Stock ships redesign - the practical approach

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It jettisons them in combat where it causes all sorts of problems.

The problem with stock designs is that they try to tank all the fire. Basically, building ships in such way that getting hit is their normal mode of operation seems to be a losing game.

It would be nice, BTW, to have ships automatically retract redundant radiators, only leaving the amount needed for actual cooling.

Eh, combustion gun fire is easy to evade with any reasonably manoeuvrable ship even at stock EM guns/lasers engagement ranges. It might be a bit scarier against microdrone dV attrition, but OTOH with custom modules you get to field those 100km/s RGs and long range laser arrays which will burn through microdrones fast at much longer range.
And there is always missile/nukegun/turretbomb nuclear PD for swarms.

Armour zoning has its own set of problems. If you let it drive your ship's design you end up with very lightweight, yet fiendishly hard to penetrate armour scheme for your crew (sitting in armoured nosecone) and other critical components (or just resilient power generation), BUT you need to constrain your maneuverability and you will likely end up with dead and very flat crew after anything pierces your almost unarmoured propellant tanks. And if it somehow does not kill the crew, constrained maneuverability will ensure your ship won't be able to kill the spin, preventing effective gunnery and letting enemy fire shred it with impunity.

OTOH If you don't let zoning drive your ship design, the crew is going to end up near center of mass meaning you'll have to continue your strongest armour layers past half of ship's length. That's going to eat in your mass budget.

That's unsurprising, because they are very accurate and effectively drill through the armour hitting the same spot repeatedly. Sniper coilguns, especially multiple firing at single target concurrently are also great armour piercers, with decent (for stock weapon) engagement range too.

Oh yeah! Seconding this wholeheartedly. If only @qswitched would do that, and fix known bugs... I'd buy me a new copy.

Using custom modules, you could design a type of radiator that let's you cool the reactor using just one "set": basically you choose the reactor, add a single radiator type, then change the number of radiators with the slider (the one that goes from 1 to 20); then you design another type of radiator that is just the first but with a different name or that is just a cm or m longer (haven't tested if changing just the name actually works), then add those too (in equal or greater number, your choice). When in combat, you retract one set and leave the other unfolded, then when it is too damage and can't cool anymore, you unfold the backup set.
You can do the same using stock modules too.

Nose Forward is handy in most cases, but Broadside against missiles could be better option since point defense's firepower will be larger and ship's cross-section doesn't matter much in this case.

"Move" as default anti-capital order is also good and allows to escape damage for some time.

Sorry can't do, I don't own a legal copy. Since anonymous downloads are not allowed for this game's steam workshop, I also can't download mods. So I can't check if this mod changes only the ships nose forward or if it makes the other changes you suggested: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1286859609


Updated the AI.txt above with your suggestions. Your question reminds me that I haven't said it here yet, but anyone is free to take whatever I do, pretend like they did it and do with it whatever they want, without asking for permission or mentioning me or anything else.