Thank you for taking your time to read this, this took me quite a while to type and took some time to get the pictures. This is made due to @DHRUVAS asking how to make spaceships, so shoutout to @DHRUVAS

Alright, let's get into it.

#Hull: The body of the beast

No matter the ship, military or not, bio or steel, Hull plays a vital role since it's literally the body, now I do reccomend you do have some preset hulls for different ship classes saved as sub assemblies so that you can easily get them whenever you feel like it, these presets can apply universally or for a specific faction (factions will be discussed later)

**Figure 1: These are preset hulls which work for the Alliance of Humankind in lore, here we can see some basic ship classes, there are many more classes (like battlecruisers and dreadnoughts, you can even make your own classes of vessels, e.g some classes I made up are the Warmonger and Scimitar)

These hulls are here just to serve as a guide, since you can make a ship wider, higher, decrease some measurements to compensate for the increase of others. As seen here:

Figure 2: A Lazarus class battleship next to a Conch class battleship and a Krellus class cruiser , the Lazarus may be short, yet it compensates in width

Why preset hulls?

Preset hulls are important to maintain a consistent scale within builds to avoid having to do rescalings of crafts later on. An example being with my Foradora class Heavy cruiser.

Figure 3: As you can see, the Foradora class heavy cruiser is dwarfed by the Krellus...this isnt lore accurate and since these ships serve as crafts, not just models, scale consistency is therefore important to maintain (foradora be tiny lol)

Even if you don't use preset hulls, do take note of the measurements to ensure consistency is present. E.g your standard cruiser hull is 15x15x25, yet you want to make a design which is rather intricate and requires 3 fuselages for that part of the hull. What do you do? Maths lol, to ensure it does add up to atleast 15x15x25, it's fine if it is slightly bigger (yet it must still be significantly smaller than a standard battleship hull) or smaller (yet it must still be significantly larger than a destroyer hull). E.g you can make the center piece, with about 1x15 and maintain the length of 25 (unless you want to make a plasma cannon) while making the other 2 hull parts, about 7x15. With some basic math we can see that 7+7+1=15 and with the consistent 15 for width, it is therefore a 15x15 hull segment, congrats! I did do something similar for my rescaled foradora class heavy cruiser.

Figure 4: A rescaled foradora next to a krellus class cruiser, sharing nearly the same height and width

How does one maintain scale consistency?

Don't worry, I understand such doubt, yet don't fear, simply take a ship of the class you are going to build, e.g a destroyer, load whichever one you want on the designer, this ship will serve as your benchmark vessel, now take a command pod (anyone of your choice lol, I don't reccomend the command chip though) and set that command pod as primary via the settings. DO NOT connect to the ship

Figure 5: My benchmark cruiser is the krellus class cruiser lol

Once you are done there, take the ship, and save it as a subassembly, this way when you are making a ship of a class, you can take the benchmark ship from the sub assemblies and place it next to your build to see if it is the correct size!

Figure 6: The Conch class battleship and Eflekolonokonis class battleship are pretty close in size, yet they aren't as large and long as a dreadnought, hence showing some scale consistency

As well you can even use these sub assembly ships in photo fleets (if your device can handle it),

Figure 7: A neat photo fleet

Hull Techniques: Making Marble look like silk

Hull techniques are important aesthetically and, likely in lore (should you have any), cost effectively.

Pinch

Pinch makes ships look really neat when used correctly, it makes ships look sleek and well designed instead of ships looking Boxy (unless you want boxiness I guess). Pinch can also be used on warships to make many turrets on the same fuselage fire either left or right thanks to one turret being more elevated than the other.

Some examples being the Aurin Class Torpedo Destroyer, which used Pinch on the side hulls to make the ship look more appealing.

