Airmen: Meta, the advanced shipbuilding guide

Compared to other games of the same genre, shipbuilding in Airmen follows its own flow, with aesthetics and functionality not always going hand in hand.

To make this as easy as possible, you should consider what your final product should be based on some general guidelines.

Starting with:

With light ships being good interceptors, usually using their nimbleness and speed to outmaneuver enemy ships and taking advantage of weak and blind spots in close quarter combat or, keeping maximum range and buffed manned cannon precision to snipe out components and avoid easy targeting.

Medium ships are the game meta and fall within the attack category and will represent the majority of the combat vessels encountered.
Their moderate nimbleness, higher firepower and increased resilience makes them a popular choice for head on approaches and chases.

Heavy ships are great for area control, with immense firepower and higher resilience between any other ships.
They are a good choice for players looking for a more defensive style of combat. And will usually keep range to maintain full firepower superiority and avoid their blind spots taken advantage of.

SHIP FUNCTION AND LOOK

Selecting balloons is one of the major choices you will have to make when building an airship, this heavily dictating your ship function and shape. Keep an eye on your centre of lift (yellow line) and your centre of mass (blue line) when building, as the latter can only be one meter above the other line before the ship becomes unstable.

Consider also weight and lift distribution and possible battle damage, as losing some ill placed balloons might cause your ship to entirely capsize.

For balloons you can choose between speed, armour, size:

Speed
Airships become slower and unwieldy the higher the mass and drag. Making use of regular balloons will maximise your speed and turning acceleration considerably, at cost of these same being susceptible to damage and very difficult to armour.

Check out each balloons drag coefficient in the build menu, for example the best all round is the large spherical balloon.

There are also three balloons which have built-in ballasts, however only the bigger one provides any kind of benefit due to its high resilience and upward thrust, making it a good choice compared to floatstone as for the same amount of drag and HP, plus the benefit of integrated ballasts.

Armour
These balloons are the perfect choice for a tankier airship, coming equipped with damage reduction and plenty of comfortable attachment points for compartmentalisation or adding extra armouring on top. These unfortunately cause higher drag, slowing down your ship considerably.

Compactness
Float stone has several times the lift of a balloon with only a quarter of the size in most cases.
Making them the perfect choice to streamline down your ship and reduce your part count, make more space for armour or components, or benefitting from the nil buoyancy that allow your airship to also work as a submarine.
These unfortunately come with the highest drag and weight of all balloons, but being the preferred choice for advanced shipbuilding.

Ship weaponry choice and placement will also greatly dictate your ship appearance and function, choose your weapon layout and type accordingly to your selected choices so far:

Fixed weapons
Which are fired directly from the steering wheel, deal much more damage than the other groups, at the cost of not being easy to aim and must move with the entirety of the ship.

They work best on very agile ships both light and heavy, usually paired with a tilt module to help the ship tilt up or down. These leaving though, considerate blind spots both below and on top, being any ship can only tilt so much.

When building a fixed weaponry focused ship, play around with the mass until you reach the limit between stable and unstable, this allows for your ship to be way more still when aiming, and correct roll or tilt with the addition of correctors.

Adjustable weapons
Which are also controlled manually and can be operated from either a gunner steering wheel or a control station, are recommended for heavy vessels, since they can be aimed without turning the entire ship and are generally long range.

These more often will be labelled with {accuracy scaling}, making them less and less accurate the more are placed, and thus unreliable on heavier vessels for consistent damage, but can be counteracted by using more precise or guided weaponry.

Broadsiders
Which are any weapon with the {broadsider firepower reduction}, that allows you to place at reduced firepower cost the same weapons symmetrically left or right.
This applies only for first placement though, meaning you can actually move around your turrets with arrows once they have been placed, still retaining the same reduction even if they are not aligned.

These weapons usually have limited firing arcs, making them more useful on more agile ships, to avoid having your blind spots taken advantage of.
These are great for ship redundancy or slow reloads, allowing you to turn your ship around for continued firing and fresh armour.

Point defence
Which generally encompass single auto turrets and turret deployers, can be used to target engines, propellers, weapons, deployables and crew.

