Master of Orion/Warship design

The first important thing to note when designing a warship is what your race's built in strengths and weaknesses are and what your research strengths and weaknesses are.

Racial advantages

 * Mrrshan = Targeting computer acts as if it were 4 Mark levels higher. Galactic experts in weaponry, will likely have better weapons than other races.
 * Alkari = Combat maneuverability acts as if it were 3 levels higher for the purposes of dodging enemy attacks, doesn't make you move additional spaces in the grid. Galactic experts in Propulsion  which allows them to develop better engines faster and move faster in and out of combat and to move farther out of it.
 * Humans = Galactic experts in Force Field technology, will likely have better shields than other races. Good rating research in the Propulsion field as well.
 * Klackon = Galactic experts in construction. Will likely have more space available for ship systems than other races.
 * Psilon = Huge bonus to research in every field, will have access to the newest systems before even the galactic expert races have that access in their best fields.
 * Meklar = Galactic experts in Computers technology, will likely have top of the line targeting computers and ECM systems.
 * Bulrathi = Good in both Construction and Weapons technology. May have slightly better systems than normal in these categories.
 * Darlok = Good rating in Computers research. Will very likely have better targeting and ECM systems.  Players of this race will probably overweight Computers research against the other fields and this combined with the good research rating should keep them ahead of most races in the field.
 * Silicoid = Also has a rating of good in Computers research. Like the Darloks, the Silicoids are likely to overweight Computers because their spending is most effective in this category.  Spying can be important in a lot of Silicoid strategies and because of that they will need the best Computers at all times.

Racial Drawbacks

 * Mrrshan = Poor in Construction research. Will likely have less space available on ships for systems.
 * Alkari = Poor in Force Fields research. Will likely have worse shielding than the other races.
 * Klackon = Poor in Propulsion research. Will likely have ships that are slower than the other races both in and out of combat.  Their ships will likely be hit more than the other race's ships as well.
 * Bulrathi = Poor in Computers research. Will likely have worse targeting computers and ECM systems than the opponents will.
 * Silicoid = Poor in everything except Computers research. Will have less space on ships, weaker force fields, slower ships that get hit more often, and worse weapons most likely.

Note: All of the above assumes that research spending in the very beginning of the game will be heavier than usual in Propulsion and Planetology to allow for rapid colonization of planets and then it will shift quickly to being equal in every category OR whatever else is specifically stated.

The above does not assume that the players try to spend extra in their weak categories or less in their good categories, in general, to even everything out.

Spending more where you are weak and less where you are strong results in helping your weaker categories stay up in exchange for getting rid of what advantages you do have. It also tends to result in you just having flat out less research points spent than you would otherwise have. Having just plain less tech for the same research points is a gamble you should consider seriously before undertaking.

The numbers: assuming 100 RP spent on a good field and a poor field 100 X 1.2 + 100 x 0.8 = 120 + 80 = 200. assuming enough spent on poor field to get 100 RP, the rest in the good field 125 x 0.8 + 75 x 1.2 = 190 Difference = 190 / 200 = 5%

The difference between the two sets of numbers is a whole 5% in total research spending across both categories. It may not sound like much, but there is a difference there and on the advanced difficulty settings you need every bit of edge you can get.

The Combined Situation
Some of the races have disadvantages that just erase what advantages they have.

The Mrrshans have less space on the ship with which to put their advanced weaponry, so their damage advantage from having better weapons is decreased. Note that they also don't have a spending advantage on Computers, so their +4 in targeting will likely be passed by the Darloks, Silicoids, Meklars, and Psilons as the game progresses.

The Alkaris have better dodge from being Propulsion experts and their racial ability, but they are poor in Force Fields so when they do get hit it will often be a lot harder than it otherwise would have been, erasing some of their survivability advantage.

The Bulrathis have poor computers which will negate some of the advantage of having more space on their ships and better weapons due to good research ratings in those categories.

The Silicoids, as mentioned before, have poor in every category except computers. This offsets their advantage in computers by a lot, or perhaps better said their advantage in Computers doesn't do much to help them make up for being bad in every other category.

The Klackons have an expert rating in Construction which gives them more space on the ships, but ship engines take up so much space that their Propulsion difficulties will erase a lot of the advantage of the extra space.

Random Luck
Most of the research items in the game fall under "randomly generated" techs. The vast majority are not guaranteed. If you randomly pull nearly no targeting computers in your randomly generated tech tree, this will remove any/all advantages in Computers research that you have, even if your race "should" be good in that field.

You can also get really good luck, say by having most of the low level ECM computers not in your tech tree and having more targeting computers in general. The earlier ones take up a lot of space for the benefits they provide and are often ignored largely for the early part of the game (except by the Alkaris). This can make you effectively "good" in a field that you would otherwise not be good in.

The difference between having and not having Class 5 Planetary Shields in your tech tree can make you seem like ultra-experts if you compare yourself with 7 - 8 absorption on missile bases against someone who doesn't have the tech and only has 2 - 3 absorption on their missile bases.

