Tridimensional Cockpit
Tridimensional Cockpit is an artifact for Max that replaces your Cockpit with Empty scaffolding, but also costs you half your max hull on pickup.
Strategy
Tridimensional Cockpit improves the defensive profile of your ship substantially, reducing how much damage enemies can do in one turn, in return for losing half your max hull. This artifact is especially good on higher difficulties, as it removes the weakest point of your ship. On Hard and Harder, it replaces a Weak part with an Empty part, and on Hardest it replaces a Brittle part with an Empty part.
For ships that are built for Tridimensional Cockpit - namely, defensive ships - the max hull loss ends up not mattering, as enemies are not going to be able to damage you. It significantly limits how much damage enemies are capable of dealing to you per turn, making it much more viable to simply tank all incoming damage with Shield. Having a hole in the middle of your ship (usually) also means it usually isn't hard for you to dodge high-damage shots. Overall, it's often possible to simply not take any damage the rest of the run with this artifact. Bosses are especially easier to deal with, as they tend to rely on hitting the player with several shots - something this artifact will often prevent.
Offensive ships won't like this as much, however, as it means they have less hull to gambit with.