These are a great choice for rounding up your defences against drones and boarders, as well as giving away hidden components or ships.

As standalone these turrets are great for agile vessels that can close the short firing distance quickly, and take advantage of the enemy blind spots. And can be a life savior if your cockpit has been destroyed, or ship is need of vital repairs.

If you opt for rotating weapons, consider where to place them to maximize your usable firepower. There are six common arrangements:

Front gunner: All guns face forward, limited traverse to the sides though

Slanted broadside: Guns are placed diagonally to the center of line, allowing to shoot forward and one side of choice.

Central broadside: Guns on or near the centre line, allowing you to shoot to both sides, but not directly forward or aft

Asymmetric broadside: All guns placed on one side of the ship

Superfiring front gunner: Guns are stacked behind eachother, giving frontal and side weapon reach.

Side Gunner: All weapons are placed sideways to allow frontal, lower and upper firing capabilities, but poor lateral targeting.

Weapons occupy each a certain niche, none excelling at nothing in particular, instead select based on your combat style and preference:

(Only most used weapons have been included, and meanwhile most projectiles will do a mix of PEN and AOE, here is a generalised list)

Penetration:
Penetration type weapons are generally very precise, can be used to snipe off components or punch holes through ships, but they vary in intensity:
Bunker Type 3, Torpedoes, Breach, Lances and Mag Beam

Saturation:
Saturation type weapons are generally not very precise, and they usually shoot very slow projectiles, but are very good for shredding armour.
Bunker Type 1, Rocket Pods, Heavy Cannons, Flak, Behemoth Flak, Batteries, Volley

Regular:
Regular type weapons have average precision, generally with a very high damage output to compensate for the lack of AOE or PEN.
Twin, Quad, Bone, Bunker Type 2, Behemoth Gatling, Needle, Longneck

Point Defence:
Usually auto turrets are best in taking care of drones, boarders and deployed turrets, but there are some exceptions.
Twin cannons are the choice for damaging ships and taking care of deployables.
Needle cannons are the the best for taking care of deployables.
Breach cannons are best for taking care of ships and some deployables.
Volley cannons are best for taking care of ships.

Bunker Type 2, quads, rocket pods and some others have such rapid rate of fire that they can take out incoming deployables with ease.

Compact vs Redundant:
Some turrets contain lots of firepower and are perfect for smaller vessels, with the issue though of easily being lost in battle. Like Bunker turrets, some fixed weapons, rocket pods, batteries.

Meanwhile all broadsiders benefit from an opposite secondary turret, making them perfect for attrition battles.

APATs
To defend your ship against boarders it’s recommended to install Anti-Personnel Auto Turrets (APAT). Their effective shooting range is 10m, but their effective targeting range is 15m, meaning they will start shooting even if they cannot hit you.
Dragoons are impervious to their bullets, making overly exposed APATs easy targets.
APATs are very quick, killing without problems a free-falling airmen before they reach ground, but they cannot hit targets slightly below them, or dead top, consider carefully how you place them.

Harpoons
Harpoons are useful for a myriad of applications, whether you are trying to complete rescue or capture contract, secure the ship to the ground, tow a battle damaged friend or immobilise an enemy ship.

Rams
Rams are of limited use and should not be used as a primary weapon, rather as a redundancy, decorative or protective purpose.
Their damage scales with your top speed and mass, making them more useful to heavier ships.

Pigeon Missiless / Shard Silos

Both of these often neglected weapons can be used to successfully board an enemy vessel by climbing on top during firing. Making these for a faster and almost unshootable substitutes for dragoons.

FIREPOWER
The higher the mass the more the firepower available, although it is recommended to use it to extent. Consider rounding up your firepower with smaller guns, as the lowest firepower weapons will be disabled first if mass dips below firepower during combat.

HARDPOINTS
All ship weapons provide extra hit points to all connected parts equal to one third of the weapon’s hit points. The maximum is 2,000 hp after addition. Thus, balloons and engines do not benefit from this, but hull and helms do.

A building tip is to build your design around your pressure requirements and not vice-versa, keeping enough redundancy to sustain your ship during a fight even with the loss of some engines, with either the addition of wells or extra engines.

