Some ship kits on sale

Still quite pricey.

To be honest I regret buying most of the ship kits.
I like the Eagle kit the most, allmost all parts fit/ look nice.
However in most I only like 3 or 4 pieces....
 
I might (might!) buy the one for the AspX (it looks the best IMHO) as a test.
But yea. Even at a tenner it's still a bit high for my blood - especially as it's only viewable from the outside view.
Now if it showed on the HUD hologram...
Perhaps I'll wait for a better sale.
 
The one for the Vulture is great IMHO. Cobra isn't that bad. I don't have any of the others, but may get the Python raider kit, when/if I get a python.
 
Wanted to get the one for the corvette but still though a bit expensive for my taste, and then having issues with paint jobs....
 
My golden rule whenever I see a discount sale is to ask myself: Would I buy this product under its normal price? You'd be surprised how this makes one realise the effect of how a simple 'discount' sign triggers an almost instinctive knee jerk impulse to buy something you never actually wanted/needed.
 
One point not picked up on by thread so far ... if you don't like kit, don't buy it!
Having looked at OP's link (thanks) I think the Asp-x one is OK and I quite like the Python one. Don't know if I'd use all the bits, but there are some nice features.
 
I really like the Vulture Kit. The kit affords a number of different looks, and I find all of the pieces compatible with each other. The Python kit is very nice too.
 
Wanted to get the one for the corvette but still though a bit expensive for my taste, and then having issues with paint jobs....

Amen brother.

Plus I'm not even sure it improves the look of the Corvette, it's pretty beautiful as is. It does make it look a bit more unique.
 
I was very happy with the Sidewinder ship kit. The Python ship kit on the other hand was poorly done - bits stuck on with no smooth transitions. I just wrote off the small expense and didn't use them. Shame really...
 
I regret buying the Python ship kit.

I don't like any of the wings, and most of the tails, spoilers and noses just don't fit in.

  • They don't really line up with panels or existing geometry on the Python.
  • They don't match the python's visual style
  • Their paintwork is static - it doesn't wear like the rest of your ship and you can never repair the paintwork to 100% clean, they're permanently "scuffed".

So after buying a 16-piece kit, I think there are maybe 5 or 6 pieces that I think are acceptable, and the implementation of the kits is disappointing to me.

Maybe you'll love them, but compared to the ship models themselves, they are left wanting on several fronts.

Oh, I forgot to voice my added disappointment that none of the ship kit is visible from the cockpit, since the Python's cockpit is right at the front, and neither the loading screen's spinning Python, nor the little ship in the shield rings have the kit parts added. To be honest with you, those are the two places where I most often get a view of my ship and that they were utterly neglected is just more salt in the £8 wound to my wallet. To add insult to injury, I think the camera angles in outfitting aren't even pointed in the right places, so two of the nose kit pieces aren't even on screen when you outfit them - I had to fit them, quit outfitting, and then enter the external camera suite just to see if I liked the effect!

For a relatively high-price (you could buy another whole copy of the game and expension from scratch for less than five ship kits) The more I think about the more disgusted I was with the shoddy effort.
 
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I love the Vulture's ship kit. It definitely adds to the look of the ship, in my opinion.
So far, this is the only one I bought, though.

I also like the Eagel's kit from the looks of it. Unfortunately, this is not a ship I usually fly, so the price tag migth still be too high.

The Phyton's kit is something I was pondering for quite a while now. I fly the "Chrimson Virgin" quite often. Maybe I should take advantage of the current offer ...
Caveat: I remember there were some issues in respect to the UV coordinates/general correlation to certain paint jobs which held me back in the first place. Is this problem fixed now?

Edit: just while writing my post, it was answered ... maybe I should abstain.
 
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The AspX kit is the only one I really like (I would also like the Vulture one, but I don't have a Vulture and don't intend to buy one either). The kits mainly add a lot of wings and aerodynamic surfaces, which are just immersion-breaking on space ships where aerodynamic surfaces are nothing but dead weight. It will be different once we can land on athmospheric planets, but right now we ... can't. It's the same with the Asp, but in her case, they just fit the overall style - she's basically the unholy hellspawn of a brick and a fighter jet and the ship kit shifts the balance more towards fighter jet :p
 
The AspX kit is the only one I really like (I would also like the Vulture one, but I don't have a Vulture and don't intend to buy one either). The kits mainly add a lot of wings and aerodynamic surfaces, which are just immersion-breaking on space ships where aerodynamic surfaces are nothing but dead weight. It will be different once we can land on athmospheric planets, but right now we ... can't. It's the same with the Asp, but in her case, they just fit the overall style - she's basically the unholy hellspawn of a brick and a fighter jet and the ship kit shifts the balance more towards fighter jet :p

It's the tail-fins on the AspX kit that do it for me.

As a "flying pentagon" it looks a bit naff but once you add those tail-fins it starts to look like a chubby F117 plane.
Maybe it's just in my head but, with the ship-kit added, the AspX starts to look a bit like a lardy Vulture.
 
Heh, the Anaconda's nose is kind of the only part of the default model I don't really like, so that sucks. An actual (serpent) Anaconda has a distinctive flat fronted snout/nose so you'd think maybe there'd be one option that didn't give it a pointy snout, right? Of the three nose kits you get, the one that is least pointy bears no resemblence to an Anaconda - it's more like the flared hood of a cobra. For a game where ships are named after snakes, that's a pretty big screw up!

Oh, and going back to the Python I forgot to voice my added disappointment that none of the ship kit is visible from the cockpit, since the Python's cockpit is right at the front, and neither the loading screen's spinning Python, nor the little ship in your HUD have the kit parts added. To be honest with you, those are the two places where I most often get a view of my ship and that they were utterly neglected is just more salt in the £8 wound to my wallet. To add insult to injury, I think the camera angles in outfitting aren't even pointed in the right places, so two of the nose kit pieces aren't even on screen when you outfit them - I had to fit them, quit outfitting, and then enter the external camera suite just to see if I liked the effect!

For a relatively high-price (ED full game and Horizons Expansion cost less in total than five shoddy ship kits), the more I think about the more disgusted I was with the poor effort. In terms of this being a comment with some constructive feedback rather than just me having a moan, here are what I feel would justify the price FDev are charging:


  1. Fix the geometry so that each piece "fits" with the contours of the ship it's joining to. (Why are there slim, flat, curved parts if the phython is an angular, chunky ship. It just doesn't work at all!)
  2. Fix the textures that don't quite line up - I believe this has been mentioned already as a UV mapping problem.
  3. Fix the paint behaviour so that they match the paint wear of the rest of the ship.
  4. Fix the HUD so that the mini-python on the HUD matches the ship kit
  5. Fix the loading screens so that the python matches the ship kit
  6. Fix the camera positions in outfitting so that you can actually SEE all of the pieces without having to exit outfitting and then use the external camera
  7. Fix the texturing of ship kits so that they don't ingore or cover paintjobs with textures (pirate faction, pulse, suadron & wireframe).

Seriously? One overpriced ship kit is a laundry-list of BUGS (why are we surprised?)
Some of the paintjobs are flawless, more visually striking and much better implemented, so why charge 3x the price for the kits?
 
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