harder to build, less compact but WAAAY more cost-efficient way is to have only 3-4 large reactors that are used to power EVERYTHING. The logistics can get hellish and doing this kind of build properly can be a huge pain, but once made, you not only benefit from more cost-to-power ration, but also way less explosivity hazard on the back, whilst also being less frail. Of course in career reactor cost is negatable so it's still probably better to go for the first type as with cost taken out of equation, it's better. Plus, I'm talking about avoiders that are priced from ~1.5mil to 2mil credits, there's literally nothing stopping you from making ones way larger, more expensive and powerful than those in Career, as the large-medium reactor avoiders [Both the weaponry and engine parts of them] are very, very modular and can easily stack like Lego pieces, which is yet another benefit of the first type of avoiders in Career.

@@NickAndriadze its worth keeping in mind most pvp ships are not good for career because the win condition is different, also people who build career ships usually ONLY build ships in the 1.5mil range and honestly has no clue how to build when on a budget, especially not when on a crew budget, which tends to be the case for career. in pvp if you win, you win. so all you have to do is win. in career a win is only a win if you took minimal damage. if you won but took substantial damage, or even worse lost a lot of crew, then you lost. therefore overwhelming defensive abilities or overwhelmingly lame playstyles (only ion beams and railfans so you never even get into a fight to begin with) dominates career. you must kill the enemy with minimal damage. you either cheese with very long range weapons or very easily scalable damage weapons or you need an absurdist approach to defense.

I have also thought on the offensive capabilities of using ram ships with demolition charges at the front lol but never quite tried that yet

ridiculously cost ineffective, but explosive charges + suicide booster ram large reactor was fun (basically overpriced nukes that PDC’s can’t really take out as easily)

I remember seeing someone doing that with explosive charge+large reactor on reddit

Oneye makes yet another good point. PD are very non-powerhungry when paired up with energy storage. One battery from a large reactor every once in a blue moon would be enough to keep it constantly blocking most things... Unless you want to be protected against cannon and HE spam in which case you'll need slightly more than that.

I’ve got to say that the campaign really punishes you for specialisation. I was having a grand old time with my 1 combat ship + 1 logistics ship. That was until I met a missle boat that was vastly faster than me. It barely did damage but after chasing it through half the galaxy I simply couldn’t catch up and died. Nor could I run away. The only thing preventing me from needing to grind in the astroid belt for an hour or two to regain my resources in my tendency to make secundary and tertiary backups. I eventually designed a second combat ship and won the fight trivially easy. But the potential to lose nearly all my progress because I specialised in a brawler made me really salty

And then we accidentally kite our way into another enemy ship and oups a single shot to the butt annihilates the entire thing. :P

Modular ship design so that even if you get hit by them, you won't lose the battle immediately and given the long reload time for railguns, you've a good window of opportunity to seize that victory. Another option is heavily armored from, with armor weaving of course. In a case like this, you're really limited on weapon choice though. Only missles and top mounted weapons will be effective as side mounted weapons just don't have the necessary angle or dmg at that point

its something that i made myself.

Noted. Maybe a guide about agility and movement in general. Might go well with crewmanagement and logistic. Basicly 3 videos about everything that isnt directly linked to combat. I also found a comment and a redditpost about sundivers, so maybe i even channel my inner capitalist for a moneyprinting factory ship. Thankfully this game still has lots of content to offer.

Each with particular sets of weapons.

Im interested. I designed and uploaded my own star divers to the workshop so im kind of curious if there's a way to improve them even further :P