Ship Loadout Guide
I've seen a couple ship loadout guides but all of those that I am aware of felt inadequate in some way, such as not being comprehensive enough, not carrying enough info, or simply being outdated. So here's my stab at it. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion. Stuff can work even if you don't follow this guide to a T.
This guide also assumes you understand the basics of the game. If you don't, I would recommend GrumpyThumper's explanations of the mechanics on Youtube, or Rubi's guide.
Seeing the refit screen for the first time may be a bit daunting but there are really only three things you need to worry about.
Those are:
Flux Weapons HullmodsOnce you understand these it's basically only a matter of balancing them to get a good loadout that hits all the points you need.
FluxLet's start with the simplest one: Flux.
Flux has two components to it. Vents and Caps.
Most ships want to be maxing out vents. This is so that they can fire their weapons without fluxing out. Flux is a bit of a tricky concept, because some ships live and die based on their flux neutrality, and others simply don't care. For the ships that do care, which is most ships, you want your flux dissipation to be equal to or slightly less than the combination of your forward facing flux and shield flux.
On many ships, not all of your weapons will be firing all the time. Some don't have converging areas of fire, are PD, or have guns facing other directions. Guns that do not face the enemy, such as the conquest's opposite broadside shouldn't be counted for forward facing flux.
Sometimes you may feel it is necessary to allow your ship to be overfluxed. This gives you more OP to play with, but you may be unable to fire weapons or use shields to tank. It's personal preference just how risky you want the ship to be. You should keep flux in mind while fitting weapons as well, and make sure not to put more points into vents than necessary.
735 + 80 = 815 so in an ideal world you want flux dissipation that is a bit under this amount. However, you may not have the base vent necessary to be flux neutral, or you may be prioritising something else. Being overfluxed is a lot like taking damage as you fire your weapons. If your ship is reliant on it's shields, this can be a slippery slope, because you may not have shields once you start getting hit.
There are exceptions to the rule of vents. Capitals tend to be overfluxed by default, as they usually have more weapons than flux. They also have enough flux capacity that they can fire weapons for a while despite being overfluxed, and they tend not to fire all their weapons at the same time. Assault ships and shieldless ships can also afford to be overfluxed. Assault ships such as SO ships try to overwhelm their enemy in a short time, so you won't get much time to vent flux, and you want to focus on this aspect. Shieldless ships do not worry as much about flux as they only need it for their guns. If a shieldless ship can comfortably fire its weapons for a while, you can afford to even completely ignore vents. This is also a reason why shield shunt can be useful.
Capacitors help your ship to be tankier, and are the best way to boost your ship's shield tanking capabilities. They can be an alternative to vents, but you should avoid resorting to this if possible.
The exception to the vents over caps rule is phase ships as they vent soft flux while in phase and want capacity to stay in phase for as long as possible. However, this guide won't discuss fitting of phase ships specifically
because they are cringe because I don't play with them much.
Hullmods Affecting WeaponsThese hullmods are special as they change the ranges of the ship they are installed on. Range in starsector is king. If you outrange someone, you can do damage to them but they can't do it to you. If two ships have equal speed but one ship has greater range, the one with greater range will win every time.
ITU/DTC 
ITU and DTC both increases ballistic and energy range based on base range. You should use ITU over DTC because DTC is just a worse version of ITU. ITU should be put on most ships that aren't SO.
Ballistic Rangefinder 
Ballistic Rangefinder, or BRF increases the ranges of small ballistics: +100 normally and +200 if the ship has a large ballistic. If this is the case it also increases base medium ballistic range by 100
This hullmod increases base range, meaning it works with ITU/DTC and can allow weapons which normally do not mix well to mix well.
You want to use this hullmod with small weapons that can have their range bumped up to match the range of other weapons.
Note that Rangefinder doesn't work on hybrid, composite, or universal slots with ballistics in them.
