Ships [not important] New ships are so ugly

Krieger

Krieger
I said it isn't important...
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But since you're here now, I have to get this off my chest. I find all new ships in Elite: Dangerous very ugly. Only the ships that derive from the ships in the older Elite games I find good looking. Besides their looks, the new ships are well designed functionally and fly very good and their hardpoints and internal bays make them fit nicely into the range of available ships. I have a Vulture myself and I love it for its effectiveness as a heavy fighter and I like how it challenges me to compromise on power to get a weapons loadout working. But... it is so hideously ugly! It looks like the cockpit of an Apache helicopter bolted onto the body of a flattened beetle with its wing covers half opened. The new Diamond Back Scout and Explorer take this insect-look a step further even. To finish my rant: the Fer de Lance looks cheap like a puffed up Hauler with extra engines bolted onto the back, the Imperial Courier looks like the cockpit of a T-33 jet trainer with its wings and tail chopped off and its air intakes bolted onto the ends of the remaining wing stubs. Please Frontier, base the next additions to the fleet on the classic polygonal look.
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Anyway, ignore this rant, it isn't important.
 

Arry

Arry
I think that you are about to get hung, drawn and quartered here for those remarks. I said the Diamondback looked like a bunch of scrap washing machines, super glued together by an Picasso obsessed psycho. Now no one talks to me.
 

Ziljan

Ziljan
The hard truth is that there aren't any good looking ships in this game. We are always choosing between different kinds of ugly. That is not to say that these ships aren't crafted with a certain amount of loving detail, and this gives them a kind of beauty that goes beyond the immediate visceral response.

What kills me is that most of these ships were designed to be massively inconvenient to fly in one way or another. From cockpits with astonishingly mucked up viewing angles, to incredibly frustrating hardpoint placement... I think that is one major benefit that star citizen has over ED. They at least know how to design a proper space ship so that every ship looks like one you'd want fly, and that might have something to do with the fact that they selling each of them for REAL money. For a game that may never get released, and will probably end up in court, I think that is highly unethical and a blatant abuse of customer gullibility, but I can't argue with the aesthetic results. Now ED is a released and functioning game, so it is quite a different thing to charge money for ships. I have a strong feeling that if there were ships in the GAME EXTRAS store that FD would go the extra mile to make you want to buy it. Some people might complain of P2W, but I think the ships would just be more logical and lovely in their design, rather than the current silly ships that no space engineer in their right mind would put into assembly.
 

Trafalgar Law

Trafalgar Law
Ziljan said:
The hard truth is that there aren't any good looking ships in this game. We are always choosing between different kinds of ugly. That is not to say that these ships aren't crafted with a certain amount of loving detail, and this gives them a kind of beauty that goes beyond the immediate visceral response.

What kills me is that most of these ships were designed to be massively inconvenient to fly in one way or another. From cockpits with astonishingly mucked up viewing angles, to incredibly frustrating hardpoint placement... I think that is one major benefit that star citizen has over ED. They at least know how to design a proper space ship so that every ship looks like one you'd want fly, and that might have something to do with the fact that they selling each of them for REAL money. For a game that may never get released, and will probably end up in court, I think that is highly unethical and a blatant abuse of customer gullibility, but I can't argue with the aesthetic results. Now ED is a released and functioning game, so it is quite a different thing to charge money for ships. I have a strong feeling that if there were ships in the GAME EXTRAS store that FD would go the extra mile to make you want to buy it. Some people might complain of P2W, but I think the ships would just be more logical and lovely in their design, rather than the current silly ships that no space engineer in their right mind would put into assembly.
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Personally I can't stand the overly busy Star Citizen vessels. Every time I think about buying a package for that game I leave because I don't like the look of any of the ships on offer (the hornet is probably the best looking of them, but looks like it belongs in atmosphere not space). I much prefer the majority of the Elite ships with their simple, elegant designs.
 

Basaltfeuer

Basaltfeuer
Trafalgar Law said:
Personally I can't stand the overly busy Star Citizen vessels. Every time I think about buying a package for that game I leave because I don't like the look of any of the ships on offer (the hornet is probably the best looking of them, but looks like it belongs in atmosphere not space). I much prefer the majority of the Elite ships with their simple, elegant designs.
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+1 for you ... exactly my thoughts ... i like the look of the python, the asp, the anaconda, the eagle, the Viper ... f.e. ;-P
 

