So, you just bought a shiny new Garage Ship from the HWS Garage and want to take it into PvP. It’s meant for fighting so you can take it immediately into a battle, right?
Wrong.
Garage ships come in three major types:
- Combat - over-limit weapons and increased armor
- Miner - SV with HV/CV mining lasers, may have increased armor
- Utility - Ships with increased production ability
Since this guide is about PvP I’ll be detailing how each of these types has a home in PvP and what changes need to be made to make them viable. If you want feedback on the base models, check out this link HWS Garage Ship Community Review and Discussion. We’ll also be using some concepts from the PVP SV topic so please check that out before proceeding or reference it as we go along.
Combat Garage ships
If you’re buying a PvP garage ship, you’re going to want to protect your 10+ mil investment. While stock fighter/combat garage ships might do alright with no changes, you’re playing a dangerous game. Stock ships are, in general, not designed with the PvP meta in mind. This means that they might lose weapons more easily, have exposed or easily exposed components, unprotected cockpits, etc.
Important Note: Repairing to blueprint will restore thrusters, RCS, armor, and most devices but WILL NOT restore weapons or drills
What we are going to need to do is something called up-armoring. Up-armoring is the process of adding standard and lag-shot armor to garage ships to extend their life. Often times garage ships are close to the class 1 (1.49) limit and will need to be stripped of unnecessary components before anything.
The typical build cycle for up-armoring a Combat Ship is:
- Save blueprint. Go spawn your new garage ship in creative and fly through it in God mode. Familiarize yourself with the layout and where critical components are. Locate components that will be targeted by bases, CVs, or HVs and note their location.
- Save template. This will allow you to restore the ship to stock (except weapons) if you make a mistake.
- Strip unnecessary components. Lights, shutters, refrigerator, shower, LCDs, medical devices (not med bay), doors, food processors, sensors, etc. This will be situational but typically all of those can go. You likely won’t have enough room to access all of these components when we’re done anyway. Also strip round blocks or blocks that are weaker than the typical building block for this particular ship type. A useful trick is to use a tier 1 multitool so that armor won’t be taken out with one hit, preventing mistakes.
- Relocate critical components. Things like your cockpit and cargo boxes should be moved from their original locations to the most well-protected spot in the ship. Lag-shots and lasers are your worst enemies in garage ships because they don’t always care that you have 10x the armor of a normal ship and chip away at your internals.
- Begin up-armoring. Depending on the type of combat ship you’re up-armoring, the way you do this step varies. If most of your damage will be coming from SVs, you’ll want to armor the front and cockpit more than anything else. If you’ll be taking targeted fire from HV/BA, place distraction weapons in the front of your ship to prevent your over-limit weapons from being immediately targeted. Typically, you’ll want to avoid these in a garage ship, though. Fill your interior with armor and lag-armor and follow the guides for cockpit design. The mirror tool is your friend! Visualize where damage would be coming from and armor those areas next. Watch your block count and class size. During this step you’ll also want to add in additional weapons of your choosing.
- Make triangle efficient. If you did this in step 5 or don’t care about class size 1 playfields, disregard this step. Otherwise, go back and remove square ends for slopes or wedge shapes. This will allow more room for weapons or other devices including shutter windows.
- Paint and optimize. Have some extra space? Get some extra shutters or spaced armor in there. Make sure to paint your design so that the areas you built on don’t stand out from areas that you didn’t.
- Save template again. If you’re happy, save the template so that you can restore the design if it takes damage.
Mining Garage ships
Garage ship miners are probably the most common type of ship purchased. They have over-limit mining lasers of either the HV or CV variety. Typically, garage miners are SVs with these mining lasers. As with the PVP garage ships, you’d want to protect your investment here as well. Mining SVs are typically used in PVP playfields for their maneuverability and ability to quickly disengage from threats by just flying away; unlike HVs that need to be loaded onto a CV or offloaded onto a SV. The process of up-armoring these ships is similar to the combat garage ships but not identical. When adding armor, keep the profile of the ship in mind. If you will be tunneling with it you will need to keep a smaller profile closer to the drills in order to not get caught on the terrain.