As a rule of thumb you can go for:
3000+ for light ships / 5000-6000+ for medium ships / 8000+ for a heavy ship

Large engines have the best pressure per mass, but are unwieldy, work better on balloon ships.

Flask engines have the second best pressure per mass, are slightly more compact and have very good attachment points.

Small and box engines have the worst pressure per mass, but are the most compact, perfect for floatstone ships and can be directly attached to hull.

Although not necessary, if enough pressure wells are employed, your max draw is highly recommended to be well below 100%, sometimes swapping some regular propellers for engine propellers might round up your pressure needs.

But the placement of pressure wells is mandatory for every ship design, they allow for your engines to be overdrawn without losing pressure to your components, especially if you employ autohammers or you want some redundancy during a battle if your engines get damaged.

Keep in mind they will lose pressure quickly when damaged, and will not fill up entirely until repaired. And that a large pressure well holds 400,000 pressure, meanwhile a small one only 40,000.

HOW TO READ THE BLACKBOARD

The blackboard in the build menu comes in hand, showing your total pressure (available from your active engines), your max draw (calculated from your movement and firing consumption), your utility (that encompasses things like autohammers, ballasts, magdrives etc..), your well time (calculated from the amount of pressure wells minus your utility and max draw) and finally your group draws (showing you what each group active on your helm will consume).

Autohammers will extend your combat time and survivability considerably, but must be used correctly as to avoid them turning detrimental.

These repair damaged parts up to four parts away from themselves, repairing only one component per time, which starts the part repair cooldown. Making the addition of more autohammers for the same ship section not always beneficiary.

Consumption

Each auto hammer consumes 200 pressure when active but not repairing, this increasing to 800 when actively repairing. In perspective, 10 autohammers will deplete a large well within 48 seconds.

This risking to overdraw your engines if you consume your pressure wells too quickly, working against you especially if not placed in their own action group.

Consider they hold up to 40 scrap pieces, which they consume at a rate of one per two seconds, meaning they will likely run out within 80 seconds of an engagement if not refilled. But this being viable or useful only if accompained by crew, as they take time to reload. A good tip is to always keep a scrap frame close to your autohammers.

Placement

By mounting them onto parts with lots of connections, you can minimise the number of auto hammers necessary, but also waste repairs on non essential components. Controlling autohammer bleed is important to avoid wasting precious repairs during combat

Pieces like rigging, 3×1 hull, 3×2 cargo cages, large synth plates and other long pieces with lots of connection points work in favour of extending your autohammer coverage, but, keeping in mind that all lifting parts consume up to three repair distances, meanwhile beam mounts consume no distance at all.

CREW COMPARTMENTS

Crew compartments are important aspects of your ship where you can spawn safely and equip yourself.

You should consider having the most important tools, like grapplings, hammers and a defence weapon close to most respawn chambers, in form of frames or cabinets, with plenty of spare essentials in different parts of the ship. This turning useful if your ship is tilted in an awkward position due battle damage or there are boarders.

For light vessels two respawn chambers should suffice, but larger ones should come with 6 or more, as they are inexpensive and will be targeted during boarding, or get damaged during combat.

Consider having respawn chambers close or with ease access to your bridge, as this will save you important seconds if you get killed.

BRIDGES

There are three available helms types and at any given time on your vessel, although having a secondary weapon control station can come in handy if they have been disabled.
A lever helm is useful for fine tuned inputs in case your ship has suffered extensive battle damage and great propeller asymmetry occurs, or your ship is heavily weighted down by cargo parcels.

Reading a helm is important, the central large pointer indicating your airspeed, with each marking being 1 m/s.
The smaller pointer in the centre indicates then turn rate, each marking being 4.8 degrees per second. A ship with a turn speed of one would make a full turn in 75 seconds. A turn speed of 12 (one full revolution) would mean a full turn in 6.25 seconds.
The outer pointer shows where the wind incoming direction, this is only relevant for sailing ships.

A good bridge is singlehandedly the most important part of your ship, protecting you and your helm from harm and sabotage.

