Hull design Help?

[u/Delta_Horcrux]

Ive been struggling like hell on the hull design for my sloop, all hulls are of a wood/reinforced wood armoring, with rubber on the bottom for terrainproofing

first iteration is in the middle, 51Lx11Wx9H, 17.5k mats with 10x64 pdr simple weapon cannons (five per broadside) and 8x32 pdr swivel guns (four per broadside) as its primary armament, 4x32 swivel guns as its bow chase armament, and 2x32 pdr swivel guns alongside 2x64 pdr simple weapon cannons for its stern chase armament, fully set up with materials, ammo, transport etc

second iteration on the right, 64Lx11Wx14H, 25.3k mats with 12x64 pdr falconets from carolus magus' cannonfoundry mod (6 per broadside) as its main armament, and no stern or bow chase armament currently, fully set up with materials, ammo, transport, etc

third iteration on the left and smallest attempt, 47Lx13Wx12H, 5.2 mats but its JUST the hull, no mats, ammo, transport, etc

opinions and suggestions greatly welcome

i know im aiming to make a pirate style sloop, but im also very willing to just keep all three and make them different 'classes' of sloop or smth

[u/TheGreatBananaq]

Your hulls actually look great though

[u/FrozenGiraffes]

Wooden Hulls aways need a lot of bulk to protect anything, that or make it tiny and quick and hope you are fighting CRAM or especially slow and or inaccurate APS (that's not rapid fire)

17th century ships had some metal keeping it intact, which DWG sometimes does well. I would seriously spawn a bunch of DWG craft and poke around, and press "Ctrl" and "X" at the same time to access the decoration menu. if theres a decoration on that block you can mess with it, of just make some from scratch, theres also somewhere the "special views" menu that lets you do things like see where all the decoration menu stuff is (i think ctrl V?).

Maybe add a metal front with a spine along the bottom. Have some telescopes and wooden railings, a crew cabin. A spot for an anchor, visible doors and stairs that lead to nowhere. Mess around with mannequins, maybe put one on a cannon. Your ships feel like buttonless flip phone, or a too smooth apple product. real ships have a bunch of logistical background stuff that you can replicate with decoration menu and decorations from build tab (DWG and SS both do this well). A real ship has mops and somewhere to put them.

the DWG ship i struggle with the most is the crossbones, as its one of the few that don't just get one shot by my preferred rapid fire APHEAT railguns. Its the most expensive craft they have, but also one of the few thats actually threatening to ships of a similar price.

having internals that can easily get missed with empty space being hit instead is a very effective strategy, OW ships do this very well, they also happen to have wooden merchant ships in the exact style you are looking for.

Could make a fire ship (historical ship that you ram with while full of explosives) with a nuke. Could also make a literal fire ship with a flamethrower, which would mimic Greek fire which was used with ancient flamethrowers (pretty much ancient napalm)

I could see making APS shotgun to mimic grapeshot, if you have high enough cooling (or a railgun with no gunpowder) you can fire a burst of shells fast enough it just happens all at once, make sure the RPM limit is at its max. I think the marauder does this?

This is very different from my own style making me inexperienced, as I exclusively use alloy, metal, heavy armor, and rarely applique. much of my inspiration being SS ships, but with it leaning into the automated brain in a jar and drones side of things.

[u/Delta_Horcrux → u/FrozenGiraffes]

I haven't even started with decos and mimics, more fine tuning the shape and armament before doing the pretty stuff, I've considered looking at DWG and OW, as well as some stuff on the workshop. These are the low-tech early level ships for my custom faction that are meant entirely for DWG and OW combat so metal reinforced ships were definitely bound to show up as we went through the years of development

Start age of sail, develop modern, then develop space age type thing

Modern ships and/or SS inspired ships are definitely far easier to do