Yes, this is yet another guide to "how make ship go zoom," and to be honest is mainly a spot for me to keep track of tips and tricks I've learned from building as I go through the game. Most of the information here is probably repeated in the other guides on Steam, but hopefully organized in a way to allow for quick Referencing.

The primary blocks for forward movement are none other than the Engine block and the Inertia Dampener block.

Engine blocks:

• Produce 20MN of force per unit volume.
  
• Higher tier materials only decrease power used.
  
• Iron engines are the least efficient in terms of produced force versus added mass.
  
• Trinium engines are the most efficient.
  
• Only contributes to forward acceleration, and does not contribute to rotation.
  
• Changes in speed and acceleration logarithmicly are less per unit volume.
  
• Listed acceleration in the build menu is the acceleration when afterburner is on.
  
• Requires Engineers.

Inertia Dampeners:

• Produce about 54MN of force per unit volume
  
• Is only available for Iron and Avorion.
  
• Avorion dampeners produce about 100MN of force per unit volume.
  
• Provides brake force for every direction, but only when stopping or going against retrograde.
  
• Don't require engineers.

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The blocks for lateral (left/right and up/down) and backwards movement are the Thruster and Directional Thruster blocks.

Thrusters (Omnidirectional):

• Produce 15MN of force per unit volume
  
• Higher tier materials only decrease power used.
  
• Iron thrusters are the least efficient in terms of produced force versus added mass.
  
• Trinium thrusters are the most efficient.
  
• Provide lateral and reverse movement in addition to rotational movement (more on that in the next section)
  
• Divides the total available force among the 3 directions according the the surface area of the face normal to the respective axis. (Larger face = more force, smaller face = less force)
  
• Require engineers, but at a less rate than Engine blocks.

Directional Thrusters:

• Produce 12.5MN of force per unit volume.
  
• Higher tier materials only decrease power used.
  
• Iron thrusters are the least efficient.
  
• Trinium thrusters are the most efficient.
  
• Provide lateral or reverse movement according to which direction it is facing.
  
• Provides less total force than a Omni thruster but are far easier to control amount of force in a particular direction.
  
• Don't require engineers.

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Thrusters automatically assist in turning to reduce "sliding" and do not need to have the respective key pressed down to fire. The Inertia dampeners likewise assist but only when the desired movement vector is close to the retrograde vector (they only fire when you're trying to go almost exact opposite direction the ship is currently sliding in).

An interesting note about thrusters is that they don't contribute to forward velocity at all, but do still provide braking force. They can be used instead of inertia dampeners but will require about 4x as much volume to achieve the same effect.

Omni thrusters divide their available thrust according to the surface area of each block:
(x = left/right, y = top/bottom, z = forward/back)

T_x = Area_yz / Area_total * Thrust
T_y = Area_xz / Area_total * Thrust
T_z = Area_xy / Area_total * Thrust

Where:
T is the thrust in the given direction
Area is the area of the block (example: y * z)
Area_total is (Area_yz + Area_xz + Area_xy)
Thrust = 15MN * volume of the block

Omni thrusters can be manipulated by carefully merging cubes together into rectangular prisms to tune the amount of thrust for a given axis. This tends to be rather inconvenient for more intricate ship designs, and reduces the advantage of having redundancy in case thruster blocks are getting destroyed.

Directional thrusters are far more convenient to tune a specific axis, but produce less force per volume than what an Omni thruster can provide. Their saving grace, in this regard, is that they don't require more engineers.

For controlling rotational movement, there are Gyro Arrays, Thrusters, and Directional Thrusters.

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Gyro Arrays:

• Provide rotational force (torque) in a specified direction.
  
• Provide a strong amount of torque per unit volume vs. Thrusters.
  
• Consume much more power than a respective Thruster for the same amount of torque.
  
• Very convenient to tune a specific direciton.
  
• Perform worse the further they are from the ships center of mass (which is also the center of rotation)
  
• Higher material tiers affect torque, power efficiency, and power consumed per block. (More power is consumed for same volume, but more torque/MW is provided)
  
• Max rotational velocity is a function of the torque, similar to Engines vs. max velocity. (Effectiveness reduces as gyro block volume increases)

Thruster (Directional and Omnidirectional) Blocks:

• Provide rotational force according to their distance away from the ship's center of mass. (Further away from center of mass = more torque)
  
• Rotational Performance may be affected when the thruster is being used for braking.
  
• Don't get as bad of a performance hit as gyros when the ship is scaled up.

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Section summary:

• There are many factors that prevent large ships from being agile.
  
• Thrusters don't lose as much performance when uniform scaling the ship up, up to a certain point.
  
• Gyro arrays are comparatively lightweight to thrusters, so there may be some point on ship scale where gyro arrays perform better than thrusters in terms of mass (but are still worse in terms of volume).

Thrusters produce torque as a function of block volume and distance from the center of rotation. Because of this, they don't suffer as bad of a performance hit as gyros do when the ship is scaled up. As the ship is scaled up, the thrusters produce more force and are put at a further distance away, which both increase the amount of torque.