Figure 8: The Aurin class Torpedo destroyer, notice the use of pinch

Another example is the Tirino class corvette, which I used pinch frequently, especially to try get the hexagonal shape on the front Hull and for the sides of the ship, particularly the rear and center parts

Figure 9: Tirino Class Corvette, which makes use of frequent pinch

Pinch Layering

Pinch layering involves pinching a fuselage and adding a fuselage to the pinched side. You can do this as many times as possible, as long as you can do maths to ensure the fuselage has the same measurements as the pinched side would, this is to ensure that there is no mistake in the layering, e.g is your 1st layer fuselage, is a 6x6 fuselage with a pinch of 50%, your 2nd layer fuselage would need to be 3x3, if you get 50% pinch on the 3x3, the 3rd layer would then be 1.5x1.5. This is the case should you want a nice slope, like on the Toro Class Battlecruiser

Figure 10: A Toro Class battlecruiser which utilizes Pinch layering

If you dont want a slope, then the depth is yours to play with, you can use it to make really nice things, as well, if you are making a warship, more depth= more surface area = more turrets (more firepower RAHHH).

why pinch?

Pinch ensures that the fuselage looks neat and uniform, especially if you have fuselage textures, it will ensure the texture stays consistent...compared to when you connect the bottom/top of a fuselage to the surface lol....

Figure 11: Do I need to explain lol?

Slant

Slant is really good since it does make the front of your fuselage Slant ofcourse, this can be useful so that you don't have to do it manually, especially if is just for that slanted front of the ship where nothing really followed...Slant can be used to also join fuselages at an angle...yet I'm not too sure how good that is since...I haven't used it lol, however you can try yourself. Slant can be pretty much used anywhere (just not everywhere) where needed, it can be used to make sides look good or to make your front and back look good, some examples include the Shield of Norinar and the Aurin Class torpedo destroyer

**Figure 12: The Shield of Norinar uses Slant in the front and back to maintain a symmetrical weight (will be discussed later), it does look dope in my opinion lol, as well we can see that the inlet is connected at an angle and not straight. As well slant can be used to make really nice smooth areas, as seen on the Aurin Class torpedo destroyer

Figure 13: The Aurin class torpedo destroyer uses Slant to have a smooth back and front, it also utilizes slant somewhere by the headquarters...

Round vs Square vs Rounded Square

This is quite important since different ships (maybe even different factions) may have different fuselage shapes for their reasons, e.g for ships I reccomend square/rounded square, while for organically designed ships, and headquarters/cockpits, maybe rounded...you can also use a variety of these for one ship, I did do this with my Neo Terra Class Battleship, with the rounded square for the front and full square for the central and rear areas, so mixed can work out if done correctly.

Figure 14: A Neo Terra class battleship, the front part uses rounded square like parts while the back is full square

Figure 15: a Nentres class battleship, which primarily utilizes a rounded square hull.

Figure 16: a Perpelotis class battlecruiser, which utilizes mainly square hull, as well as Pinch

Ofcourse, no matter the ship class, or even faction, you can possibly try either round, square or rounded square, up to you lol.

Elevation: The high ground

Elevation, especially for turrets is important, not only does it allow for multiple turrets to fire forward, back, left or right at once, yet Elevation prevents your ship from being flatter than Kansas (which is scientifically flatter than your average pancake), this ofcourse...wouldn't feel right, not for me atleast. Even if your ship isn't a warship, it still may need Elevation, in lore you could say that some elevated areas host important components and parts, e.g, a large hydrogen tank, a reactor, the Crew bunk, etc. Elevation is a great thing when used right, ofcourse there can be some flat areas on the ship, these can serve as docking areas or even carrier decks for atmospheric exploration crafts (or even fighters lol). Here are some examples

Figure 17, The Neo Terra class of battleships does have elevated regions to ensure frontal and starboard/portside fire for most turrets can commence to fire at hostile targets as much as possible

Figure 18: A Yimalios class Warmonger has a very layered front with a reasonable amount of flat spaces to sport turrets...yet a back that is somewhat flat, this was due to my phone crashing out lol

So do remember why elevation is important.

Factions

Now this is important, since, if you are going to make your own fictional universe, factions are likely going to be involved, either one way or another. Factions ships will have different aesthetics (likely), different weapons, different weapons styles, different colours, and even different textures as well!

Aesthetic: The distinguisher and the feast for the eyes

Aesthetic is important, since it doesn't just make a ship look good, yet, it also distinguishes that ship's style from other factions ship style, one can do this by not just changing the texture for each faction, yet also by using different shapes, slant, pinch, rise, run, corners, clamps (although clamps and symmetry aren't the best, hence I haven't covered it) and colours for hull parts.

