Echoes of Elysium Airship Builder: Designing and Crewing Your First Ship
The airship is the entire game. Combat, exploration, resource gathering, even most movement happens from or with the airship, and the design of that ship determines whether your crew survives the second region or limps back to spawn looking for scrap. This guide walks through the builder fundamentals, a recommended first-ship design that works for a 1-3 player crew, and the co-op role structure that turns four players staring at the helm into a functioning crew.
How the Builder Works
The airship builder uses a modular grid system. You start with a core hull frame and attach modules: propulsion (engines, sails, balloons), helm, crew positions, weapon mounts, cargo bays, and decorative or functional rigging. Each module has a weight, an energy cost, and a placement constraint (some need exterior mount, some need interior, some need a specific facing).
Three rules that catch most new builders:
- Weight balance matters more than total weight. A symmetrical ship with 800kg flies better than a 600kg ship with all the weight on one side. Lopsided builds drift, list, and waste fuel.
- Power budget is real. Each propulsion and weapon module consumes power. Exceed your generator capacity and modules go offline. Plan generator placement before you place the weapons you want to feed.
- Crew positions are not interchangeable. A gunner station and a pilot station are different modules. You cannot fire from the helm and you cannot steer from the gun.
Your First Ship: Minimum Viable Design
For a 1-2 player crew in the opening regions, target this loadout:
- Hull: the smallest hull frame the builder offers. Bigger hulls are tempting because they fit more modules, but they consume more fuel, take more damage hits, and require more crew to operate effectively.
- Propulsion: one main engine plus one auxiliary sail. The auxiliary lets you keep moving when the engine takes damage.
- Helm: centered, with clear sight lines forward and down.
- Weapons: two light-mount guns on the front quarter. Avoid heavy weapons until you have a dedicated gunner.
- Cargo: one bay near the centerline. Loot weight changes the ship's balance; centering it keeps the ship trim.
- Generator: one mid-tier generator, placed away from external walls (less likely to be shot out).
- Crew positions: one helm, one repair station, one gunner. Skip the second gunner until you have a third crewmate.
This build flies stable, has redundant propulsion, fits a crew of 1-3, and weighs little enough that fuel costs stay manageable.
Co-op Crew Roles
EoE airships are crewed games at their best. A four-player crew split:
Pilot
Operates the helm. Responsible for course, altitude, evasion, and fuel management. The pilot has the worst situational awareness because the helm view is forward-locked, so the pilot depends entirely on the crew calling out threats. A good pilot communicates planned maneuvers ("rolling starboard", "diving") so the gunners can lead targets.
Gunner
Mans the weapon mounts. Each gun has its own arc; gunners need to know their arc and call out when a target is leaving it. Two gunners on a single ship should split arcs (one port, one starboard) rather than both chasing the same target.
Engineer
Manages repairs, fuel, and damaged modules. The engineer is the busiest role in combat because every hit to a critical module needs immediate attention or the ship loses capability. An engineer with the right tools can keep a battered ship in the fight long after a poorly-engineered one would have to disengage.
Scout / Boarder
For larger crews. The scout operates from a deployed grappling system or jump-down rope, doing exterior tasks, salvaging downed enemies, or boarding ground objectives the ship cannot directly engage. Optional for 1-3 player crews; essential for 4+.
Combat-Ready Builds
Once you outgrow the first ship, the combat-tier build introduces specialization:
- Armor priority on the propulsion side. Enemies almost always target engines first to disable mobility.
- Redundant generators. One generator hit equals dark weapons. Two generators (smaller each) make the ship harder to disable.
- Mixed weapon types. Sustained-fire light weapons for fighters, one heavy mount for capital targets. Pure heavy ships struggle against small fast targets.
- Repair stations inside, not outside. An engineer being shot mid-repair is an engineer who is dead.
- Escape options. A second exit (drop rope, escape pod, or rear hatch) gives the crew options if the ship is going down.
Resource Priorities
Copper is the most-asked-about resource ("echoes of elysium copper" is a recurring search), and for good reason: it gates the mid-game weapon tier and several propulsion upgrades. Copper deposits cluster in specific biomes; plan a copper-farming expedition as a dedicated trip rather than an opportunistic side stop.
Other resource priorities by stage:
- Early: wood, basic metals, sail cloth. Focus on hull repairability.
- Mid: copper, refined metals, mid-tier propulsion components.
- Late: rare biome resources, advanced weapon ammunition, generator upgrades.
The economy rewards specialization. A crew that decides "we are the copper crew this week" and runs three copper runs back-to-back makes faster progress than one that opportunistically gathers a little of everything.
Upgrading: Scrap or Iterate?
Two upgrade philosophies, both valid:
The Incremental Path
Keep the same hull, swap in better modules as you unlock them. Cheap, preserves crew muscle-memory for the ship layout, but eventually capped by the hull's max module count and weight limit.
The Scrap-and-Rebuild Path
Every 5-10 hours, scrap the entire ship and rebuild from current resource availability. Expensive but uncapped. A crew that scraps and rebuilds twice usually ends up with a noticeably better ship by hour 20.
The hybrid most experienced crews actually use: iterate within a hull, scrap when you outgrow the hull, then iterate again on the new one.
Co-op Etiquette
Small things that prevent crew arguments:
- Designate the captain. Not the best pilot necessarily, but the person who calls strategic decisions (which region to head to, when to retreat). Without a captain, votes deadlock mid-combat.
- Helm handoffs are deliberate. Pilots do not switch mid-fight. The pilot finishes the maneuver or the engagement, then hands off cleanly.
- Loot priorities agreed in advance. Who gets the next weapon upgrade? Who gets the new helmet? Decided before a fight, not during the loot screen.
- One designated builder. Multiple players editing the ship builder simultaneously is asking for inconsistencies. One person commits design changes; others suggest.
Server-Side Considerations for Crew Servers
For groups planning more than a few sessions, a dedicated server changes the dynamic. Ship state, crew progress, and discovered regions persist between sessions, which means your crew can rotate (Sunday crew of three, Wednesday crew of two, same ship) without losing progress. Setup specifics are in our dedicated server setup guide; multiplayer-specific player-slot tuning is in our player slots and performance guide.
Two server settings matter for crewed airships:
- Persistent crew permissions. Without this, every session re-prompts permission assignments for every player.
- Ship save backup interval. Airship designs are time-intensive; losing a build to a server crash is morale-killing. See our save backup guide for the recommended interval.
Common Mistakes
- Overbuilding the first ship. A 12-module ship for a 2-player crew is just unused weight.
- Ignoring weight balance. A lopsided ship handles poorly forever.
- One generator, all weapons. One hit dark.
- Helm without sight lines. The pilot needs to see what they're flying into.
- No repair station. Combat damage outpaces what you can fix manually.
- All-heavy weapons. Small enemies outmaneuver heavy-mount-only ships.
Ready to Crew Up?
Building an airship is the easy part. Keeping a crew of three or four flying the same ship across multiple sessions, with progress preserved, requires the server to be online when any one of you wants to play. Supercraft Echoes of Elysium hosting ships with 24/7 uptime, automatic ship-save backups, and the multi-player persistence that crewed airship games depend on. Your captain stays the captain, your engineer keeps their kit, and your ship is exactly where you left it.