Corvettes

How do you build the best corvette? Start a build, finalise a small corvette, upgrade it to class S, buy every technology slot and fill it with your own upgrade modules, and add the rest of the parts last, 3 of the best of each group, kept compact. A corvette is the starship you build yourself at the corvette workshop of a space station, the hangar between the fighters and the exit; no one else flies one, so it is never a crashed ship and never for sale. Every working part brings an upgrade module of its own, and that module, not the part's look, decides what the part adds; every part and its module are on corvette modules.

Build it step by step

1. Start a build. The second you start it fixes the corvette's supercharged slots and base stats. Reloading a save made after that does not change them; to try other slots, start a new build.
2. Finalise a small corvette from the seven parts a build needs, below.
3. Upgrade it to class S at the starship terminal, 85,000 nanites from C, as for any ship. Each class opens the next supercharged slot, up to 4.
4. Buy every technology slot: a class S corvette reaches 60.
5. Install your own upgrade modules, 3 of each system at class S, the ones on the supercharged slots first, and leave a free slot for each part whose module you want. Your modules stay where they are.
6. Add the parts last. A part's module takes only a free technology slot, so the parts fill what your modules leave. Take 3 heavy boosters for class A Pulse Engine modules and 3 Medusa reactors for class A boost and maneuverability, placed before the cockpit, as below, and keep the hull compact: a tall stack or a long row costs maneuverability.

What a build needs

A corvette needs exactly one cockpit and at least one thruster, one landing gear, one accessway, one reactor, one hab, and one weapon, all joined in one piece; until then the build screen shows a warning for each missing part and no stats. The build screen also warns past 100 structural parts, with a caution from 80; decorations do not count toward that limit.

Where to find corvette parts

The Corvette Workshop of a space station sells the plain parts of a first build for units: a cockpit, a hab, landing gear, a landing bay, thrusters and a booster, a reactor, a cannon, a tractor beam, wings, plating, and two decorations. Its other option, the Salvage Exchange, trades better parts for the ones you bring.

Most parts come from salvage and loot, each a random part of one shared list: salvage dug up on planets that show salvageable scrap, corvette debris drifting in space, pirates, smugglers, and freighters you raid, a crashed freighter's containers, corvette missions on the mission boards, frigate expeditions, and a derelict freighter's engineering control panel. Its Fabricate Corvette Modules gives parts to build with, not upgrade modules: always two or three of one hull part (plating, wings, joints, or a decoration), and often one working part as well (a cockpit, hab, engine, thruster, reactor, weapon, landing gear, or shield).

A few cockpits, thrusters, and reactors, the Hornet, Viper, Mantis, and Vantage cockpits among them, come only from the Forsaken Trader, summoned at a Deep-Space Outpost. Some parts were expedition rewards: the Deadeye Cannon, the Aeron Drive, and the Aeron Powershield. A handful of parts are in the game's files but in no reward, shop, or expedition, so this page leaves them out.

How many parts count

Up to 3 parts of a group bring a module each; one more only changes the look. A group is wider than one kind of part:

• every small thruster and heavy booster is one group, so 3 engines in all count;
• the cockpit and the Medusa and Chelone reactors are one group, so a cockpit placed first takes one of the places, and the last Medusa that does not fit adds nothing;
• habs, walkways, and cargo pieces are one group;
• the landing gear, the shields, the tractor beams, each other reactor, and each weapon form a group of their own.

The parts count in the order the game keeps them, and that is not always the order you placed them: a part you place takes the earliest place a part you removed left empty since you last loaded the game, and goes to the end only when no place is empty. Saving closes the empty places. So to get 3 class A modules from Medusa reactors, remove the cockpit, place any other part first, and only then place the cockpit again; the cockpit then adds nothing.

Room for modules

Ordinary starship upgrade modules, the ones you install in a fighter, fit in a corvette beside the parts' modules. The two are different groups, so your own upgrade modules count on top of the parts': a corvette's Phase Beam with a Phase Beam Array hit far harder once three Phase Beam upgrade modules were added, so 3 of your modules and 3 of the parts' can work together. A part's module takes a free technology slot. When there is none, placing the part opens a new technology slot for it, until the grid is full; once it is full, a part you add brings no module and only changes the look. Which parts keep a module then follows the order above.

Cargo slots come from the habs' modules: a hab adds 3 cargo slots and a walkway or a cargo piece 1, and only the first 3 of that group count, so the parts add at most 9.