E.g Commonwealth engineering often features sleek ships (sleek meaning a hull segment is normally 1-3 fuselages wide while still staying 1 fuselage high) with varying Elevation to fit more turrets, missile bays or CIWS by either using pinch (on the sides) or larger fuselages behind smaller ones, often following a more turret heavy ship, following a dark metallic grey and dark metallic blue colour pallete.

Figure 19: the Krellus Class cruiser, Conch class battleship and Neo Terra Class Battleship, as we can see the Neo Terra and Krellus do make use of varying height to sport more turrets, yet the Conch on the other hand does make use of some height yet follows the more turrets heavy philosophy, since the 2nd set of bow turrets can't fire forward...instead they are made for portside/starboard fire.

Another example of faction aesthetic would be the Coalition of Jovians, which often prioritize either surface area or portside or starboard side space to sport their cutting laser bays, often either making their designs square or round, depending on the ship.

Figure 20: The Nonsterius class Battlecruiser, a triangular hulled ship which has plenty of side space to host a large number of cutting laser bays alongside a Gredella class Carrier, which hosts multiple bays and some turrets, yet this time, most of the bays are directly on the surface of the ship

Aesthetic, especially faction aesthetic can be Lore Driven. Lore driven aesthetic helps with distinguishing and also can bring out some more interesting ship designs, an example being the Tirino class Corvette, this ship is small and utilizes a sizable amount of turrets for its size, this was due to the Auros Legion wanting to be resourceful with what they had and aim for mass production, it also can serve in many roles, such as anti fighter anti light cap (capable of taking on some frigates if numbers are high enough) which also makes sense due to a Faction wanting to make the most of what they got.

Figure 21: The Tirino class Corvette is an all rounder warship, designed for mass production with reasonable durability in order to ensure resources weren't wasted

Niche: Purpose

You've likely heard about this term in biology, essentially it defines an organisms role within an eco system, well, ships too have niches! This can range from military roles, support roles, non military roles, etc
Some examples if niches in a Sci fi setting being (btw im just using my universe as an example):

Anti-Capital: This ship is meant to destroy capital warships, Anti capital warships are normally small ships meant for hit and run tactics, yet a Large Anti capital warship isn't impossible... some examples of anti cap ships I've built would be the Sellius class Scimitar, the Lazarus class battleship and the Antares class Destroyer.
Weapons examples: Anti cap grade Heavy plasma Ordnance (like SCUHPOC's and ISCHPOC's), heavy anti capital warship torpedoes, anti cap grade heavy guided missiles, anti turret swarmer missiles, Anti cap grade high power railguns.

Area Denial: basically: "Get off of My Lawn!" But with more dangerous ordnance lol, can either be used to defend a newly captured zone/territory or can be used to defend current ones. An example of an area denial craft I've built is the Dera class Destroyer. Weapon examples: Medium Destroyer grade plasma barrage turrets, Medium Destroyer grade multi barreled monstrosities, heavy swarmer nests, medium destroyer grade Auxiliary turrets, medium destroyer grade guided missiles, heavy plasma ciws turrets, heavy Las ciws turrets, heavy beam ciws turrets.

Anti Fighter: Often meant to take on fighters in large numbers to clear them out, leading to them having a large amount of light weapons in a high concentration, either on a turret or intergrated, Anti fighter ships are normally corvette or frigate class warships, which can still evade fighters while still clearing them out (instead of being a sitting duck...). One Anti fighter ship I've built was the Delos class Heavy Corvette. Weapon examples: Corvette grade Plasma barrage turrets, Light Corvette grade Multi Barrelled monstrosities and swarmer missiles

Anti-station: Meant to take out large stations, often using rather heavy weaponry and needing support from other vessels, such as area denial vessels in order to not be destroyed, due to stations being more armoured than ships, smaller Anti station vessels may not have enough energy to sport turrets, instead using most energy just for the Anti station weapon alone, e.g a heavy plasma beam. Larger ones may sport some turrets or just more Anti station weaponry... I haven't built any of these. Weapon examples: Ultra Heavy torpedoes, Anti station plasma beams, Anti Station Guided (ASG) missiles, ultra heavy, high powered cutting laser, Anti station railgun (would likely work in under the blink of an eye, hence a lot of energy used).

