Subscribe to download
Fury & Fortitude (Railkite Multi-Ship Concept Demo)

By building a rail-kite as 2 separate ships, we can use M.R.T thrusters on a railkite to devestating effect. Here is a video of it tearing apart a massive enemy fleet with a balanced composition: https://youtu.be/FZcdTqeoyaA

Assembly Demo: https://youtu.be/3l4thULlkCM
NOTE ON ASSEMBLY!!!: There is now a bug that didn't exist when I made the video where you have to replace the blueprint of each ship part twice in order for supply lines to appear correctly. The ship won't work without properly assigned supply lines.





TLDR: big thruster make big ship go zoom, big ship go zoom = hard to kill.
The power of the MRTs allows the multi-ship to mount more, bigger railguns, a massive battery of EMP launchers, and ion beam secondaries as powerful as those of dedicated ion capital ships, while still maintaining a high max speed. (The ion beams are necessary because simply increasing the speed without doing so leaves the multi-ship weak against a fast enemy resistant to close range railgun fire, e.g. a Sadalmelik with upgraded engines).

The idea behind this particular multi-ship is that the extra speed and firepower lets it outrun or outgun anything that can chase it down, meaning it has all the strengths of a railkite without most of the weaknesses. Even enemy railgun ships don't truly counter it; the speed afforded by the M.R.Ts and the firepower of 6 extended railguns lets the multi-ship pick conventional rail-kites apart one at a time.

Hopefully, this multi-ship inspires other multi-ship archetypes that might be good.
This is the first (pair of) ship(s) I've painted from scratch, so please give critiques/alternative paintjobs!

Assembly Instructions:
1) Build the "Scaffold" blueprint
2) Detonate the 2 rearmost explosive charges
3) Open build menu for the rear section, and "Replace Existing" with the "Fury" blueprint, making sure you check all the boxes in the ensuing context menu
3.5) Repeat step 3. There is a bug where the first time you do replacement it won't carry the supply lines over, but replacing the blueprint twice seems to fix it.
4) Open build menu for the forward section, and "Replace Existing" with the "Fortitude" blueprint, making sure you check all the boxes in the ensuing context menu
4.5) Repeat step 4. There is a bug where the first time you do replacement it won't carry the supply lines over, but replacing the blueprint twice seems to fix it.
5) Disable the checkbox settings -> gameplay -> enable collision avoidance so that the ship doesn't derp out
6) The ship is made for railfanning so railguns are set to fire at my target only by default, but you may wish to set them to fire at will depending on the situation or if you don't feel like railfanning.
7) You can now fly both ships by controlling "Fury" as usual! See tips (especially tip #1) for how to operate the multi-ship, as multi-ships handle slightly differently than conventional ships.

Stats:
Total Cost: 6.2 M, 860 crew
Weapons: 6x 246% railguns (full uptime), 20x factory loaded emp launchers, 2x2^4 ion beams
Armor: 20-30 layers of lightweight anti-pen armor + 2-30 layers of solid armor front, 2-3 layers of lightweight anti-pen/anti-nuke armor sides. Sides are rated to stop 6 nukes hitting the same spot and <= 200% railgun shots at 90 degrees (they can stop a lot more at steeper angles), but are not very durable.
Shield Strength: Averages ~75k dps in the front

Tips:
1) The autopilot for "Fury" doesn't seem to account for the mass of "Fortitude", leading to it firing thrusters later than it should when changing directions. Therefore, when fighting non-railgun ships, it is best to set the initial engagement range extra long and then closing the engagement range when you get closer to the enemy. Otherwise, if the enemy ship is fast enough you risk letting it get off a salvo or two before you get back out of its range.
2) Unfortunately, a tile only needs to be adjacent to a tile belonging to another ship to count as obstructed. If a part occupying one of those tiles needs repairs, either delete it instead or reassemble the ship at the space station (deconstruct "Fortitude", replace "Fury" with "Scaffold", and repeat the assembly process). If "Fortitude" gets cut in half, it still works fine as long as both halves are still solidly locked in place with "Fury", but if it jiggles in flight at all you will have to reassemble the ship.
3) If some hypothetical ship is chasing you down and it looks like it can both catch and kill you, select both ships and press 5 to select a set of explosive charges. Detonate those charges to jettison the armor and hopefully get away. This only works when moving backwards.
4) "Fortitude" has some extra storage for sulfur/iron/copper, so in safe spots between combats you can transfer some of that over to "Fury" if your running low on ammo.