"Complexity is simple, simplicity is complex." "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." "Practice makes perfect." Etc.

How to build cheap Step 1: Don't make a government vehicle. Step 2:

Me: let’s make something cheap. Also me: what if I put large missiles on it?

Oddly enough, this is likely the most helpful video you have made so far.

Something I've learned about building both durable and cheep is that one layer of metal is enough except for maybe the ammo and AI. Also, if you are using APS, deck guns, despite being terrible everywhere else (except maybe secondary guns), will be your friends.

Other quick guides: 2 minutes. Borderwise FtD quick guides: 22 minutes.

Funny, I worked on what was supposed to be a pocket battlecruiser, ended up being the size of a battleship, but still looking like it's coming into the intended price range of around 300k

Use lasers. Cheap. Compact. Powerful. Make it a short range focuser, add a few storage cavities and its a shotgun of doom. Like Volta, which is just 36k

In speaking of "speed being the best active defense" could you do a hydrofoil guide? That would be cool to know because of my noobie desire for tiny corvettes who's only defense is the fact that they can outrun a PAC beam. I know PACs are hitscan, I was just making a joke.

ACHOO "Scuse' me, I'm allergic to good advice" XD

I REALLY like the idea of using a simple weapon and putting it in a larger, better custom turret like that. It seems so obvious for a weapon that needs to be small anc cheap but also a little bigger/better than *just* a simple weapon.

For anyone reading this: you can build those steam engines to be a lot more efficient. Remove pipes, connect turbines directly to boilers. Build bigger turbines rather than more of them. One boiler for several turbines unless you're investing in redundancy. For long-term material efficiency, use an RTG and have your boiler start running only when battery is under 50%. Have the turbines and the RTG produce no more than what your craft spends at its peak. Also, supercharger engines can be more efficient than steam if running slow. No radiators, turbochargers or injectors needed and exhaust pipes cost basically 1 per cylinder.

Although it's generally less resource-efficient, I like making my tiny hulls for small boats out of a mix of alloy and metal. Alloy is extremely buoyant, moreso than wood, and metal is around neutral buoyancy. That is the sole purpose I use those two rather than wood and alloy or just wood. It allows me to maintain some level of protection against light fast shells from mostly simple weapons while also floating perfectly fine without air pumps. I might swap to wood mockups for ships as you suggested though.

Greetings Borderwise, nice video. Just wanted to let you know that you can connect boilers directly to turbines. In your craft this will save you 3 blocks. Also for further advice, pistons can be connected directly to a large boiler with no pipes. Have fun as always.

That building something out of wood first thing sounds like terrible advice, because replacing every armour block on a craft is a pain.....

Still going to put my 10.5K mat Mason class Frigate against most anything. It ain't perfect, but it's solid. Even with custom APS, and it seems to hold up even with the latest updates, much to my surprise. Yep, just beat an OW Corsair with it in designer. Still got the goods.

Just found your channel very recently and I will say that you are amazing. I enjoy your videos a lot and these guides are very helpful.

Nice video I am on that stage where you want to try the campaign for the first time... after 1000+ hours on the designer, basically learning, my latest challenge as been learning to build cheap. Building cheap AND efficient is definitely the way I want to go. I have to admit it has not been easy at all to give up certain bad habits I got from building without worrying about the price tag. Keep up the nice videos 👍

Huh I always thought i built too small and cheap. Thanks for the guide!

Was going to say how the laser barrel looks so much better now.. then realized this was 2 years ago.

I have 920 hours in FTD, and 90% of my ships is rarely under 100k, and most of those was me trying to build cheapish, it is very easy to keep wanting to add more and more shiny things, then suddenly I got on a full spree of "Give me all the THINGS! =D Muahaha! triple layered armor! Big cannon is good but Huge cannon equals a huge boom! Now I must have anti torpedo and missile systems! " Yah this happens to me most of the time playing FtD. "Sigh" well, I appreciate you trying Mr. Borderwise but I just do not think I am save-able at this point.

Melee is incredible for cost efficiency

I love this game but it is super complicated compared to others like it. That's one of the things that makes it great though. Awesome video by the way. Thanks for a quick (for FtD) guide about building cheap. I have a lot of trouble not turning everything I build into a giant tank.

The problem with cheap things is that they tend to do nothing except exist. If you're new you should probably build something fairly sizeable so you're not constrained, and you should get decent results. Building small is probably the hardest thing to do.

Borderwise's ship causing motion sickness for 22 minutes Good info though, still trying to get into grips how to get started and what to do

Build sheep. With LAMBS.

Not trying to hate, but you’ve essentially spent 5k resource to have one simple weapon in the battle. I would recommend spending more on the weapon vs the overall cost of the craft, as you recommended with the laser.

me who studied engineering and is over engineering my first ship: Nonsense, My first ship will glide over the water at 30m/s and be armed with 2 300 shell a min canons that can destroy heavy Armour with one round. True story still working on programing the trust vectoring to have perfect stability while gliding over the water. The cost is at 75k material with double alloy hulls. The guns take like 2 seconds to pen the hull or the heavy Armour gun turrets and detonate the guns. It also does not over pen wood. This is only my corvet. I got a CWIS Anti cram/missle/topedo ready to mount on a destroyer that will fallow the same design since its modular

Easy to do if you are facing DWG. Beyond that, getting something cheap and small to be survivable and hit above it's weight class is tough. 5 to 10k craft are pretty much disposable and are probably would have to be deployed in large groups to be effective. I like your idea about building in wood, but if you try to make the straight swap from a wooden ship to metal, you are going to find your boat becomes a sub or your airship won't air. I build in alloy or metal just so there are fewer surprises with the weight and balance and it's fairly easy to reinforce critical areas with metal/ha. I also think fuel engines are better cost per power/space. My most cost effective craft is a hovercraft that moves @ 140ms. At 150k cost, it can handle all DWG and OW craft (it can take the Stronghold if you have about an hour) plus some of the WF craft, and it uses only a couple repair bots. I have some smaller aircraft/spacecraft at about 20-40k, but i consider them almost disposable as a couple well placed shots or missiles can cause serious problems. I don't build smaller than that because I hate getting wrecked. :)

Budget-canoo goes *bupbupbupbup*!