Damage

A corvette fires the ordinary starship weapons. A weapon part brings an upgrade module for one of them, the cannon part for the Photon Cannon, the Phase Beam Array for the Phase Beam, and so on, and it brings gun barrels. Its module counts only with that weapon installed. No corvette turret fires on its own.

The weapon you fire shoots from the barrels of every weapon part on the corvette, up to 12. Most weapons fire from one barrel after another, so more barrels add no damage. The Phase Beam fires a beam from every barrel at once, each at full damage, so a corvette built for damage is built on the Phase Beam: Phase Beam Arrays for the modules, and other weapon parts for more barrels. The Infra-Knife has the most barrels, twice a Phase Beam Array's, so two Infra-Knives beside 3 Phase Beam Arrays fill the 12. The Torpedo Launcher has none. The build screen's damage counts two beams, so it shows less than such a corvette deals.

Your own Phase Beam upgrade modules count beside the modules of the parts. Each weapon part adds one beam for each of its barrels: the Infra-Knife 4; the Photon Cannon Array, the Phase Beam Array, and the Cyclotron Defence Cannon 2 each; the Deadeye Cannon, the Venom Spitter, and the Dematerialisation Ray 1 each.

Size and maneuverability

A corvette's maneuverability falls with its size: the game takes the box around all its parts, how wide, how tall, and how long it is, and the largest box takes up to 80% off the maneuverability on the build screen. In flight the same cut lowers the turning and the thrust, while the boost speed stays. Landing takes longer too: the largest corvette turns up to 3 times slower as it sets down.

Balance does not matter. A corvette built lopsided turns as well as a symmetric one of the same size, and many parts cost nothing as long as they stay inside the box: a tall stack or a long row that sticks out is what costs. Weapons, shields, and the other stats do not depend on size.

Speed limits

A corvette flies on two engines. Near a planet, below 200 m, it cruises at 130; in space at 180. Between 200 m and 1,200 m the space engine takes over step by step, so the speeds climb with height; diving nose down, the change comes later. The boost starts from 185 near a planet and 1,100 in space, and a class S corvette adds 5 to 15, different for each ship; a class C one moves it by up to 5 either way.

Boost bonuses multiply: every module's boost, the parts' and your own upgrade modules', multiplies the one before, after its supercharged slot and adjacent slots, with no cap.

The speedometer does not show the plain speed. On boost it adds 10 for every +100% of the boost total, so a corvette full of boost modules reads higher without flying faster. Climbing from 200 m toward space, the number it shows grows to 2 times the speed. That is why the speeds players read in space are far above the boost limit.

The real boost speed stops just above the boost limit. A few boost bonuses already take a corvette there, and every boost module past that only raises the number on the speedometer, near a planet and in space alike. The class S bonus is the one thing that raises the limit itself.

Boost also costs turning: while boosting a corvette turns less, and a large one less again; boost maneuverability on a module is what wins some of that turning back.

Supercharged slots and class

Every new corvette starts at class C. Its supercharged slots and its base stats are fixed the moment you start a new build, not when you press Finalise, and they stay through the build. Players who reload a save again and again for better slots only get new ones if the save goes back to before the build was started; starting a new build is the quicker way. Upgrading the class at the starship terminal works as for any ship: it rolls the base stats again for the new class and opens the next supercharged slots, as when you upgrade a ship.

Why your numbers differ from another player's

A part's module is an install like any starship upgrade module: the install fixes its stats, and the tables on corvette modules give the weakest and the strongest card each part's module can print. Trust the module in the ship's technology slots, not the build menu's card. The card counts the parts of its group already on the corvette, the module counts only those before it in the order above: for a Medusa reactor, a Cyclotron, and a Torpedo Launcher the two counts were the same and the card was the module, but a cockpit's card counts the cockpit already on the ship and shows the module of a second one. A cockpit swapped for another keeps the module the corvette already has, and only the name on the module changes.

Which install a part gets depends on three things: the part itself, so two parts of one kind can roll differently; how many parts of its group stand before it, so the first, the second, and the third differ; and a value the game keeps for your game, which is why another player sees other numbers. The side a part is fixed to does not enter on its own, only where the part then stands in the order. That value is where your starship stood when your game began, and the game holds it with your character: another space station, another corvette, or a death does not change it.

So in your game a part has a fixed bonus, and there is no reroll. The same part at the same place in its group brings the same module on every corvette you build, at every space station, and after a death; building again or elsewhere gives the same numbers.

A part you remove and place again gets its old module back, and so does another part of its kind placed in its stead: the corvette keeps the module, and only its name changes.

Every part, the module it brings, and what that module can add are on corvette modules.