These are some general guidelines for beginners.
Energy
Make sure your ship has enough power. A ship that runs low on power, can’t fire it’s weapons, which is bad.
You can calculate the per-second rate of fire of all your weapons, add them together, and calculate how many generators you need. … or just take your new ship for a spin, hold down all the weapons, and see if your energy bar drains away. If it does, you may need more generators.
If you have Shields equipped, you will need additional power. Shields use energy to recharge. If you don’t have enough extra energy to supply both weapons and shields, your weapons may stop firing as your shields try to come back online.
Generators and Shields Explode
These modules explode when they take damage. Protect them with armor, or place them in locations where they will cause minimum damage if they blow up.
They can also ‘chain-explode’, meaning the explosion radius from one generator hits a nearby generator and causes that one to explode as well.
Capacity
A ship can only carry as much R as it’s combined capacity. Add extra storage blocks if you intent to collect lots of R, or if your ship is equipped with a Factory.
If your ship is meant to collect lots of Resources, you can add blocks with the TRACTOR function. More harvester blocks will extend the range and speed that your ship can collect R.
Thrusters
Thrusters equal survival. They are just as essential as armor and shields.
When placing thrusters, keep in mind that the AI will try to move in all directions. If the thruster layout is wonky, the ship will not behave as intended.
Pay attention to the red arrow in the Constructor. This shows the center-point of the ship.
Turning thrusters work better if they are in front of the center-point. Reversing thrusters should not be behind the center-point.
Also, protect your thrusters if you can. If they get shot off, your ship becomes immobile.
Armor
Armor is cheaper than Shields. In most cases it does not cost P, and uses no energy.
The only drawback to using lots of armor is mass. Use more Thrusters to offset added mass. In most cases it will still be more cost-efficient than paying for Shields.
Weapon Bindings
Experiment with Weapon Bindings.
If you have too many weapons on Primary Fire, your ship may be taking lots of damage from incoming projectiles.
If you have too many weapons on Point-Defense, your ship may spend all it’s time attacking incoming missiles, and not enough time killing the enemy.
Make Back-ups
Especially when building large ships, export your ship periodically. If the game crashes, you don’t want to lose all the time invested in your blueprint.