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[Draxis]

Updated manual is here.  There's a lot of information like this in the OP.  Also, I'll be happy to answer any questions that come up.

[BluarianKnight]

Anything for the ship-building part? Thanks.

[Draxis]

The manual's got a section, and here's a post by the developer with good information about design.

[BluarianKnight]

Alright. One more question. Does this require Multiplayer play? Or is there singleplayer/AI?

[Draxis]

There's no AI.

[BluarianKnight]

That stinks.
Also, creating a ship has its problems. Like when I try to connect two different charge disruptors with hull to my ship, one is red, and one is white. Red means disconnected to my belief. I don't know how to fix this.. or if I'm doing it wrong.

[Draxis]

You've got to fit the green spots on the item to the little colored hexes next to the hull; not every hex on an item is a connection point.  Also, any hull has to go in one continuous block - you can't have two hull sections connected by a component, or two L2 hull sections connected by L1 hull.  L1 hull connected by L2 hull is fine, though.  Either or those the problem?

[BluarianKnight]

It seems so? I tested it slightly and it seems to work. I'll comment again if it stops working..

[Toriad]

...

The first would give a good way to learn the game and evolve your designs, but the second would let you see how the game plays before doing the design - it's quite different than how most of the original players expected it.  ....

What would you recommend? Would it be better if we played a few matches with some pre-made designs, or would it be better if we tried our hand at designing some prototype-like ships and test them out against each other?

Also, how exactly does the multi-player work? Does it have a dedicated server where we all play together? or is it play-by-save files?

[Draxis]

I would say that in the long run, a deathmatch between any new players with ships of their own design would be best to start off; it runs the risk of someone having inferior designs and getting totally put out of the game for it, but at this point there are few enough players that I figure bringing in people who don't know the meta could easily find something nobody else has.

Multiplayer is play-by-web; the server generates a turn (.gam) file, which you download, feed into the game, and create an orders (.plr) file.  That is uploaded to the server, and once every player has uploaded orders, the server runs the next turn and makes a new .gam file.

[BluarianKnight]

That's interesting. I guess I better start making ships then!

[SuicideJunkie]

I've updated the DNS in the image links, so the play-by-play should be visible now.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131996.msg4701270#msg4701270

[Toriad]

Nice! I shall now carefully observe and replicate those designs! *cue evil laugh*

[SuicideJunkie]

As a consideration for deciding on your start settings, I really liked how the Fabthree game progressed, with a really nice curve from teeny drones to fighters, to light ships to battleships.

One medium fabricator per team was the income level that accomplished that.
The other thing that I now believe helped, was the fact that the bases were initially defenceless.

We all waited to save up for a few turns until somebody cracked and built a drone or missile.
Then the others had to build a light fighter to counter that, and then more/heavy fighters to counter that, and so on.

[Draxis]

It was a large fab, 4 small reactors, and 2 large spacedocks.

One thing that's good to know is that shift-s saves a screenshot of the window in both the ship designer and the game.  Unfortunately, it also saves the ship file in the shipdesigner, but it's handy for posting pictures of designs.