I think I really need to stop trying to maximizing effectiveness for things that don't matter. Designing starter crafts to be almost entirely EMP proof despite just fighting DWG is just silly. There are alot of crafts I've started and never finished because and it led to me to take a break from this game, but I do really want to get into ftd again cause it's just so amazing.

Massive real airships are incredibly weak to the wind while massive ftd airships are nigh-unstoppable.

Submarine is just an upside down airship

I've already asked the FTD community the "Why ship?" question before. Got answers like "it's a cheap platform that holds weapons". Based on that answer i've built a very effective small ship. It's a big flat alloy platform 2 blocks thick. Main weapon is a big 360 laser turret. It just works. Enemy AI often targets the flat part, ignoring the middle, where laser components are, so the ship lives long enough to disable enemy turrets. The other ships i've built are drones. They're tiny and don't have much armor on them. Basicaly a small gun, wrapped in thin metal. Dirt cheap, so you can spam them. Since they're small, they're harder to hit, so if you put equal in terms of material cost amount of them against the big ship they're going to win 100% of the time. Often even half the cost is enough. Torpedo defence turned out to be easier than i thought it was. Just put a sonar decoy on 2 connected ( Г shape, spinblock on the right end of the shape, decoy bottom) 4m truss blocks spinblock under the ship and make it spin. 9/10 torpedos will miss. No need to add anything else, unless you're building big, then you'll probably need more of them. I find CRAM only viable as bombs for bomber planes. Most things in the game dodge CRAM shells, unless fired point blank. Never put CRAM on a slow ship. Planes with hit and run tactics are much better for that weapon type.

There are other differences between real life and From the Depths that favour ships, like how ships can spend momths on sea without having to resupply while ftd crafts constantly repair and refuel through scavenging and supply lines (in a campaign). Thrusters and CJEs can lift flying bricks of heavy armour and guns, even against the soup that is neter's atmosphere. Those same bricks have to dedicate only a tiny portion of their volume to fuel and materials. If real life had these ftd technolgies than I'm sure military vehicles would more resemble the Scarlet Dawn or Gray Talons rather than Steel Striders (or the other way around idk)

some bonus info on the steam/fire section, while being underwater does proect you from frag, HEAT/HESH and fire, underwater explosions (and I think the thump effects in the recent updates) deal twice the damage. This is why the steam boilers dealt more damage when they exploded underwater than above water.

Thank you for motivating me to build ships.

I like bouncing is from Not the Nine O'clock News with Rowan Atkinson on vocals.

One of the most important reasons airships are better is because of their speed, but not just in the way you mentioned. Short range or melee weapons can be extremely powerful in FtD, and the only counter is being able to run away from them. Think about any WF craft, nukes, CRAMs, short range lasers / laser swords, DIF spam, etc. A lot of new players tend to find themselves completely unable to deal with these kinds of cheesy builds.

One thing I will say: The kobold would not be doing as great if the eeryie was a "get very close and very personal as quickly as possible" ship. As you mentioned: speed is a good thing in this game, and closing as quickly with possible with that many crams is what makes that ship so terrifying for ships on the water. If it could close quickly on the kobold.... Well. The distance to close for the shells becomes a lot less of an issue.

And then you've got the Dustwind Gypsies with their land ship and the White Flayers with their legions of fire ships. The four elements in harmony.

I've been building airships for the last 1000 hours now. primarily for adventure mode. They are just way easier to handle.

I've been working on a Crimson skies inspired faction for awhile, which means lots of airships. One of these faction rules however does put a series limit on the effectiveness though, that being that have to be held up via helium pumps. When you can't use custom jets, it really limits how much armor and how big of Advanced canons you can realistically squeeze on to them. Even with their problems they have been a blast to build and some of them see use in my standard campaigns playthroughs.

you can change the air and water physics in the custom settings to some degree, i guess it's better than just vanilla physics edit: but yes vertical maneuver is better than horizontal maneuver

Albeit I'm getting this more from watching than playing, but it seems that passive buoyancy has an even greater advantage than material efficiency, and that is the "second kind of survivability". Such ships can be turned to absolute Swiss cheese and reduced to 60% health and still somehow fight.