Swarm ships
These ships are mostly support vessels, mainly meant to swarm hostile vessels, these ships can also have another niche, like anti cap, or anti fighter, this does depend on what missiles they do carry, although, a fleet soley consisting of swarm ships wouldn't be exactly wise to deploy against a threat, since they do have significantly less turrets, ciws and bay weaponry than other ships of their class, it'll be going smoothly...until it won't (when they run out of missiles). An example of some missiles ships I've build are the Caesar class missile destroyer and the Yimalios class Warmonger. Weapons examples: Swarmer missiles nests, light swarmer missile nests, heavy swarmer missile nests, light missile nests, missile nest, heavy missile nests, anti cap missile nest, anti turret swarmer missile nests, anti fighter turret swarmer missile nests.

All rounder: All rounder type warships concentrate on pretty much most aspects mentioned above and aspects yet to be mentioned. These warships would normally be manufactured to be the "one ship for all jobs", factions with limited resources would normally build these vessels in large numbers. An example of an all rounder class warship I built would be the Tirino Class Corvette. Weapons examples: Pretty much most things mentioned above and that are yet to be mentioned.

Sniper warships: Sniper warships are precision warships, meant to deliver a fatal blow to turn tables in skirmishes, or to disable a hostile vessel. These ships work fast and often are stealth warships. Weapons examples: heavy grade plasma beam weaponry, heavy grade cutting laser weaponry, heavy grade high velocity railguns (intergrated and turret based), heavy grade high velocity plasma railguns (intergrated or turret based), heavy grade high velocity Kinetic weaponry. An example of a Sniper warship would technically be the Eflekolonokonis class railgun battleship.

Barge: These ships are large cargo hauling vessels, often meant to carry bulk amounts of cargo over long distances, these ships would likely need some form of escort in order to make it to the destination safely. Weapons examples: Heavy grade CIWS, Medium grade anti fighter turrets.

Passenger liners: These ships are meant to carry passengers a long distance, either from one place to another, or just to tour a certain area. These ships can feature some gnarly armaments in order to ward off any hostiles, weapons examples: Heavy corporation grade anti capital warship turrets, heavy corporation grade anti fighter turrets, heavy corporation grade ciws, heavy corporation grade intergrated weaponry. Ship example: Nadar class Passenger liner

Civilian ships: these ships are meant to house civilians, essentially be mobile homes for civilians, ships like these often sport some of the fastest engines known in order to outrun attackers, as well as light weaponry to fend some off.

So those are just some examples of Niches that ship's can be built for.

Why is Niche Important?

Niche essentially defines a ships purpose(s) and what the ship is meant to do once produced, without a niche, a ship ultimately is just like her:

Figure 22: Teenage Sakura from Naruto...for context she is more useless than Google Gemini which'd tell you "tfym" means "Trees for you and me"

Useless...

Turrets

Turrets, military or not, are very important, one needs to be prepared for attacks from hostiles...even if your universe doesn't have pirates or hostiles, micro asteroids can still be an issue sometimes that just a pew and a pew can solve. Turrets, like ships too, can be faction aesthetic dependent and lore driven (using lore in order to make your turret for a Faction, e.g some random republic just likes railguns...hence their turrets use railguns), turrets too, can have certain niches like:

Auxiliary: Providing constant fire, often supposed to be quick firing.

Primary: These turrets are the main turrets of the ship, often meant to be the most dangerous and used wisely.

Secondary: Meant to provide support, secondary turrets can also likely take out some ships if you give them a fair chance.

"Direction removing" (RAHHH): Often sports many barrels and fires in quick succession, looking almost like a laser or beam.

(Insert all of the ship niches mentioned before here...since I'm kind of feeling lazy rn...since turrets can be anti cap, anti fighter, etc)

Ofcourse, it's your universe you are building these ships for, im not going to give you turret ammo examples...since you can make your own lol, I can sense your creativity, quite inspiring if im being honest.

