two-dimensional ship designs

bummer6

B
I've noticed a trend with pretty much all of the ships in Elite... They're very flat, as if they were all designed with a top-down perspective in mind. All of the ships so far are wide and flat, so I'd like to see some long, slender designs, or maybe a ship with a vertical posture like the B-wing from Star Wars, or Boba Fett's Slave-1. It's a minor complaint since I love the designs of Elite, I just think they're getting repetitive. Anyone agree with me?

EDIT: thought I'd include some examples of spaceships with a taller design.
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CCS_B-wing.jpg


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Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
What shape are the space station entrances?

What kind of shape would fit through that safely, and be able to maneuver to a landing pad without incident?
 

forger

forger
bummer6 said:
I've noticed a trend with pretty much all of the ships in Elite... They're very flat, as if they were all designed with a top-down perspective in mind. All of the ships so far are wide and flat, so I'd like to see some long, slender designs, or maybe a ship with a vertical posture like the B-wing from Star Wars, or Boba Fett's Slave-1. It's a minor complaint since I love the designs of Elite, I just think they're getting repetitive. Anyone agree with me?
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the most flat ship is anaconda :)
 

bummer6

B
Concerning the ports on the stations, if the ship is like the B-wing, you can simply fly it in sideways... It's space, there's no up, down, left or right.
 

Tinman

Tinman
bummer6 said:
Concerning the ports on the stations, if the ship is like the B-wing, you can simply fly it in sideways... It's space, there's no up, down, left or right.
Click to expand...

Indeed...there is no up or down...neither any "vertical". Rotate the ships above 90 degrees and suddenly they are "flat". :p

Beside...ships need to be able to land on the pads and future planetary landings (and therefore some minor respect to aerodynamics) also needs to be taken into account.
 

Zarunoi

Zarunoi
bummer6 said:
Concerning the ports on the stations, if the ship is like the B-wing, you can simply fly it in sideways... It's space, there's no up, down, left or right.
Click to expand...

If that's true, then maybe all ships are already tall and the cockpit is on the side of the ship.
 

bummer6

B
Zarunoi said:
If that's true, then maybe all ships are already tall and the cockpit is on the side of the ship.
Click to expand...

<snip>There is no direction in space, there is however, direction inside your cockpit, which in turn decides the orientation of the ship. If the ship was truly on it's side, like you suggest, then the cockpit would be as well.
 
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Xzanron

Xzanron
Theoretically (and practically in an expansion's time) all the playable ships should be able to land on a planet; so for atmospheric reasons a symmetrical wing shape is a good idea.

Unlike the ships from other universes Elite doesn't have artificial gravity, so you'd have to add loads of complex gimbling for the cockpits so that pilots can be in the horizontal position when the ship is "flat". This introduces unnecessary complexity and doesn't make much sense from an engineering perspective.

For capital ships, which will never enter atmosphere, I think they can be any shape you want them to be, spiky, irregular, unsymmetrical, etc, unless there are restrictions based on the in-fiction requirements of the FSD.
 

popuptoaster

P
Tall space ships are a stupid idea, if you use them where there is gravity they have to be full of stairs, interior space is seriously buggered up, you either have lots of very small rooms stacked on top of each other or one big tall room with lots of useless headroom where you can't get cupboards and work surfaces at convenient heights.

They would also be much harder to keep stable when landed and much more difficult to perform maintenance on, much harder to load with cargo and if you are flying through confined spaces its much harder to look up and down than it is to look left and right to see where the edges of your ship are.

They may look "cool" but in reality it would be impractical.
 

Rolands

Rolands
Xzanron said:
Theoretically (and practically in an expansion's time) all the playable ships should be able to land on a planet; so for atmospheric reasons a symmetrical wing shape is a good idea.

Unlike the ships from other universes Elite doesn't have artificial gravity, so you'd have to add loads of complex gimbling for the cockpits so that pilots can be in the horizontal position when the ship is "flat". This introduces unnecessary complexity and doesn't make much sense from an engineering perspective.

For capital ships, which will never enter atmosphere, I think they can be any shape you want them to be, spiky, irregular, unsymmetrical, etc, unless there are restrictions based on the in-fiction requirements of the FSD.
Click to expand...
Or there could be some ships that are not meant for entering atmospheres, some people just like big majestic ships
 

bummer6

B
Would you people mind motivating your negativity towards this idea?
Here's my motivation... From a top-view, the silhouettes of pretty much all the ships in ED are strong and recognizable, but from a side-view, they're not interesting at all. This is not simply an opinion that you can disagree with, it's a fact that the side-views of the ships are much weaker and less recognizable than the top-views.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
I confuse the Anaconda with the Hauler side-on all the time, and the only reason I can tell a Type 6 from a Type 9 is the engine noise.

If I've not got my headphones on I'm stuck :(

;)
 

bummer6

B
popuptoaster said:
Tall space ships are a stupid idea, if you use them where there is gravity they have to be full of stairs, interior space is seriously buggered up, you either have lots of very small rooms stacked on top of each other or one big tall room with lots of useless headroom where you can't get cupboards and work surfaces at convenient heights.

They would also be much harder to keep stable when landed and much more difficult to perform maintenance on, much harder to load with cargo and if you are flying through confined spaces its much harder to look up and down than it is to look left and right to see where the edges of your ship are.

They may look "cool" but in reality it would be impractical.
Click to expand...

You're totally right, realism is deffinately the most important thing in the universe. Infact, let's change all ships so they look like space-shuttles, remove all sound, remove lasers and projectile weapons (cause machineguns and the like require oxygen to fire). I'm sure it'll be a much better game, right?

Sarcasm aside, I wasn't talking specifically about capital ships... Again, look at the B-wing or the Slave-1 as the perfect examples... The B-wing has different postures for different situations; it can fly horizontally for dogfighting or vertically for cruising, it also has wings that it can fold in if needed. Slave-1 also has stabilizing wings and lands on it's back... These two ships work perfectly fine in or out of an atmosphere.
 
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