Mathematical Illustration:
Torque = Thrust * d
Thrust = block volume * C
Torque = (s*x)(s*y)(s*z) * C * (s*d)
Torque = s^4 * (x*y*z) * C * d

d = distance away from the axis of rotation
s = a scalar between 50% and 200%
C = Thruster constant, either 15MN or 12.5MN

This equation doesn't include the game's "space resistance" which counteracts the available force from thrusters as they scale up. It does however illustrate the effect of scaling the ship.

Where forward and lateral movement has mass counteracting the force provided by the engines and thrusters, rotational movement has moment of inertia[en.wikipedia.org], or the "rotational equivalent" of mass. This essentially subtracts from the torque provided by thrusters and gyros so that the remainder is the rotational acceleration that the ship actually obtains. Like with thrusters, the moment of inertia is affected by s^4.

Since gyros only increase their torque by block size (and thus s^3) they become less effective per unit volume as does their equivalent in thrusters.

About that space resistance...
There is, unfortunately, more to the story. As with engines, thrusters have a maximum speed to them. As the thrusters are pushed further out away from the center of rotation, they will eventually hit their speed limit and won't be able to achieve a high rad/s. The space resistance, however, is not limited and will still apply.

Additionally, the indicated "rad/s" appears to be more accurately "revolutions per second" but there are player reports that the maximum turning rate is related to the game's frames per second, meaning getting an accurate mathematical model based on observation is difficult.

The observed torque, or more accurately rotational acceleration, appears to be a function of the maximum rotational speed of the thrusters, and since the thrusters have a speed limit this means their is a limit to the rotational acceleration as well.

Relationship between gyro arrays and the ship's rad/s
Theoretically the gyro arrays mimic real-life arrays which are a number of reaction wheels: massive cylinders that are spun by an electric motor in order to produce a torque on the ship due to Newton's Third Law of motion[en.wikipedia.org]. Their top rotational speed is due to frictional losses, performance of the electric motor, and safety operation windows to prevent the reaction wheel assembly from destroying itself.

Gyro arrays can be said to posses a finite amount of change in momentum, or delta L, which can be used to more easily understand the relationship between the ship's moment of inertia and its top rad/s when using gyros. In summary:

I = (delta L) / w
w = delta L / I

where:
I = Ship's moment of inertia (calculated by the sum of all block's individual momenta of inertia)
delta L = sum of all gyro array blocks potential change in momentum
w = rotational speed rad/s

Again, this equation is before space resistance is taken into account.

Here is a table of delta L vs. material. All values are based on a 1x1x1 gyro block used to rotate a wheel-like test ship. (version 2.0)

Why do gyro arrays perform worse further away from the axis of rotation?
This is because their mass and radius to the axis of rotation get added to the rotational dynamics equation. If the gyro array is centered exactly on axis of rotation, then their mass doesn't contribute. Note that the gyro can be very large and still be "canceled out" should it be exactly centered.

Before moving on to talking about them we should first touch upon the importance of the snap grid.

The most used snap grid modes are Middle and Local modes, followed by Global and Voxel.

Middle Snap mod will attempt to place the middle of the block that you're placing down onto the middle of the block that your mouse is hovering over.

Local Snap mode will place down an invisible snap grid on the face of the block you're hovering over, with the origin of this grid centered around the block's center.

Global snap mode will also place down an invisible snap grid, but will use the root block's middle as the origin.

Lastly, Voxel snap chooses the corner of the block as the grid origin.

Selection of the grid size is important because when trying to align stuff together for intricate curves and the like, it makes it tons easier. The smallest unit the grid can go is 0.001 unit, but I recommend powers of 2 since its easy to scale up by 200% or down by 50% and be at the next power of two. These are: 0.125, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8.

When building up your ship's hull HP, the blocks to use are Hull, Smart Hull, and Armor blocks. This section also touches on the importance of Framework blocks and Integrity Generators.

Hull Blocks:
Used to fill out the ship's HP and for aesthetics without increasing the processing power of the ship. Use these blocks to tune down a ship's slot number to make it available for a particular material tech grade.


Smart Hull Blocks:
Use these blocks to fill out your hull's aesthetics while increasing the processing power a bit.

Armor Blocks:
These should be applied immediately around your functional tech blocks (engines, generators, thrusters, etc.) to protect them from damage. Armor blocks stop railgun projectiles from penetrating through to the underlying techblocks, and are highly recommended for late and end-game operations.

Since armor blocks are the third heaviest block, it is recommended to make a comparatively thin shell of armor that is essentially shrinkwrapped around the vulnerable innards. I've seen recommendations of 1u thickness for armor of end-game vessels, with mid-game being between 0.25 to 0.5 thickness.

To minimize the effect that armor has on the flight dynamics, it is recommended to have a convex shape as much as possible to reduce the amount of nooks and crannies that the armor has to shrinkwrap around.

Armor blocks should also be used for aesthetic scaffolding parts that bits of the ship use to attach to each other or the main hull of the ship. The theory here is that, should the scaffolding get destroyed, it will instantly destroy everything that was attached to it as if it were deleted with safe-mode off in the Building mode.