Up-armoring a Mining SV:
- Save blueprint. Go spawn your new garage ship in creative and fly through it in God mode. Familiarize yourself with the layout and where critical components are.
- Save template. This will allow you to restore the ship to stock (except drills) if you make a mistake.
- Relocate critical components - Optional Things like your cockpit and cargo boxes should be moved from their original locations to the most well-protected spot in the ship. DO NOT REMOVE HARVEST BOXES. Most mining ships can function well with their original cockpit location. You may find it necessary to add additional boxes for storage. We will not be adding distraction devices to this type of ship, any BAs or HVs should be immediately disengaged.
- Begin up-armoring. This is where the major differences from armoring mining ships to combat ships occur. When adding blocks to a mining ship, you’ll want to protect your drills first and foremost. You can block the front of your drills up and they will still work. I personally recommend 2 layers of material. After armoring up around the drills, armor up any weak areas around critical components. Warp drive, generators, cockpit primarily. After this is done, check your block limit and add armor onto the access points. You can make any style of cover on your doors as long as it protects you from being shot in the door. This will protect you and your internals as attackers will typically aim for this spot when they first engage these ships. If you still have blocks left, armor up the back and any exposed thrusters. Your goal should be to disengage, armoring areas that will take hits while doing that should finish out your block count (if keeping under 3k).
- Make triangle efficient. If you did this in step 4 or don’t care about class size 1 playfields, disregard this step. Otherwise, go back and remove square ends for slopes or wedge shapes. This will allow more room for weapons or other devices including shutter windows.
- Paint and optimize. Have some extra space? Get some extra shutters or spaced armor in there. Make sure to paint your design so that the areas you built on don’t stand out from areas that you didn’t.
- Save template again. If you’re happy, save the template so that you can restore the design if it takes damage.
- For mining CVs, the same thing applies. Armor up the areas that would be the first to take damage if you’re unaware and mining and protect any overlimit drills.
Utility Garage ships
Lastly, we have the utility garage ships. These are the ships that have furnaces, advanced constructors, multiturrets, and lots of cargo boxes. The reason they’re on this list to take to PVP is because they often have a very valuable component: CV Thrusters. This allows these ships to be made into very agile fighters or tanky soakers. These ships require the most effort to put together but can be very resilient and deceiving ships.
Up-armoring a Utility garage ship:
- Save blueprint. Go spawn your new garage ship in creative and fly through it in God mode. Familiarize yourself with the layout and where critical components are. At this stage, you know what purpose you want your new ship to serve in PVP and see what needs to be removed to make it work.
- Save template. This will allow you to restore the ship to stock (except constructors/furnaces/repair bay) if you make a mistake.
- Remove unnecessary components - If you’re making a fighter, you won’t be needing 40 cargo boxes, lights, etc. If you are going for maximum speed, remove any heavy component. There may be times when removing the ship’s thin layer of combat steel will be worth the increase in acceleration.
- Begin up-armoring. Follow the guide to making good PVP SVs and take concepts from there and apply it to this build. It will take you longer to do it on HWS than in creative and remember, the mirror tool is your friend. Make sure you are keeping the purpose of the ship in mind. A tanky soaker will need more distraction devices and lagshot armor than an agility fighter. Also keep in mind that if you have any combat steel on your ship, adding SV thrusters will not make a noticeable impact. Focus more on protecting the CV thrusters you have.
- Make triangle efficient. If you did this in step 4 or don’t care about class size 1 playfields, disregard this step. Otherwise, go back and remove square ends for slopes or wedge shapes. This will allow more room for weapons or other devices including shutter windows.
- Paint and optimize. Have some extra space? Get some extra shutters or spaced armor in there. Make sure to paint your design so that the areas you built on don’t stand out from areas that you didn’t.
- Save template again. If you’re happy, save the template so that you can restore the design if it takes damage.