Most experienced combatants and pirates will aim directly at your bridge, in the hopes to disable the ship with minimal fight or giving them precious seconds to take the upper hand.

It is highly recommended to use all three helms available, possibly in different parts of the ship, with their own autohammer coverage, scrap supply and healing station. Here are some cockpit types you can build:

High HP cockpits

Weapons have high HP and give directly connected parts increased durability, making quite easy to shield your helm with weapons, or, building your cockpit directly connected to one, specifically the bunker types.

sunken helm

Sinking your helm one space below the window line will streamline your cockpit and make sniping attempt impossible even with breached windows.
This limits your viewing field considerably.

open helm

Usually a bridge is easily identifiable from the surrounding windows, therefore a windowless helm area or hidden among ship components, will make the helm indistinguishable at distance.
But this makes it very susceptible to battle damage and boarding attempts.

double windows

Doubling down on windows is never a bad idea given you have the space, works especially well with cockpits sandwiched within the ship itself, where there are plenty of attachments for the windows themselves

Rudders as well as propellers must be strategically placed for maximum efficiency, which comes easier if the vessel follows a certain shape or design.

Narrower vessels benefit from a faster turn acceleration and deceleration when the propellers are placed closer to the symmetry line and no rudders are employed, with the additional benefit of maintaining attitude even if large amount of asymmetry occur (ex: loss of propellers on one side).

Longer vessels, benefit most from rudders further from the centre of mass along the direction of travel, (rudders placed directly left and right of the centre of mass provide no turn force)

Vertical or wide vessels benefit most from easy placement of propellers, as the blades will have plenty of space and more can easily be added.

When added, rudders work with key combinations W/S and A/D, meanwhile propellers will only turn when solely A/D are pressed.

This can be optimized by repeatedly pressing W/S meanwhile holding A/D for tighter turns, as propellers do not immediately lose spin (works only on vessels which turn force by rudder is greater than just propeller turn)

A properly rudder fitted ship will always out-turn a ship with only propellers, but quickly becoming a disadvantage if too few are placed or too many are lost. Making it essential to have good redundancy and not simply having a few for aesthetics, as they will change your ship turning behavior (dragon tail included).

By mounting propellers facing up/down or sideways you can also use them to change your altitude or heading. Neither is recommended though, since ballasts and rudders respectively can achieve the same more efficiently.

Any propeller, regarding of placement, will always move directionally forwards at 100% of its speed, and 50% when going backwards.

Mass and drag directly affect your maximum speed, try adding propellers to see whether you need more or you reached your cap speed, which can always be seen in extra stats at the bottom right of your in-hangar menu. Wind aligned sails are the only mean of increasing speed above your cap, even if not shown on the blackboard.

The dragoon tail is the most efficient propeller by weight, closing in the leaf fan propeller and the heavy short propeller.

Between rudders there is little to no difference, except the square ones having more HP and built in stabilization, which quickly stabilizes a vessel after a turn. One of these in particular is preferred as it allows for side by side placement.

Adding any kind of walker legs or threads to an otherwise heavy and cumbersome vessel, will increase the turning speed considerably when using the ground to your advantage.

Meanwhile being even partially submerged will slow down your vessel up to 30%, this can be lessened by adding roll correctors to seavessels.

Your ship flies slightly faster when following another vessel less than 500 m away, this effect maximizes within 200 m where you will reach the pursuit speed as per the black board.

For normal maneuverability you should have at least one ballast per 1,000 neutrally buoyant masses. Considering that each lifts around three times its own mass.
Thus if you have more than 2.2 ballasts per 1,000 mass, your ship can fly even without any lift from balloons or float stone.

This is a good building tip to increase your airships speed and maneuverability, as less balloons can be balanced out by adding extra ballasts or wings.

Your ballasts should be spread out equally to the mass of your ship. If you want to use a tilt module you should place them mostly at the front and back of the ship.

It is recommended whenever possible to use the rod ballasts due to their higher HP.

Magdrives need 30 seconds to charge, during which time they consume 2,000 pressure per second for a total of 60,000 pressure, or one and a half small wells.

While charging, your ship can only move at around one quarter of its normal speed. Afterwards propelling the ship at speeds ranging from around 17 for a heavy to 20 for a light.

