Basic ship building tips

Ship building help

This is a full guide about basic building tips from damage multipliers to AoE, pierce, crosses, and more.

Short overview:

(credits to dudiobugtron for making this)

More detailed explanations:

Paths:

When you make a path you want it to be as long as possible and only split at the end, by that you can put many items in one row and they can all interact with each other. 

The same goes with custom chunks, you can try to move the chunks and then calculate which layout you came up with is the best by counting the items spots in the ship and the crosses you use (read multipliers and loop for the numbers) 

There is also a list of the Meta Paths for classic ships.

and for custom ships, you can always ask in the discord server.

Items:

Priority:

When you want to fill your path with items you don't prioritize direct dmg first. You want to first put additive dmg, extra projectiles, piercing and aoe etc. But keep in mind there that you want to fill cross loops with them so put the there. Then if you have free space you can fill it with Damage Crits and maybe other useful items depending on the situation. 

Add Damage:

Before you multiply your dmg you want to first have additive dmg like the +1 items or the legendary +100. 

+1 damage item will be only good if you have less than 3 "total damage" which you can see in the stats menu. Because each new +1  will give deminishing effects.

Skills of course change that. With the first skill each +1 dmg item will now to +6.

The 2nd skill however. Different from what you might think will NOT make it a +26.
What it does:
When you have the 2nd skill for the +1 damage, you want to fill all the empty spots (in other words, spots outside the path of projectiles) on the ship with it. This is because when skilled, it adds +20 damage per +1 damage item on the ship, not just on the path. And use 2-4 of them at the start of your build depending on the build and base damage. 

Damage crits:

Multipliers are very important, they are the items you stack the most in your build. 

Which multipliers to use and when:

Early game:

Since you don't use as many items in a build then, it is ok to use the arithmetic mean(what most would call the normal average) as the factor to compare the average dmg increase of a crit item.

Item tier-list:
1. The 0111111111234 crit, on average is a x1.38 increase per item. Yes even with the chance to delete a projectile this is good. 
2. The x2 crit, on average is a x1.33 increase. 

3. The left and right curves (with skills) are a x1.3 increase. Their very low price makes them a good replacement for better items if they are too expensive. 
4. The x10 crit is overall not really good, even though it has a theoretic average of x1.36. The chance is just too low. Don't use this

After tier 650 when you can get both skills for the x2 crit it becomes the new best crit item with an average of x1.44 (geometric mean).

Later game: 

Since you now stack more items in one ship (mostly custom ship) you want to use the geometric mean

Item tier-list:

1. Thermite, Charged and Plutonium Round are the best with an average of x1.54 (very good since they don't need skills, but very expensive)

2. The x2 crit, on average is a x1.44 increase. (skilled)

These two are your priority

Combinations of the skilled x10 and skilled charger can work well too

The math:

2.6^0.45=~1.537

2.5^0.4=~1.443

1.3*100%=1.3

18/13=~1.385

2*0.33+1*0.67=1.33

10*0.04+1*0.96=1.36 

Pierce

Pierce is a very good addition to your build. And also interacts very well with aoe.

When you pierce a block you also hit the block after it.

I recommend using 2 of the regular pierce except for waves, why 2? Considering you already use aoe: the first one will give 2.5x and the second one will give around 1.6x which is better than any Damage Crit.

The remaining damage of hp pierce depends on the damage, I recommend only using one of it, this is only good for waves and low tiers. It will pierce through as long as its damage will run out, the damage formula is [Damage / (Items×(Items+1))].

AoE

The more aoe you use the bigger the area of effect gets. But it does not increase enough to make the use of many AoE worth it.

Use one circle aoe for missions and early tiers. Use 2 circle 1 rectangle if for a bigger aoe e.g. if you want to clear 

AoE damage reduction is simplified so instead of it being 5 6% damage reduction ([94/100]^5) it would be simplified to 6%×5 so 30%, however, aoe is just too good it is very worth it however don't use too many. AoE damage reductions apply at the ejector so it doesn't matter where you put it

Note: the formula for aoe reduction is separate for each AoE type, so consider using different types if you get the same area

(simplified)

Charger

The charger should be used at the end of the path and with a legendary, however only use the charger if there are at least 10 damage multipliers. This item will help with consistency. (Note: there are other ways to use a charger)

For how this item really works, it will copy 20% of the projectiles damage (does not reduce) and it will add it to its "damage pool" and for passing projectile it will add 10% of the damage pool to the following projectiles basically smoothing the damage spike out

Add Projectile

This will add 1 projectile. In tiers or waves use 2 or 3 of them and add them at the start. Why at the start? to raise consistency. Why 2/3 or not more or less?

2nd add projectile will give a buff of 1.5x which is good

3rd add projectile will give a buff of 1.33x which isn't very good mathematically it's still ok as consistency but I don't really recommend using this.

Since the Combiner legendary will always put out a projectile with the ORIGINAL tag (read what that means down below) it is good to also put +1 projectile items after the combiner.

And the legendary cloner will basically double the rate of fire. Cloner and +1 projectiles order does not matter in the ship if there are no other parts between them. 

The ejector creates a projectile with the tag ORIGINAL 

A cloner creates a COPY for each COPY and an ORIGINAL for every ORIGINAL. With this, it doubles every projectile added with +1 projectile before cloner and after it

+1 projectile adds a COPY for each ORIGINAL 

Copied projectile will COPY every ATTRIBUTES but it CANT become an ORIGINAL projectile itself. This means all damage which is the current ATTRIBUTES  will get COPIED.

Crosses:

Crosses are very unique items in this game, and complicated to use.

You can place Crosses in the sections where a path crosses itself, though that only helps if it is the same path crossing there twice and also going into an output so you need to have a kind of a loop. See the example picture:

In such places, it can be very helpful, but you need to be careful so that you don't lose too many item spots for a cross since it is at max x2 (or x3 if skilled) damage. Additionally, the cross needs to be rotated correctly, as seen in the picture, the path needs to cross through the side first.
How the cross then works is it will save the damage the projectile had when it passed the cross the first time. And adds it onto the projectile again when passed the 2nd time. This will result in x2(x3) damage in the best case.

It is important that you don't increase the damage of the projectile in the "loop". For any damage-increasing items inside the loop, while they will indeed add damage to the projectile, that damage won't get doubled, because the damage-to-be-doubled is "remembered" when the projectile enters the loop (passes the Cross) and is applied to the projectile once it exits the loop (passes the Cross again). It is better to put such damage-increasing items before or after the Cross' loop.

So fill the loop/cross with: aoe, pierce, add projectile, trident (if needed), bounce, etc. that don't directly increase the damage


Two examples:
Optimal:

no dmg increasing items in the "loop"

Damage is 10, enters cross, 10 gets saved, exits cross, adds 10. Dmg is now 20 so it is doubled by the cross. Then you can put a x2 crit to make it 40.

Suboptimal: 
you have a x2 crit in the "loop"

Damage is 10, enters cross, 10 gets saved, x2 crit makes it 20, exits cross, adds 10. Dmg is now 30 and lower than 40.

(Made by Skill_issue and MasterNO)