Proceeding
Once you have taken stock of your strengths and weaknesses, it is time to think about how to construct your warship.

Note: Sirian and some other Master of Orion pros also very heavily factor in the opponent's level of technology when constructing their warships as well. The advantages and disadvantage of this are discussed elsewhere and will not be re-iterated here.

Generally speaking, the number one goal is to have your ships be as survivable as possible. Generally speaking, the number two goal is to have your ships do as much damage to the enemy as possible.

Killing 3 enemy ships and losing 2 yourself is playable, killing 2 enemy ships and losing 1 yourself is better, killing 1 enemy ship and losing 0 yourself is the best you can do.

An offense can be a good defense and a good defense can be a good offense. If their full force can't even kill one of your ships, they can never defeat your fleet. If you kill all their ships and bases before they even get a turn, it doesn't matter if there are no shields whatsoever on your ships.

Ship Defense
Generally speaking, for most of the game you will probably have so little space available on your ships that if you put your best shields and your best engine/maneuverability setup on your ships that you possibly can, there will not be a whole lot of space left over for anything else.

You will probably have to choose which side to err on for this reason. Note also here that some of your hand may be forced as well. You often want to travel as fast as possible on the galaxy map, so you might be forced to take the best possible engine even if you can't take advantage of that with in-combat maneuverability ratings due to the lack of space available on your ship. This problem is incredibly acute at the beginning part of the game and into the middle of the game, but disappears almost completely at the end.

It is entirely possible that it is a good idea to have a warp 9 engine for galactic travel, and only put a maneuverability of 4 for in combat. Some pros find this preferable to, say, putting a warp 6 engine on the ship and a maneuverability 6 rating for in combat.

Once you have decided how fast you want the ship to move on the galactic map (specified a warp engine rating) everything else is an in-combat concern.

Given what was mentioned before, defense is probably where you want to start first.

Every increase in the class of your ship's shields WILL result in taking less damage in combat, that is guaranteed.

Every increase in the combat maneuverability of your ship will PROBABLY result in you being missed 10% more often by the enemy. This is not guaranteed. If the enemies outstrip you technologically increasing your maneuverability could gain you nothing at all.

Against low damage weapons, the shield class will always be better. If their best tech is Gatling laser (4 x shots of 1 - 4 damage) if you have a Class IV Deflector Shield on your ships it doesn't matter if you have the worst maneuverability rating. They could hit with every shot and still do a grand total of 0 damage.

If you are using Class 4 shields and the opponent is using either Fusion Beam or Heavy Mounted Fusion Beam technology (4 - 16 damage or 4 - 30 damage, respectively) then you might get a lot more out of adding a couple levels of maneuverability (to give yourself, say 30% more chance to dodge) than if you gave yourself a 3 level higher deflector shield.

There are no hard and fast rules here, but it helps to have general guidelines.

Some of those might be
 * If you are rated higher at either Force Fields or Propulsion than the other category, you might want to consider overweighting the one you are better at. This applies to Alkari, Human, and Klackon.
 * You might want to decide how much space you want to reserve for defensive systems out of the in-combat portion and then try to divide it half and half between shields and maneuverability.
 * Low levels of ECM that can be gotten for really cheap can be worthwhile if the next step up in maneuverability costs a lot.
 * It is better to err on the side of increasing the maneuverability to an even number (gains you an additional square of combat movement) and err away from increasing maneuverability to an odd number (doesn't give you any more squares of movement in combat), even though both give you an additional 10% to dodge.
 * Some pros default to putting the max deflector on every ship always and deciding on maneuverability based on how much space they want to leave for weapons.
 * If you can't be hurt by the enemy weapons, you only need 1 or 2 decent weapons to come out ahead in space combat

Ship Offense
Once you have gotten a defensive setup you can live with, then it is time to equip a ship with offensive systems.

Generally speaking, you want weapons that have as high of an average damage as you can get for a good cost. The best weapon is not always going to be the newest one. Generally, newer is better, but each weapon must be examined based on its individual merits.

To equip a ship well, there are a few things you need to know about the way ships engage each other and the rules for their engagement.

First of all, a single attack can only kill a single ship.

"Streaming" weapons can break this rule. The Tachyon Beam and the Graviton Beam are the two streaming weapons in the game and they are both arguably very weak weapons. The shields of the defender are applied for each ship, and the minimum damage for both of these weapons is 1. The best you can really hope to do with these weapons is to kill about 3 ships per shot which doesn't make them any better than a regular weapon that attacks 3 times per turn. Most of the time, they will probably turn out a lot worse. Another thing to note is that tiny ships, what these are designed to counter are more likely to dodge the shot entirely and that tiny ships are usually not that large of threats anyway because they usually don't have enough space for weapons that they can load up stuff that is damaging enough to get through YOUR shields.

Nobody will fault you for pretending like "streaming" weapons don't exist and skipping researching them if you can.