For light vessel the relative speed benefit is negligible, but I recommend always having them on board as a mean of transport, given all your propellers has been taken out or the asymmetry due combat is too great.

Each magdrive supports a mass of up to 12,500. However, exceeding this mass merely reduces your speed, as a 30k vessel with three magdrives reaches speeds of 17.6, whereas with two it still reaches 16.5. Using just one your magdrive speed will only be 14 though.

{careful when placing them as their direction of travel is dictated by the tiny golden teeth on the rim}

Armoring your vessel in the right places will extend your combat life and decrease excessive mass, sometimes streamlining your design and hiding sensitive components from your enemies sight.

This will entirely depend on your ship type and combat style, making it essential to cover vital components without compromising ship functionality and handling.
An overly armored balloon ship will lose its speed advantage, and a too lightly armored heavy vessel will lose its high suitability by exposing vulnerable pieces.

Usually the components you want to armour the most are the bridge, and the engine compartment, being the most significant if lost in combat.

Preferably you have two building materials to shell your vessel, hull and armour.

Hull has the advantage of being cheaper, connects well with other pieces and requires wood instead of the scarcer synthest for the armor.

Armour plating on the other hand offers a higher damage reduction, while weighing only half as much as hull.
However, they may only be placed onto hull pieces, though not having to extend all the way beneath the armor plating itself, allowing you to save mass here and there by connecting several plates with only one hull piece.

A good example is joining the slanted sides of triangular synth pieces to cover awkward places or extent their reach. Or further saving mass by using lighter pieces like:

hull triangle long, hull plank, hull half, hull ridge or switching slanted hulls for slanted windows

Observe, this section of hull with no synth weighs 240 masses.

A regular paneled hull with synth weighs 200 masses

A weight reduced hull with synth weighs only 161 masses

In general, synthest armor is the better choice, but hull skinning, rigging or shielding components with high health parts like engines, armored balloons or floatstone are a great choice to shell your ship saving mass.

Considering the contract requirements, it is recommended a cargo capacity of 192 parcels for bigger ships. This allowing to fill up on the most profitable or biggest deliveries of 64 parcels with ease.

For combat oriented vessels 64 cargo capacity should suffice for faction deliveries, smuggling or collecting cargo from downed vessels.

Easy access to your cargo racks is important to transfer loot or harvest parcels quickly and efficiently, placing them closer to the ground or on horizontal surfaces, like below or inside the ship, will make loading easier. If this is not possible, the use of pneumatic tubing and hatches is also very convenient, or, using to an extent cargo racks as flooring, allowing to both easy access and mass saving.

Consider that When loading cargo, your ships mass will increase, like with normal cargo pads or cages your mass increases by 30 per parcel, meanwhile using float stone cargo racks it only increases it by 10.

If your parcel racks get blown off during a delivery, rebuilding your ship at a friendly factory will restock them, making not necessary to hide your parcel racks inside your ship.

Dragoons are a must for every vessel, either for boarding enemy ships, quick scouting or even saving a sinking vessel.

Bear in mind that all of them are relatively fragile, even the armoured dragoons have less hit points than the long hull plate they are probably standing on.

Thus, I recommend to house them in a hangar aboard your ship with hatches leading outside, these though do not need to be opened as the dragoons do not interact with them.

Since dragoons float, they can effectively be used to lift a sunken ship given they get caught in the ship frame.

Emergency brakes can be activated by leaving the dragoon seat, this will make a certain death unlikely, and if inevitable, you will not explode along the dragoon.

The regular dragoon is the fastest, but all dragons can be useful.
The armoured ones can be repaired mid-flight, the harpoon can be used to turn and push a propeller dead ship, smoke can be used to indicate targets or obfuscate someone’s view, transport are great for airdropping airmen to locations, conduct self repair or shooting, cargo ones are perfect for loading or carrying extra cargo.

For more info on dragoons, check out our DRAGOON guide: coming soon

Special thanks to the members of the Onion Communion and Zakdorn that made all of this possible.

Our official discord link: https://discord.gg/HVQAHTHTcr