Safety Overrides 
Safety Overrides (or SO) massively overhauls a ship, and completely changes what weapons you want. It increases venting, which lets you use higher flux weapons without issue. It also increases speed and maneuverability, which makes up for the low range, because you can get close to an enemy to negate their range advantage. You want to use this hullmod in conjunction with low range weapons, as those tend to be stronger, and leverage the buffs this hullmod gives, while not suffering from the range cut.
600 range weapons like Heavy Blaster or Ion Pulser count as "SO Weapons" because are not high range enough to be used effectively with ITU, and have extremely high flux costs which makes them hard to use without SO.
WeaponsThese are the three main things you want to keep in mind for weapons which are not PD (point defence) or missiles, in descending order of importance:
Range Anti Armor and Anti Shield FluxAll of these are important, and you should try to tick all of these boxes, but the ones on top are more important than the ones below.
RangeIn most scenarios, you want all weapons on a ship to have the same or similar range. For instance, putting a 1000 range gun and a 450 range gun on the same ship is bad. The exception is PD and missiles.
The reason you match ranges like this is twofold. For one, not doing this screws with the AI, as they will not know which weapon range to use and will flail around helplessly. This goes for all AI types. It also has a practical effect. Weapons are balanced to be effective at their respective ranges. A Hypervelocity Driver is balanced to be good at 1000 range with its stats nerfed to compensate. If you take it into 450 range use, it will be less effective compared to a 450 range gun. Conversely, If you stay at 1000 range while having a 450 range gun, the 450 range gun won't even see use. Keep your ranges matched.
This is bad. The Hypervelocity Driver on the right has 1000 range while Assault Chaingun on the left has 450 range. Don't do this.
This is good. The Hypervelocity Driver on the right has 1000 range just like Heavy Mauler on the left which also has 1000 range. Match weapons like this.
A range mismatch of 100 range is acceptable, such as a Heavy mortar combined with a heavy Autocannon. However, range mismatches of 200 are usually not, such as with a Heavy Autocannon with a heavy mauler.
A weapon like the Light Autocannon, which normally has 700 range, would be best used together with 700 or 800 range weapons (not 600 range weapons as these tend to be more for SO weapons). However, with BRF, the range jumps up to 900, meaning it is only 100 off from weapons like Heavy Mauler, meaning one can use the two together. Another option to pair with Heavy Maulers if you have BRF would be the Heavy Autocannons, which are bumped to 900 range.
As previously discussed, weapons with low range and high damage should be used on SO builds. These can be devastating if used right, despite their low range. Light machineguns, light dual machine guns, and heavy machine guns are used as damage weapons, because despite being tagged as PD, they deal a lot of efficient kinetic damage. This is not to say that low range weapons cannot be used on non-SO ships. The machine gun line can act as a good defence weapon, while assault chainguns can work as anti-fighter.
I said that weapons should have the same range, but sometimes there may be a higher range option that is just better. For instance, autopulse lasers can be used together with tachyon lances or high intensity lasers because the autopulse's high anti-shield works very well with the other weapon's amazing anti armor. Another example would be Heavy Needlers and Heavy Maulers, as Heavy Maulers are so good they can outdo the Needler's normal 700 range companion: the Heavy Mortar. Even when not utilizing it's full range the Heavy Mauler outperforms the Heavy Mortar. This rule applies when the weapons being mismatched combo very well together, and they also outdo the lower range weapons even when they do not make full use of their range.
Anti Armor and Anti ShieldYou want to mix anti armor and anti shield weapons so that your dps is not bottlenecked by one. Note that I did not say "high explosive and kinetic damage". This is due to hit strength mechanics which means a weapon can be anti armor/shield despite not doing HE/kinetic damage.
Note that fragmentation damage is mostly a PD damage type. There are exceptions to that rule - Thumper and SUPER REDACTED weapon. However, most fragmentation damage in vanilla is relegated to PD duty.
An example of this damage type mixing is a Heavy Blaster vs the Ion Pulser
Due to armor damage calculations, high damage/hit does more to armor, even if DPS is equal. The Heavy Blaster has high damage/hit, so it does high damage to armor. Shield damage does not take damage per hit into account. Therefore the Ion Pulser's extremely high DPS serves it well against shields.
