Starship

From Horizon's End Wiki
Revision as of 02:10, 13 March 2025 by Gregolegomonkey (talk | contribs)
The Vesta shuttle is the most common ship used by new players on Horizon's End.

Starships are the main form of transportation on Horizon's End.

They can be custom built by players or purchased from a Ship Dealer, and can carry items, mine asteroids or on planets, and engage in SvS combat with other player built ships and NPC-controlled AI Ships.

Starship Classes

Starships must be assigned a class which dictates their block count, characteristics, and performance at different tasks.

A ship can only be made with certain blocks. A list of blocks that a starship can be built with is available at the Horizon's End github.

Civilian Ship Classes

Civilian ships are used for carrying Cargo Crates and mining asteroids using Mining Lasers, and can carry vast quantities of items.

Civilian ships require at least 25% of total blocks as concrete to be detected.

Indicated statistics on the table below are for a ship of the maximum size for its class. Ships that are below the maximum size for its class can carry fewer cargo crates and containers, and can fire fewer weapons and support fewer shields.

Light Freighters, Medium Freighters, and Heavy Freighters can fire 1 Heavy Laser in addition to other weaponry. Civilian ships have weaker shields than warships of the same size.

There is not currently a civilian ship class that is 12,000 - 16,000 blocks in size.

Name Size Range Unlock Level Maximum Crates Maximum Storage Capacity (Doublechests) Mining Lasers Shield Count (Total/0.8i) Maximum Turrets (PDT/LT/HT/TT)
Shuttle 100 - 1,000 1 15 7.5 1x T1 1/0 0/0/0/0
Transport 1,000 - 2,000 10 30 15 1x T2 3/0 1/0/0/0
Light Freighter 2,000 - 4,000 20 60 30 2x T2 6/0 1/1/0/0
Medium Freighter 4,000 - 8,000 40 89 60 4x T3 12/1 2/1/2/0
Heavy Freighter 8,000 - 12,000 60 109 90 6x T3 17/1 3/1/3/1
Barge 16,000 - 20,000 80 Cannot carry crates 150 10x T4 26/2 4/0/4/1

Warship Classes

Warships are used in SvS combat against other players and NPC-controlled AI Ships.

Warships require at least 30% of total blocks as concrete to be detected.

Indicated statistics on the table below are for a ship of the maximum size for its class. Ships that are below the maximum size for its class can fire fewer weapons and support fewer shields.

Warships can carry half as many cargo crates and containers as a Civilian Ship of the same size. Battlecruisers cannot carry crates. Corvettes, Frigates, and Destroyers can use 1 T1 Mining Laser.

Name Size Range Unlock Level Shield Count (Total/0.8i) Maximum Turrets (PDT/LT/HT/TT/IT/QT) Class Specific Weapons
Interceptor 150 - 350 1 1/0 0/0/0/0/0/0 4x Interceptor Cannon
Starfighter 350 - 500 1 1/0 0/0/0/0/0/0
Gunship 500 - 2,000 10 3/0 1/1/0/0/0/0 2x Pulse Cannon, 1x Heavy Laser
Corvette 2,000 - 4,000 20 6/0 1/1/0/1/0/0 3x Pulse Cannon, 1x Heavy Laser
Frigate 4,000 - 8,000 40 12/1 2/1/3/1/0/0 1x Phaser, 2x Heavy Laser
Destroyer 8,000 - 12,000 60 17/1 3/1/4/1/0/0 1x Phaser, 2x Heavy Laser
Cruiser 12,000 - 16,000 70 21/2 3/0/0/1/4/0 4x Ion Turret
Battlecruiser 16,000 - 20,000 80 26/2 4/0/0/1/0/3 3x Quad Turret

Other Ship Classes

Speeders are small ships used for quick, short range transportation. Platforms are used for detecting and printing large builds using Ship Factories.

Neither ship class requires concrete to detect, and they cannot use shields, weapons, hyperdrives, mining lasers, or starship gravity wells. Both ship classes can be detected oversize without any penalties.

Speeders can use starship drills and cannot move by cruising or by direct control.

Platforms cannot move at all.

Name Size Range Unlock Level Maximum Crates
Speeder 25 - 110 1 4.5
Platform 25 - 2,200,000 1 Unlimited

Starship Concepts

The following concepts are important for understanding starship behavior in Horizon's End.

Ship Computer

A ship computer.

