Asymmetrical ships

Hello,
I would like to see new ships introduced with asymmetrical aspects. Such as offset cockpits, wings heavy to one side, antenna clusters randomly placed. I've always felt, starships with asymmetry have more character.
A quicker / easier fix would to allow ship kits to be applied asymmetrically. Also, allow the targeting radar to render the modifications.
Thank you.
EldredBrix
 
Short answer, no.

Ship kits are purely aesthetic (holographic projection based on what FD have declared to date) and have no bearing on targeting/manoeuvrability characteristics. I suggest you have a look at the Raider ship-kits if you are looking for more visual asymmetry.

Some ships do have visually asymmetric aspects in their stock visuals (e.g. Viper Mk3, Viper Mk 4, T10D) BUT given our ships are intended to be flown in sub-orbital circumstances it is logical that they are designed with symmetrical mass distribution characteristics.
 
Some more stuff here.
 
Most of the mass of a Type-7 is above the cockpit.
Top-Heavy/Bottom heavy designs are different from laterally distinct designs....

Various ships have most of their mass above/below/fore/aft of their cockpits - that is somewhat different to what you are talking about.
 
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Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
A little asymmetry would be welcome, either new ships or existing kits.
 
Hello,
I would like to see new ships introduced with asymmetrical aspects. Such as offset cockpits, wings heavy to one side, antenna clusters randomly placed. I've always felt, starships with asymmetry have more character.
A quicker / easier fix would to allow ship kits to be applied asymmetrically. Also, allow the targeting radar to render the modifications.
Thank you.
EldredBrix

I'm sure FD will get right on that. This is Elite. Not gonna happen. Ship forms in game stay true to their roots. How it should be imho, this isn't Star Wars.
 
What is the advantage of asymmetric design? If it is only for looks you can forget it.
There is no real advantage in itself, in fact it can be considered quite the opposite when considering manoeuvring characteristics.

The LHD/RHD of cars (which is a case often used to argue for asymmetry) is due to inherent lack of symmetry in the car internals in the first place and the need to place the driver in the notionally best location for situational awareness reasons (RHD for LH road infrastructures and LHD for RH road infrastructures - the driver being placed as close to the centre of the road in the context of the road system it is primarily built for).

As a rule of thumb, you really want the pilot to be as close to the centre of momentum as possible for manoeuvring reasons (lower turning forces on the pilot during manouvres) and on the flipside as clear of the hull as possible (situational awareness). Typically, in both science fiction and the real world, bridges/cockpits are located in the most logical place for the individual use case. In most cases of space craft, similar cockpit positioning to that of classical military aircraft is typically adopted. Which normally means offset fore/aft/up/down but on the whole laterally speaking centrally placed - even if there are instances of the pilot being offset to one side of the vessel in the case of some cockpits.

In the context of space craft, placing the cockpit offset laterally (c/f B-Wing in horizontal flight configuration and the Millennium Falcon) is perhaps the worst thing you can do from a design perspective for a number of practical reasons - Star Wars nostalgia is not a good basis for arguing for it.
 
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People are already stressed enough about the FDL’s seat being a little off center.

I can only imagine what would happen if a whole ship was lopsided!
Actually, the FDL's seat is perfectly centered; it's just the rest of the ship that's completely lopsided!
 
Aesthetics aside, we learned from the recent Discovery Scanner stream that there is an actual technical benefit to ships having symmetrical exteriors. Some of the layers that make up the external textures (not the paintjobs, but the stuff "underneath") use mirror symmetry to reduce GPU memory usage and increase performance. Naturally as GPUs improve the importance of this optimization is going to diminish, but for now it's still there baked into the code.
 
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