The Heavy Blaster has such good damage/hit that it even outclasses HE weapons such as the Assault Chaingun against armor, which does double its DPS at base!
Because of hit strength calculations, small non-missile weapons tend to have bad anti armor capabilities. Don't count on them for anti armor (except the AMB). The embodiment of this is the Light Assault Gun, which does pitiful anti armor damage despite being HE.
This is good, as the anti armor is handled by the medium slots with high dmg/hit, while anti shield is handled by the smalls.
This is bad, as the anti armor is handled by the low damage/shot smalls, and anti shield by the higher damage/shot weapons.
FluxNot gonna go into depth much here, as it was already mentioned previously under the "Flux" section above. Sometimes you want to change your weapons to have lower flux, as opposed to putting points into flux. This is especially useful as lower flux weapons tend to also have lower OP costs, freeing up a lot of OP.
As an example of replacing a high flux weapon with a lower flux one, you might consider replacing a Railgun with a Light Autcannon. They have the same damage type and range, but the LAC has far lower flux gain.
Some ships are going to be overfluxed no matter how hard you try. This is why it's at the bottom of the list in terms of importance. Don't compromise on the other two for flux. However, you can leave some slots empty if it means you can meet the other two points without compromising on flux.
Another thing to keep in mind is flux efficiency, which is how much damage a weapon does per flux spent on it. Lower flux efficiency means that you can fire for longer, fire more weapons, and do more damage when you overflux. An LAC has far better flux efficiency than a railgun, which means even though you "lose" dps (the railgun does more dps), you keep your shield strength, and in the long run are going to do more damage because your ship stays alive for longer, and does more damage when overfluxed.
Note on Mining blasters:
don't use them. ever.An aside on broadsides (heh)
A broadside ship is a ship that has guns on it's side, instead of near the front like many ships have. Such ships should have guns on the broadside that you will point to the enemy and only PD on the other side.
An aside on missilesYou should put missiles in most slots that can hold a missile. This includes missile slots (which you can't really go wrong with filling with missiles) but also composite, synergy, and universal slots. The reason for this is that missiles are generally higher value than other weapon type. However, there are some ships where this rule should not be followed. Namely ballistic weapons on ships which want the upsides that ballistic weapons give (range and specific antishield/anti armor), or to slot AMBs. However, fitting every slot that can hold a missile with a missile is still generally a good rule to keep in mind if you do not know of the outliers.
If you don't have the space to fit missiles, for instance in the lower impact small slots, don't worry! Low OP cost missiles like double sabots exist to save the day!
You also want to keep similar ideas in mind as with the other weapons, such as range and damage type. Try to use missiles for whose damage type you are missing; eg. use sabots if your guns are mostly anti armor and you need some anti shield.
Also keep range in mind just like your guns. Use harpoons or pilums on medium missile slots if your guns are 900-1000 base range with ITU on top of that.
Don't use both sizes of breaches. Some people like them, but I'm gonna go out and say it. They are bad.
Also generally don't use the medium salamanders, except on ships with fast missile racks that like to stay far from other ships, as they can abuse the infinite ammo.
All the other missiles are good or at least have use cases.
An aside on PDPD was not mentioned in the above section because it is not as nuanced as the other types. Generally you want to use the good pd weapons in the good spots.
The good pd weapons are: Vulcans, Flak Cannons, Dual Flak Cannons, Devastator Cannons, and Burst PD
LRPD and PD Lasers are alright and can be used instead of burst pd if you can mass them or if you have ITU on a capital.
Mining lasers are a cheap alternative to Burst PD if you don't want to spend so much OP.
Heavy Burst PD and Paladin PD are bad. Burst PD because it's just terrible. Paladin PD is actually extremely good, but it takes up a large energy slot. Paladin PD can be used on one special redacted ship though.
If you have the choice of using small PD and medium/large damage weapons, or medium/large PD and small weapons, you should use the smalls as PD slots because of the higher damage/hit that larges have, as well as the tendency for vanilla small pd to be more efficient than medium or large PD.An Aside on FightersThe same rules of anti armor and anti shield apply to these discount mobile weapon mounts as well.