A block (jukebox) on a starship where the main controls of a ship are accessed.

All interactions with a ship computer occur while holding a controller (clock).

Only one jukebox can be the active starship computer of a starship. Multiple non-starship jukeboxes may be present, but all activated jukeboxes on a starship must be owned by its pilot.

Ship Computer Functions

The ship computer interface, accessed by left clicking a ship computer while holding a controller.
  • Redetect: Redefines what blocks are considered part of the starship.
  • Add pilot: Lets another player pilot the starship. Type the new pilot's username in chat.
  • Change starship type: Changes the starship type. A redetect is required afterwards.
  • Lock starship: Prevents the starship from being broken up or flown by players not on the pilot list. The lock takes five minutes to activate, during which the ship may be broken into. To clarify, it is illegal to steal a locked ship in unclaimed land, space, or in safe zones; if a locked ship is present within your claim, notify a staff member to unlock the ship for you or use the Take Ownership function.
  • Take ownership: Adds the player to the list of pilots. Only settlement owners, nation leaders, and players given the TAKE_SHIP_OWNERSHIP permission by settlement and nation leaders can use this function.
  • Change starship name: Changes the starship name visible on /listships and in certain server events. Type the ship's new name in chat. Starship names can be formatted by Patreon donators using formatting tags.

Detecting & Piloting Starships

Follow these steps to detect and pilot your starship:

  1. Left click the ship computer (jukebox) while holding a controller (clock).
  2. Click the ghast tear item to open a menu where you can select your ship class. Click the desired class.
    • Some starship classes, such as the interceptor, are subclasses of other ship classes. Right click the parent class, then select the subclass.
  3. Left click the clock item to re-detect your starship.
  4. Right click the ship computer while holding a controller to pilot your starship.
  5. Right click the ship computer again or use /release to stop flying and release your starship.

Crate Capacity

Trade ships can mount crates (or sticky pistons) up to 0.015 * block count or sqrt(block count), whichever value is smaller. The switch occurs for ships around 4444 blocks. A ship can detect with more sticky pistons than the maximum amount of crates it can carry, but it will not be able to carry additional crates.

Warships can mount half as many sticky pistons/crates as a trade ship of the same size.

Storage Capacity

Trade ships can mount containers up to 0.045 * block count where 1 container is equivalent to 9 inventory slots (e.g., a chest with 27 inventory slots is equivalent to 3 containers, and a trade ship of size 8,000 can mount 360 containers or 120 single chests.)

Warships can mount half as many containers as a trade ship of the same size.

Oversize Starships

Oversizing is the act of detecting a ship with more blocks than the class allows, and is often used to tow multiple ships together.

Any ship can be detected with 10% more blocks than the maximum allowed for the class, with a 50% debuff to ship power to thruster acceleration, shields, and weapons. The debuff is the same for any block count above the limit for the class. Speeder and Platform ship classes can be detected as oversize ships without any penalties.

Oversize ships are able to carry extra chests, allowing oversize ships to have slightly more storage.

When detecting a ship, it will warn the player if the ship is oversize.

Thrusters

Thrusters are the primary source of propulsion for starship cruising and add speed and acceleration in the direction that they are pointing. Applying thrust to one or multiple sides of a ship is possible.

A thruster's exhaust path may not be blocked by any block of the active starship at any distance, with the exception of one glass block or glass pane with no space in between.

Blast Resistance

The blast resistance of blocks affects the amount of damage that shields take and the strength of explosions when a shield is disabled.

A starship's hull should be constructed of armor blocks with high blast resistance such as stairs, slabs, walls, and terracotta, which have a modified blast resistance of 6.0. Core structural blocks such as concrete, which has a lower blast resistance of 1.8, cause shields to take more damage and explosions of unshielded blocks to be more powerful. Glass blocks and panes have a blast resistance of 5.0 and are often the only exterior weakpoints on well-built starships.

Power Modes

You can change how power is allocated between three different systems in your ship:

Thrusters: Acceleration (not maximum speed) in cruising and direct control

Shields: Shield recharge rate

Weapons: Weapon recharge rate

You can change your power mode with /pm (Shield power) (Weapon power) (Thruster power). The numbers you input must add to 100. A system's power cannot be below 10 or above 50. You can assign these modes to a sign by writing [powermode] on a sign and setting the second, third, and fourth lines to your desired shield, weapon, and thruster power.