Because of the first rule and because of the weakness of streaming weapons at doing what they are even supposed to do, it is generally a good idea to try to increase the number of shots you can do when possible.

That takes us to auto-fire weaponry. There are a class of weapons that each shoot 3 or 4 times per turn per weapon. 10 of these weapons can generate 30 or 40 attacks in a single turn if there are enough enemy ships for them to attack.

These weapons, by their nature are highly susceptible to higher level deflector shields.

The weapon Auto Blaster does 3 shots of 4 - 16 damage. You can probably equip your ship with a Heavy Mounted Fusion Beam for about the same space as an Auto Blaster which is 4 - 30 damage (and it has a 2 space range).

The average damage of an auto-blaster shot, assuming they all hit, would be 3 hits of 10 damage. The average damage of a Heavy Fusion shot would be one hit of 17.

If the enemy had no shields, the Auto Blaster would do 30 and the Heavy Fusion would do 17. With Class 1 shields, the Auto Blaster would do 27 and the Heavy Fusion 16. With Class 2 shields, the Auto Blaster would do 24 and the Heavy Fusion 15. With Class 3 shields, the Auto Blaster would do 21 and the Heavy Fusion 14. . With Class 7 shields, the Auto Blaster would do 9 and the Heavy Fusion 10. With Class 11 shields, the Auto Blaster would do 0 and the Heavy Fusion 6.

With Class 15 shields, the Heavy Fusion would still have the potential to do as much as 15 damage with a hit and the Auto Blaster would at best do 1 damage on a single hit.

High level targeting computers make weapons hit for higher damage and hit more often, and if you are hitting on the higher end of a range, generally you want the range to be as wide as possible. Auto-fire weapons tend to have much smaller damage ranges and scoring on the upper end of the range gains you a whole lot less with each hit than with wide range weapons.

After all that, you might think that auto-fire weapons are the suck. The Gauss Autocannon is quite possibly the best weapon in the game and it is one of the highest level multi-shot weapons.

The reason that they are good is because the opponents usually don't have enough shields to obsolete the weapons at the stage you research them and because they do so much damage (smaller chunks more often) that they usually rip the enemy ships to shreds very quickly when you are talking about the Auto Blaster and the Gauss Autocannon (arguably the 2 best in the auto-fire line up).

It is usually good to include at least a few of either of these on your ships if you have them researched due to their destructive potential and especially so if you have the High Energy Focus technology researched. If you do have High Energy Focus, it is not a bad idea to put as much as 75% of your ship's offense into these weapons, they are that good. The reason that isn't 100% is because its usually good to put something on a ship that has the ability to penetrate missile base shields for damage (usually multiple copies of the best available bomb, sometimes a missile or torpedo). The Auto Blaster and Gauss Autocannon are really good, but usually not good enough to penetrate planetary shields. That is their worst weakness, if there is one.

One important thing to note, at this point, is how weapon attacks apply to defending ships. There are some rules that are useful to note here:

Every weapon of the same type will fire one shot all at the same time against whatever stack of ships is targeted.

If you have a ship with 40 Heavy Fusion Beams and you tell the ship to fire at a stack of 4 small ships, it will fire all 40 shots at that stack of 4.

The auto-fire weapons are fired in stages. The first shot of the auto-fire weapons all goes off at the same time. If that first shot of each weapon kills the whole enemy stack, you can target a different enemy stack with the next round. If it doesn't kill the whole stack, the next stage must be entirely fired at the same stack that was already targeted.

The potential of auto-fire weapons is then to kill up to 4 stacks of enemy ships with the same set of weapons.

Note also, it is possible to equip your ship with multiple instances of the same weapon. You can put 4 separate instances of one of a single weapon rather than 1 stack of 4 of the same weapon on the same ship.

As long as you have extra space for different types of weapons, there is no good reason not to use them in this way. It can only help you waste less shots after you kill stacks of enemy ships. This strategy does have the drawback of drastically limiting your slots for different weapon types, though. If you fill up all the slots like this, there is no space for a different type of weapon.

Generally, you should always try to use up free slots like this, but never try to do this until you are sure you have a free slot to begin with.

Another important type of weapon is the "shield piercing" weapon. These weapons have the built in advantage that they half the value of the defender's shields before they calculate damage.

The Mass Driver does 5 - 8 damage and halves the value of the enemy's shields. This is rounded down, so the weapon gets an additional small advantage when it is fired at a target with an odd shield value rather than even. This accounts for about 2/3 of the available possible shielding numbers.

These weapons are good because they tend to have really good damage once the halving of the shield is factored in. They tend to have small damage ranges and that gives them high minimum damage when they do hit.

If shields are often worth defaulting to max, it is probably also worth halving their value pretty often before calculating damage.

Note that the Gauss Autocannon is the only weapon that both halves the enemy's shields AND has auto-fire capability. It also has a highish damage range of 7 - 10. The combination of both of these items in a weapon that will still damage ships that have the highest shielding is potentially very powerful and makes this one of the top 2 or 3 weapons in the game (if not the top 1) no matter who you are.