If you only ever use these fighters, then you can never really go wrong. (Make sure to still match damage types.) Daggers are better than tridents because they move faster, meaning they can have faster bombing runs, meaning they do higher dps. Their OP cost also aligns better with the OP breakpoints that most vanilla carriers want. They are better than the other HE bombers because they have guided missiles. Longbows have recharging sabots. Nuff said. Broadswords are just crazy. Extremely tanky, high dps, has flares, fast, cheap. It's got everything.
These are also good in specific use cases. Xyphos is great on battlecarriers (carriers that engage enemies directly), as they basically give you 2 mediums and 2 PD weapons for extremely cheap. However, they can't be set to engage enemies. They make up for this by having 1200 range ion beams, but this still means they can only affect up to 1200 range. Plan accordingly if using these. Thunders have extremely high engagement range, extremely high speed, and do every single damage type in the game (except frag but who really cares about frag). This makes them the most self sufficient type of fighter. They can easily be used to harass enemy ships and be a real threat to them. However, they aren't gonna remove ships from existence like a lot of other fighters do. This puts it into more of an auxiliary/support role than a normal fighter.
Don't get me wrong. Other fighters are still usable. But there generally is no real reason to use them over these five fighters, which do everything you could want.
For if you know you are gonna be fighting stations. These mess stations up due to their extremely high damage/bombing run. But they suck vs anything else because they couldn't hit the fatter side of Jangala.
These fighters are all great candidates on ships with the Converted Hangar hullmod. Talons and Mining Pods can also be used if you can't find the OP to fit real fighters.
HullmodsThe last part I wanna talk about: hullmods. These are pretty important and can drastically change the way a ship plays. However, I can't really give you a go to rule on these, as they are so diverse and can be used in so many ways. Instead I'll just give you a couple important hullmods and a couple hullmod combos to get your brain juices swirling.
Remnants Hate Him! 
For use against remnants. A staple, as it ruins the two main damage types that remnants use. Warranty not protected against reaper swarm.
My Face is My Shield 
The hullmod combo for armor/hulltanking. Gives you such a stupid amount of protection that you don't need shields. Therefore it can be combined with shield shunt for the ultimate brick wall. Heavy Armor and Bulkheads are great candidates for S-modding. Does not include Blast Doors because it isn't an efficient hullmod. Also crew lives don't matter. Just bring more crew.
Is this a tournament??? 
The two missile hullmods. You can use either, or both, or none. EMR is a great candidate for S-modding
OPTIMAAAAAAL 
Not actually optimal, but these two are the only two hullmods you need to make any SO build work.
But Muh Flux 
For when the flux stats are not enough. Note that Flux Distributor and Flux Coil Adjunct only give 75% of their OP cost in vent/cap points. Only use these two if you are at max vents/caps.
Carriers Love Him 
Makes your good carrier into a gooder carrier. Most dedicated carriers should use this.
Newbie Sighted 
Stop using these on your combat ships. It's not efficient. You lose a lot more time or supplies if your ship blows up because it has 130 less OP than it should have, although there is an argument to be made about efficiency overhaul making repair times faster so you can do more fights.
Missiles Scare Me 
Usually not all that good. These are all the PD related hullmods. Combine with ITU for if you are terrified of reapers.
Funniiiiii 
Combine with low dp spammable destroyers for a low budget fighter swarm. No carriers needed!
Phase Ship Beginner Guide 
I said I wouldn't talk about phase ships. I lied. These are generally mandatory on your fair and balanced power fantasy botes. One can trade out Adaptive Phase Coils for Phase Anchor if you want maximum dakka on a phase ship.
I will probably add some example builds here at some point using the principles outlined above. Today is not that day.
I have not actually read over this at all so if you see any mistakes please let me know through here or on discord @Lortus#3308.
Credits
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Me
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Also the unofficial starsector ppl for correcting my dumb mistakes, as I now hope to do with you. The cycle is neverending, and it is beautiful. Glory to the Emperor.