jabberwalkie

J
Ziljan said:
The hard truth is that there aren't any good looking ships in this game. We are always choosing between different kinds of ugly. That is not to say that these ships aren't crafted with a certain amount of loving detail, and this gives them a kind of beauty that goes beyond the immediate visceral response.
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True to a degree I guess. There are a few ships that are more aesthetically pleasing to me than others (the Clipper, Courier, the DBE/S, and Asp for example) but as a whole, most of the ships just don't really strike me really good looking
They at least know how to design a proper space ship so that every ship looks like one you'd want fly, and that might have something to do with the fact that they selling each of them for REAL money. For a game that may never get released, and will probably end up in court, I think that is highly unethical and a blatant abuse of customer gullibility, but I can't argue with the aesthetic results.
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If SC is ever released, I'd consider throwing in some cash for it but as it stands I just can't and will not support a game that appears like it will be stuck in infinite alpha.
Now ED is a released and functioning game, so it is quite a different thing to charge money for ships. I have a strong feeling that if there were ships in the GAME EXTRAS store that FD would go the extra mile to make you want to buy it. Some people might complain of P2W, but I think the ships would just be more logical and lovely in their design, rather than the current silly ships that no space engineer in their right mind would put into assembly.
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Hasn't someone mentioned different ship skins possibly? That seems like the same idea you posed here. I'd be for the idea of updating the exterior of the ships, but if 1.3 with the Diamondbacks is any indication I think we may see more variants of ships in the future. Personally I'd be for a couple of variants of the Asp (the military version and a version with a larger FSD that is more stripped down), and maybe a more advanced version of the Cobra as well (four medium hard points maybe?). But I wouldn't be for different ship variants being purchasable.
 
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Cmdr. Numa

Cmdr. Numa
I find most SC ships butt ugly and highly impractical, although the tanky designs of Vulture and Diamondback don't sit well with me either. Some of the best designs from a combat perspective were the ships in Privateer 2. I flew a Faldari MK II, which looks a bit like the F63 Condor. It was not the fastest and not the strongest ship either, but like quite a few of the designs it was razorflat. The only significant height was in the cockpit itself. That ship could joust like no other and fly right between the enemy beams without ever getting hit. Of course the game had only fixed weapons. Seen from the top there were big holes in the wing. Enemies often shot through them, again minimizing damage even when the ship was attacked from this worst angle. Low target profile, preferably lowest when your guns are turned towards the enemy, that is true fighter design.
 

Tinman

Tinman
Ziljan said:
The hard truth is that there aren't any good looking ships in this game.
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The hard truth is that there is no hard "truth" when it comes to looks. These things will always be subjective.

Want proof? Ok.

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I find the DiamondBack and the Fer de Lance very good looking!
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So there...

BTW...I also find many of the StarCitizen ships quite boring and generic sci fi in terms of look even if they are extremely detailed.
 
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Ziljan

Ziljan
Tinman said:
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I find the DiamondBack and the Fer de Lance very good looking!
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Well those are two of the most interesting looking ships in the game, but they still have their "what were they thinking?" features that nearly every ship in the game is blessed with. Ugliness isn't just about looks, it's also about how appealing the ship is fly and how much it frees you to do the things you want to do. The only ship that comes close to doing that for me is the Scout. But it's far too underpowered, and just looks it was designed by people with competing aesthetics, both of which lost in the end.

The FdL is a pretty ship, but that underbelly hardpoint is a sick joke and the cockpit is one of the most annoying hud-blocking contraptions ever invented. It also turns like a sea cow and jumps between stars like a flea with a penny glued to its back.
 
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TiberiuS

TiberiuS
Ziljan said:
The only ship that comes close to doing that for me is the Scout. But it's far too underpowered, and just looks it was designed by people with competing aesthetics, both of which lost in the end.
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The design of the Diamondback Scout kind of reminds me of the Raptor from BSG, n'est pas Dr. Baltar? ^^
It even has the same applications (combat and exploration)
 

Ziljan

Ziljan
TiberiuS said:
The design of the Diamondback Scout kind of reminds me of the Raptor from BSG, n'est pas Dr. Baltar? ^^
It even has the same applications (combat and exploration)
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Raptor is a complete ship where the front end matches the middle which sweeps into the tail. You cannot draw any bright lines or see any stitch marks by Dr Frankenstein.

The Scout looks like they designed the ship with the rear in mind first, I mean just look at the tail engines... you can get lost in the finely crafted detail. However, the design team realized a bit too late that concept art didn't leave any place for the hardpoints to mount, so they tacked on a rushed version of an extended blocky nose and cockpit that allowed for good hardpoint placement with the smallest possible polygon count. If they had bothered to match the front and rear art design at all, or taken the time to craft the outer cockpit detail even half as much as the engines, then it would have looked 100 times better.

Concept Art:
CCPvi0wXIAA4Mxs.jpg
 
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Starender

Starender
the ships looks very "standard", i likes it, especially the vulture (which i miss) and the clipper

we can all agree that the concept art of the Diamondback is 10 times better than the ship ingame
 

Poseidal

Poseidal
With the Courier, I would have spaced the Nacelles further out from the body, and maybe made the back no protrude out so much (or make the nacelle and 'wing' parts bigger). Maybe to the size of a Class 4 ship...

The Clipper, Fer-de-Lance are good looking ships. Faulcon deLacy have pretty nice designs too, like the Viper.
 
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