As the name implies, this is where ships can be created and edited.

In the upper right corner of this window there's a text box where you can choose a filename for the ship. The name itself is irrelevant, it's used internally by the engine but it doesn't appear in-game. It must be unique and shorter than 64 characters. Don't use special characters or punctuation that you wouldn't usually see in a filename like “à , . é ? *”. Keep that alphanumerical.

Once you're done choosing a name press the Add New button to get a blank new template for your ship.

Alternatively, you can use an existing ship as a template. To do so, select a ship in the drop down list in the top left and choose a new file name in the text box, but DO NOT press Add New in that case.

First and foremost you'll have to choose a sprite for the ship. The drop down list will display all the available sprites. If you want to add your own sprites to the game you'll have to put them in the following folder while the editor is closed:

[game installation folder]\data\sprites

Sprite must be in PNG format with a transparent background. The ship must be facing north.

That said, there's two important text boxes to fill: Display Width and Display Height. Those are the dimensions you want your image to be displayed at when the game is at a 1:1 zoom level. By default it's the size of the PNG, but it can be handy to change those settings if the source image is bigger than you want it to be.

Ship Name Must be relatively short to fit into the windows correctly. It's limited to 64 characters, you can use special characters.

Ship Description A longer description of the ship with its history and so on. Limited to 255 characters.

Ship Class It's mostly self explanatory. It's still important to note that only fighters and transports can dock at carriers, that only constructors can build stations and that only carriers will use their docked ships to defend themselves.

Equipment Max Size unused

Ware Used to Build it All standard races use “ShipPart” to build ships apart from the Core who has its own custom ship part (“CoreShipPart”). Basically that is a ware produced by a factory that will be used to limit a faction's military production. If you are making a custom faction with it's own custom factories and production logic this is something you may want to change.

Default Faction If set to none, any faction that can use 3rd party ships (pirates, humans, ISA, player) will be allowed to buy / build this kind of ship. If you set it to a particular faction, then, only this faction will be allowed to build it.

Weapon Slots The amount and size of weapons the ship can equip.

Shield Slots The amount and size of shields the ship can equip.

Equipment Slots Unused so far.

Armor Strength Total hit points the ship have

Cargo Space How much cargo the ship can hold

Price The average value at which the can be bought by a faction when its not producing it.

Battery Energy Maximum amount of energy the ship's battery can hold. Firing weapons and recharging the shield cost energy.

Battery Recharge Rate How much energy the ship gets back per second

Maximum Speed Self explanatory. A too high value (15+) may result in weird behaviors.

Acceleration same.

Turn Rate How fast a ship can turn (in °), mostly cosmetic, at least until proper hitboxes are implemented.

Brakes Unused so far. Acceleration is used instead.

Hangar bay size How many fighters this ship can hold in its hangars. In theory any ship class can have hangar bays, but it has only been tested for carriers and constructors so far.

Just press the Save Settings button at the bottom.

Assuming you have a developer build of the game, there's a handy Cheat menu available for you. Launch the game normally, wait for the game to load, and then press the cheat button at the bottom of the top left toolbar to get this window:

It's my internal debugging tools, and it's easy to crash the game from it. Anyway, you can notice a “Spawn Ship” box. Inside, select your ship (first box) by its filename, then select your faction (player), then to make things easier for you to locate it if you are in a busy sector, select the “protect me” order from the last box. Click spawn and close the window.

If everything goes well, a newly spawned ship should be heading to your position. If you want to fly it yourself, select it and press the “take over” shortcut key, which should be [E] by default.