Turrets can also vary in size, since some may be made for frigates, some for battleships, some for all ships, some just for the ultra heavy capital warships, some for battlestations, some for citadel and fortresses, etc. Turrets can also be made for a particular class of ship too, an example being the Conch class battleship, utilizing specially made Conch turrets, made for the battleship in particular.

Here is a pic showing different turrets of the commonwealth (dont worry we will go faction turret comparing later)

Figure 23: An Array featuring some Commonwealth turrets, notice the size difference as well as the ammo types (if you can read them lol)

Factions Turrets, turrets for different factions will, ofcourse, differ, since they follow different design philosophies and aesthetics, not to mention, they may choose different weapons for turrets. Yet turrets used for the same purpose can still differ between factions, some being more practical than the other. An example being the Tri Barrelled plasma turrets of the Celestial league and Commonwealth

Figure 24: A Celestial league plasma turret next to a Commonwealth plasma turret, both of which are used on each factions battleships, notice the difference between barrel size, texture, turret size, shape and colour

These 2 turrets are rather different, since the Commonwealth turret does host a larger central barrel when compared to the barrels of the Celestial leagues turret, not to mention, the Celestial league turret is a tad bit larger. Although these 2 turrets are nearly the same, let's compare the Commonwealth turret here (since it is a primary turret on most warships) and the main turret of the Antrov Empire's Main Battlecruiser

Figure 25: the Antrov Empires Multi Barrelled Monstrocity plasma beam turret compared to the Commonwealths tri barrelled turret, notice the difference in shape and the number of barrells, these turrets are very different, this is due to the Antrov Empire wanting to spam their enemies warships with plasma beam fire, yet the Commonwealth rather preferring high value hits and dangerous blows

What NOT to do

Alright, let's go over what not to do for ship design along with their reasons.

Over and Under Turreting

Over turreting and under turreting are some major issues. Over turreting is the act of shoving a turret wherever there is space, while having no regard for other turrets firing arc and whether the ship has enough storage to house the machinery for the turret and most importantly the ammo, be it plasma or bullets, as well as how much it's going to strain the reactors...not to mention, it isnt really good aesthetically (just saying, should you value aesthetic highly) as well, do take intergrated weaponry into account should you have any.

Under turreting, is doing the opposite, fewer turrets for the ship, infact, too few! Leaving only a few turrets to defend a ship isn't normally ideal, depending on the design, yes, the few turrets may have larger arcs, yet what's arc without firepower? Not to mention, the turrets won't be able to fully defend the ship which would result in really bad results...yes you may see more of the ship...yet are aesthetics more important than functionality? To me, no, if it works it works, idk abt you. Remember, do take intergrated weaponry into account

Let's use the Aurin class Torpedo Destroyer as an example, take notice of the primary turrets on the side of the ship.

Here is the normal version

Figure 26: A perfectly normal Aurin class torpedo destroyer

Over turreted:

Figure 27: an Over turreted Aurin Class torpedo destroyer, noticenhow crowded it looks, not to mention, how much more energy, space and hydrogen would those 4 extra dual barreled take? Likely too much

Under turreted

Figure 28: an Under turreted Aurin class torpedo destroyer...notice how only the 1 turret on each surface is left to defend it...yes, it's a lot of arc...perhaps too much

How do I know if my ship is over or under turreted?

Ask yourself the important questions of evaluation:

Would the ship be able to have enough energy to fire these?

Would the ship have enough ammo for these? (Be it projectiles or gas)

Can all the turrets fire un obstructed (essentially, can all turrets fire without another turret(s) in the way?)

Would this be enough to defend the ship?

Would the turrets rotary machinery have enough space? (yes JNO does have rotators, yet turret rotary machinery can be quite complex and take up a considerable amount of space...regardless of whether your turret is manned or controlled remotely or even if your turret is controlled by AI)

Is the turret too big?

Is the Barrel count reasonable?

So these are some questions you'd need to ask, and do remember not to doubt yourself. A Purple Alien Farmer once did show us the importance of Balance before being murdered lol

Careful Positioning

Especially regarding turrets, you needn't have any weapons obstructing eachothers arcs or line of fire, e.g putting a turret infront of an intergrated weapon...