Great video! I really like hydrofoil ships, they're kinda in the middle of ships and airships, not only altitude wise but also regarding maneuverability.

Yeah the airships are so cool when they are able to be evasive, when not, wellllll Nice test!

Finally made it to the end of the video, in any building game there should be restrictions to foster creativity. The various real life vehicles with weird engineering or designs came about, as a way to get around limitations, not because limitations didn't exist. Think of the Deustchland class, the Nelson class of warships, Flower class corvettes, the Do 335, the Ho 229, the LVT, HSTVL, etc Also FtD itself stands out in that there's actually something to fight against other than needing other players. The campaign and the adventure mode are great in that aspect, because imo vehicles should not exist in a vacuum. Designs and crafts should be battle tested, if existing in a vacuum was all that was needed then the Maus super heavy tank would have been an amazing weapon, the IS-7 would've actually been deployed, and the Yamato class would rule the seas. To that end, flying HA brick frontsiders being the meta is a balance problem, at least for me. Campaign and Adventure mode are trivialized once a player figures out how to build an airship which again is relatively easier than a normal ship. Tournaments need restrictions so that not everyone builds a frontsider. People putting naval vessels on the workshop more than airships, is a reaction to airships being the meta, again my opinion. Again, I feel it's a cost issue. Thrust is cheap and mats are easy. Logistics has been the primary limiting factor IRL which is why IRL there are such a variety of vehicles.

Late to the video, but imo the advantages that you said airships have can be attributed, the cheap cost of propulsion from jets and thrusters, and how easy it is to keep vehicles supplied with mats. Thrust is cheap as hell compared to water props, especially jet engines. Jet engines output more thrust compared to any of the steam props, and are smaller in size as well. The mats per sec use of jet engines is hardly an issue, when the second point, resupply is considered. From mat gifting to salvaging, keeping craft resupplied is easy as all hell. Being able to gift mats just tosses the need for a logistics chain out the window. Yes it's "inefficient" when converting via the previous refinery pieces but you're basically teleporting supplies anywhere it's needed. Streamlining all resources into just "mats" also trivializes logistics, since you just "gift" mats to any of your craft and it'll automatically transform into whatever is needed be it fuel, ammo, or just raw mats. Even if you wish to challenge yourself by doing no gifting, thrust is still pretty damn cheap for a pure cargo craft. It's not hard to create a high speed, low drag cargo transport that carries over 100k, flies at 130m/s and only consumes 5 or less mats per sec. Imo making thrust more expensive on a mat/sec basis and making it harder to teleport mats would help balance things out for ships vs airships.

Well... there is a lot worse than airships. Like being able to breadboard and code and understand the physics engine. There are bans for a reason in tournaments ;D You can basically teleport tungsten or a nuke right into the enemy with a weapon so fast, it teleports its distances per game tick. But to your airship dodging, this is a RIP against anyone who knows how to put in a curve prediction for his gun aims. I think they could update the base game targeting to do that.

a comparable thrustercraft would be like the avengers ship. the queen of the real world is the nuclear sub. not at all the aircraft carrier- they are in groups for a reason. the real king of everything? nuclear tipped missiles.

My experience with ftd is that the water doesn’t have enough drag to be realistic and air has too much. Real ships would be hard pressed to reach 20mps in any situation outside of hydrofoil. Excluding hydrofoils 30mps would be an impossible speed with a ship, maybe possible with a boat, but no luck with a ship. Meanwhile, real aircraft can easily breach 200mps with jet engines. In ftd, it’s the opposite. Ships can pretty easily get to 30mps, but any faster is a real challenge. Meanwhile, airplanes would struggle to get past 200mps.

Hydroden also have higher lift force than helium.

Hey Borderwise! When is the next livestream going over new Sewowal submissions?

1st

Albeit I'm getting this more from watching than playing, but it seems that passive buoyancy has an even greater advantage than material efficiency, and that is the "second kind of survivability". Such ships can be turned to absolute Swiss cheese and reduced to 60% health and still somehow fight.