I'd also recommend building a weapons test platform for those of you who dont have one. Also direct feed APS are still a viable options esp when employed in mass.

If you build a tiny laser, wouldn't destabilizers help? They increase the power per shot (could be better than a storage cavity)

huh one of my favorite (and for its size deadliest) units is TINY has 2 super short fast firing close range PACs, 1 remote guided medium size missile/torpedo and uses ion thrusters powered PURELLY by RTGs i heavily repurposed the marine duster from the DWG for it well i know that but you cannot recognize it as such anymore

Ufffff Mega good Video when your smallest viehicle is about 400.000 Materials lol

Thank you so much for these videos! I've been waiting for a game like this my whole life and only started playing last week, your tutorials have been a huge help in getting started! Just one question - how'd you set it so when you click-build, the next-placement retreats as opposes to advances?

I actually find this somewhat easy, as I tend to build small aircraft most of the time. Emphasis on "somewhat". I cannot into making large ships. Not well, anyway.

I've had issues where my craft move so fast that missiles glitch inside and do massive damage. So, going the fastest might not be the best defense.

I made a alternate starter raft thats basically the same cost as the actual starter raft(+100 resourcws i think, the thing is a little under 2400) while trying to arm the thing i checked out the grenade launchers, if your making something cheap with a small shell, putting frag rounds in those and dumping three on a boat is suprisingly alright in a "under the cost of firing some missles sort of way".

Just remembers me on my first battle ship. This thing chrusch easy my pc and have something of 2.7 million hp.

The tooret looks cool BTW

Imo 500 points of autocannons is almost always better then 500 points of aps/cram but im not great at the game so take that with a grain of salt

hey thanks for uploading so much info over the years, I've learned a lot from your channel, appreciate it!

allergic to good advice, yeah im sticking with your series to learn the game

Are you using a 3x3 turret base? It won't have a higher turning rate with that little weight on it, and while it's a bit more tanky, it's also quite a bit more expensive from what I recall off the top of my head.

If that is a tiny ship then all my ships are microskopic becos my avrage size is about like 5m wide 5 high and max like 10-15 long

Nothing is quick in FTD!

wood, cram, who needs more

Instruction unclear, ended up at 250k

Do you upload the craft you build?

Hey borderwise! I tried to copy this design, to learn how to build it myself. But the thrusters just make it shoot up in the sky. Could you post this to workshop so I can learn how to build stuff like this properly?

simple you don't

I'm sorry but your bit about fuel engines isn't right, especially if you're going to recommend a low efficiency hybrid setup instead. Have you seen the cost of batteries compared to any fuel engine components? Nowadays it's only turbochargers that are expensive, and still less so than a battery. Only if you were to use a railgun or PAC would I recommend going for such a setup in a compact vehicle. You can get just over 300 stable power from a very cheap 6 blocks, 1m tall injector engine : generator-cylinder-injector on one row, three radiators on the other. It conveniently only requires a maximum of 49 mats per minute, just one less than the mainframe provides to start with. If you need more thrust for cheaper, don't use ion thrusters which are the most expensive and least efficient. As for the cost-per-firepower efficiency of simple weapons, if you are firing at anything but wood (or lead, stone, ERA) they quickly lose out most of their advantage. APS is weaker, but more bang for less buck by a fair margin if you're shooting at metal or alloy. Lasers don't compare too favorably either, unless you're using them to counter speed, which they are meant to.

Sorry, but Lathland already one-upped you with his spinny-rammy skimmer-jet-thing of doom.

help me amigo my smol boat costs 30k and it doesnt even have weapons amigo

Very Nice video

I cant build big its a big isue

I consider anything under 1 million materials cheap, what is wrong with me?

"Quick" guide, hey?

Helo borderwise

00

When is how to build expensive it would be much more useful

This was useless. "Use cheap materials and cheap guns" is basically what he said for 20 minutes. How about showing us *HOW* to build compactly? What type and size of an engine would be enough? Where's the placement for it? If we are to build everything next to each other which parts work next to each other? All I know for sure is to not put fuel, ammo and a fuel engine next to each other. What about weight distribution? AI or not? If yes, what to prioritize? Propellers or jet engines? Lastly, how to transition to more expensive stuff *AFTER* have built cheaply? What do we prioritize? Engine power? If yes which engine would be good in the mid-early game? Should we increase the "number" of weapons or should we invest in a single more powerful weapon? Which type of weapons are a good transition? The laser he built. He *said* it was a good, relatively cheap and slow weapon but he never showed if it was any reliable. He put facing forward on a fast boat which makes no sense as it won't get any shots at the enemy. Tldr: this was utterly useless.