Figure 29: That turret is cooked....

That turret is going to get Vapourised...an utter waste of Materials...

Some archetypical nerd: "UhM aCsHuAlLY YOu cOuLd oBsTrUct a TuRRet sO tHaT sHoUlD tHe ObStRuCtOr TuRrEt bE dEsTroYeD tHe nOw UnObsTrUCteD tUrReT cAn FiRe"

That's just plain dumb, it is as if you are expecting that turret to be destroyed in battle in order for another turret to fire...its just a useless waste of materials since they turret won't always be destroyed in battle...

Using the same colour pallete for different factions

Sure factions can share common colours within their colour pallete, yet the same colour pallete? For different factions? That's going to be quite confusing for most...unless you do increase the metallicness, smoothness, etc I guess, I still wouldn't reccomend though since some may say it's lazy...

Builders tips

Alright, this is the fun parts, likely this is the last part of this entire detailed guide.

Let's get to it then!

Elevation without curves or slopes

This is quite simple! All you have to do is press the mouse icon on your left hand side panel and look at the bottom slider that says: "Auto resize parts" and turn that off for as long as you need, you needn't worry, if you do turn it back on it will leave parts as they are, and it won't resize parts you've already placed while it was off.

Figure 30: This is a really nice feature ngl

Now you end up having elevations looking like this!

Figure 31: Elevation of Neo Terra Class battleship, not sloped

And not like this...

Figure 32: Not that there is anything wrong with this.

Engines that last hundreds of years

This is quite simple, just head over to the editing menu if an engine, now head over to the tinker panel, scroll down until you see "Edit Hidden properties" tap it, now you

**Figure 33: AMONGUS (is there anything relevant to say about this Figure?)

will see 2 arrows above, next to the word "Part"

Figure 34: Do scroll and read carefully when changing values, ensure to apply them once typed

Press the LEFT arrow 2 times and you should see "Rocket Engine" now scroll down until you see these 3 words on the left

"thrustOverride" 1

"massFlowRateOverride" -1

"massPerFuelFlowOverride" -1

The last 2 are very important, since those determine how long your engine will burn, now, if you want your engine to last long, you should change the massflowrateoverride to 0.1 - 0.00001
As well as the wattsPerFuelFlowOverride.
If you want some extra efficiency, then you can tamper with the thrustOverride and make your ship really quick. And congrats! You just made a really dope engine!

Warp drives.
Following the same foundation as modernized engines, do the exact same thing yet, change the fuel and watt overrides to 0, this way they won't consume fuel, and change the thrust override to 50k - 200k (depends on what your device can handle), then find the setting "supportsWarpBurn" and change "false" to "true" allowing you to warp ar 10x speed (so your ship doesn't become unstable) now shove it somewhere in the center and discrete lol and boom, you have a warp drive.
DO NOT USE ON SHIPS WITH TURRETS
Since the turrets will get ripped off...causing immense lag

Windows
Shoutout to @BeaconIndustries for this genius window making method. Firstly take a text part, now size it up to the maximum, or if you really want it to fit a droods head, then set it to the max size via the Tinker panel. Now remove the text, keep width at 0.2, replace it with either a series of --------- ; ======== ; __ ; <><><><> ; ** ; ~~~~~ ; ::::::::: ; [][][][][][][][][][] or ''''''''''''''''''''' and now you add 4-8 spaces, copy that line by selecting all, and paste from your clipboard repetitively in order to have a bunch of windows! This isn't just it though, ensure to colour them in an emissive paint of your choice.

Symmetry

The symmetry tool is a gift indeed it can do quite a lot, especially the top part, which allows you to radial from 2-6 which really does help, as well, if you are satisfied with your symmetry once completed, I suggest you do tap the "Break Symmetry" button once you are done for sure.

Sub Assembly Turrets

Don't want to make a turret each time? I don't blame you, save it as a sub assembly, state for which faction and what weapons it has, so yeah,

that's all from me, if you read this till the end...you are the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) since this took me a long time to write...anyway, Live Long and Prosper and Thank you!