Framework
Framework (also called Scaffolding) blocks are widely used as placeholders for technical blocks inside of a ship's hull or armor plating. End users of the ship can then filter their view for the framework so they can easily convert the framework into the desired tech block without needing to cut into the ship's hull to expose the internals.

I often use framework as temporary blocks to help align other structural blocks to a particularly tricky area where the grid snaps fail to adequately do the job, I also use framework as a quick way to keep pieces of hull from auto-destructing when a supporting member is being cut away and replaced.

Framework blocks are also useful for aesthetics and intentional breakaways. Some ship builders also favor using framework as primary hull blocks in conjunction with integrity generators to make an extremely lightweight ship design.


Integrity Generators:
Integrity generators are an essential addition to the hull, before shields become available. For a relatively minor amount in power costs they can increase the survivability of the ship by reducing the damage taken by blocks within its field of influence to 25%.

Integrity gens differ from shield generators in that they have a box-like field of influence that is a function of the integrity generator's dimensions. Larger integrity generators have a comparitively larger volume field than multiple smaller integrity generators of the same volume (One 2x2x2 integrity generator has a larger field than 8 integrity gens bunched together).

A common practice is to have many smaller integrity gens evenly spread out across the inside of the ship, just inside the armor shell. This is less efficient power wise but ensures redunancy of the integrity generators -- should some of the smaller gens get destroyed, the other generators are still protecting the ship.

Alternatively, builders can have a few large integrity generators deep inside the ship to cover the entire ship in a few, larger fields. This is better power wise but a well placed railgun strike or two can make the entire ship vulnerable.

A balance between the two practices is also an option.

Shield generators:
Shield HP is only affected by total volume of the shield generator blocks, and is not affected by its geometry like the omni thrusters are. As with everything, try to build essential tech blocks close to the center of rotation to reduce the amount of added moment of inertia. Having the shield blocks seperated from each other by a fair distance theoretically makes them less likely to be all taken out by a lucky cannon or railgun shot.

Stone, Rich Stone, Super Rich Stone:
Late and End-game ships predominantly use Tesla and Lightning Cannons. These are absurdly strong turrets, especially against technical blocks as of 2.2, and can be difficult to defend against.

Since stone is immune to electric, a common tactic is to make a very-thin venier of stone on top of the armor layer (or vice versa).

Stone however is also extremely heavy, and is rarely seen thicker than 0.5 units.

Building a ship for agility largely boils down to how well you can place your thrusters and how smartly you can merge omni thrusters or place directional thrusters to tune a specific rotational axis.

Placement of omnithrusters can provide all axes of rotation with just 3 blocks in a triangle shape or 4 blocks in a rectangle shape, at the extreme end of your ship's design. Horizontal plane is the most common for airplane-like ships while vertical plane is more attractive to boat-like ships.

Early game low-cost ships can get away with only one or two omnithruster blocks for the rotation by making use of stone blocks to move the center of mass away from the centerline of the omni thruster. Also, very thin omni thrusters may be used as the wings of a dart-like ship to get decent pitch and roll while providing up/down braking ability.

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Building a ship for speed is mainly from how many engine blocks you are willing to slap into your ship. Having an equal acceleration and decelleration rating is as easy as having the volume of inertia dampeners be roughly 1/3 that of engines, although keep in mind that the dampeners only fire when trying to thrust towards retrograde or otherwise have hands off the any of the thrust/throttle keys. Combat craft instead may be more interested in using cubes of omnithrusters to provide the braking force, but be advised cubed omni thrusters are about 1/11th as effective as iron dampeners.

Civilian craft (miners and freighters) may be more interested in stopping than going fast since they'll largely be doing maneuvers around asteroids and other ships at safe speeds. At the most, they'll be jumping out of sector and out of harms way.

End-game (Ogonite, Avorion) ship agility seems to average around 0.3 rads/s and tends to lean towards high HP, high DPS, and long range builds.

Mid to Late-game ships (Trinium, Xanion) seem to average around 1 to 1.5 rad/s and tend to lean towards fast and agile ships that can quickly close into and out of range for the chainguns, bolters, and plasmas while dodging the cannon fire.

Early to Mid-game ships (Iron, Titanium, Naonite) seem to lean towards a balance of 1:2 of hull HP and shield HP. 0.5 to 1 rad/s is acceptable but burst speeds to dart out of range of chaingun fire and evade the slower pirate ships.

The dimensions of an interstellar gate (or just simply known as a Gate) are roughly 100x100, but the max dimensions it'll let a ship through is around 98x98. Since 96 is a product of a factor of two (96 = 32*3) a maximum frontal silhouette of 96x96 may be desirable.

Similarly, the bounding box size for docking blocks is roughly 60x60. Since there is a fair bit of different between the docking lane's size and the Gate's size, you may want to design mid- to mid-late game stations to be able to service the larger 96x96 vessels.

As stated before these are observations and tidbits that I've picked up from experience and by scouring the Avorion Fandom Wiki[avorion.fandom.com]. I'll try to update them as I learn more about the game and as the game is updated.