What do you think of the ships design?

[Robert Graham]

Venture, hate to tell you but actually a brick WILL fly in an Atmosphere if given enough thrust. Heck technically we already Do have flying bricks there called certain helicopter designs. The reason we have wings on our aircraft is actually fairly obvious we need them for lift, we make things aerodynamic to reduce drag and reduce the amount of thrust required to push an object through that drag. We technically don't need large wings to be 'aerodynamically' stable at all nada zip zero and you can find the proof in aircraft that have already flown from the X-1 through to Virgin's most recent designs.

heck look at a lot of the designs for NASA's self landing capsule's etc.. there actually not much more then slightly pointed blocks with rockets on one end and a landing gear.. why? the thrust over comes the drag and if you have RCS and fly by wire a computer can and will make even something inherently unstable stable.. it corrects for the instabilities.


There is No reason that the Asp could not fly in Atmosphere so long as it had Fly By Wire controls nor even the Type 7.. all they need is enough thrust to over come the drag caused by Atmospheric resistance and gravity and enough RCS to overcome the roll,pitch and yaw moment's caused by said drag.

 

[Poseidal]

I've always liked them, the majority were distinctive from the early days in the old Elite games (though I think the large wedge freighters were kind of similar looking to each other back then).

I thought the Krait looked really cool back then. The current Adder I like, but not as an Adder if you know what I mean - the SpaceShuttle+ look is ok, and makes reasonable sense for a planetary capable ship but it's not how I viewed the Adder.

As for impact, the feel when seeing the Star Destroyer in Star Wars (a wedge shape not too dissimilar to the old Elite ships actually), I got a similar sense when a Farragut entered a conflict zone.

 

[Shads]

I think they are pretty unimaginative TBH. Why does everything need to be streamlined and symmetrical in space. Caldari design the best space ships

 

[Venture]

Mr Graham, you are indeed correct when you say that anything will fly given enough thrust, I concede your point and obviously didn't quite explain what I was getting at. Any object will fly, granted, but it won't pilot particularly well in a dogfight unless it's got an aerodynamically sound shape. The Asp is a box, with nothing to provide drag for turns, nothing to provide lift, the engine design doesn't have any obvious flaps to alter direction of travel. I know that we can explain some of that away to future technologies if you want, but facts are facts - there is simply nothing to provide the stability and drag required to turn and actually fight the ship in atmosphere.

In reference to modern day aircraft, I wasn't talking about wings to provide lift. I mentioned fins (for want of a better word, I'm not an aircraft engineer/designer) that would provide the aircraft with stability and drag when turning, i.e dorsel fins on every modern day fighter.

This brings back my main point that, without relying on explaining the apparent flaws with how a brick with an engine is supposed to fly responsively in atmosphere on future tech, SC has done a pretty good job at designing some ships that could realistically fly in atmosphere while still relying on modern day principles (such as fins and winglets that lots of posters deride) to pilot it correctly.

Edit: Poor spelling! Apologies.

 

[Knarkarkent]

I think that the distant future, if we dont terminate our species first, will look a bit like in firefly. Humanity is spread out on a dozens of worlds, on some its high tech, on others there is just a few human settlers and more like the old wild west-ish. I think that in a time when almost everybody owns a spaceship that the designers compete with functionality but also looks on their products. Many of todays top-designs on cars, jetplanes and so on, is inspired from shapes that exists in nature. The airodynamics of the swallow, the streamlined shape of sharks, the efficency of insektoid shapes. I think that us humans have a natural tendency to find products with a natureinspired shape to be more pleasing. Its kind of programmed in our genes. So I think that our everyday spaceships will be designed accordingly. But ships that is only to be in space and not on planets can be how big and strange they want to. I think also that we will invent technology that will be more organic, like living technology with self repairing materials and so on. We have alredy invented selfrepairing plastic. Nanotechnology etc. We will have other materials like Grafen, grafen is stronger than steel but flexible and translucent and lightweight. It will probably be important in future spaceprograms.

So to the topic at hand. I was a little bit harsh on the designers in the beginning of the thread, the ships are ok, I have gotten meself an adder recently , ugly one yes but charming. But I look forward to more inspiring ships in future expansions and updates. Here are some pictures of spaceships I like, as you can see they got an organic design. There is also reapers from masseffect. That design is taken from an insect called earwig and is really cool. Wouldnt work in Elite, but there is a lot of cool bugs that can inspire new designs of future elite ships. Like the dropships in Man of steel. Bobba Fetts spaceship... there you have an iconic ship, yes sir

 

[Straker]

For me personally, it was the ship designs that actually caught my eye. Some other games are inspired heavily by modern military aircraft and I was extremely excited to see that while Elite Dangerous is inspired by its own original low-polygon designs, it is not generally-speaking derived from the military cliche. I cannot emphasise this enough.

 

[Rotomon]

I really want an asymetric ship or a firefly, though the ships in elite arent bad.

 

[Dr Roly]

Faulcon DeLacy ships look like they were designed as a tool for the one man trader/mercenary, with looks being secondary at best. Zorgon Patterson ships look like they are clean, modern vehicles for doing mundane jobs (like a present day van). Core Dynamics ships look militaristic. Only Saud Kruger and Gutamaya appear to have been designed with looks being part of the (fictional) manufacturer's brief.

What I'm trying to get across is the FD designers have done a great job in making the ships look believable; as though each manufacturer had a different design brief in mind. I much prefer this to the ships in most other games; many of which look over-designed or with form over function.

 

[Abomination]

I like the designs. Raw functionality with some exceptions like the Orca.
It fits this genre. But then again, I'm from the 70's and still like movies such as Space Truckers