Avorion: Construction literacy (For beginners)

The difference is that you can load your ship with extra armor., which will increase your mass and give almost no effect with a shield (not counting the pirates with impulse weapons), but you can instead of this cube from the armor put the cube of the shield generator, sounds better, is not it?

Armor or system

Depending on the stage of the game and your goals, but more often than not putting a shield instead of a simple body / armor is a much better solution

But now my ship looks like chaotic pieces of systems!

It doesn't matter at all, note, that living quarters have all the same types of blocks as a simple case, and you can make your ship more aesthetically pleasing with their help, and at the same time you will not have to put a separate block of the living compartment on the ship.

Maneuverability or strength

Great question, you are facing a difficult choice, speed and maneuverability or strength and survivability. Depends on what kind of ship you have, but generally, put more on agility, playing barely turning to either side is still a torment, and the shield can be compensated by modules.

Why are gyroscopes needed?

Гироскопы эфективнее толкателей, but require installation on certain axes for rotation, in contrast to the all-round pusher, and the price of a gyroscope is more than that of a pusher. If your ship can fit gyroscopes normally, put them on, if not, then the pushers are not much worse.
IMPORTANT: In the absence of pushers, the entire braking function will depend on inertial dampers

Structural Integrity Field Generators

It's simple, set them like this, what would they own “zone” covered the entire area of ​​the ship, and you won't lose 90% hulls upon collision with an asteroid

Workshop ships are often very closely related to their original size., for example, conventionally, with size B, they have a very thin case, which you can not touch, but when the ship increases to size A, the hull becomes thicker and turns into extra garbage on the ship, better build yourself or look for ships that were originally built for your stage of the game.