Would you like to see some asymmetrical ships in Elite: Dangerous?
- Thread starter Scruffman
- Start date
Asymmetricals and some butt-ugly ones too please
That's a good idea. I vote Yes.
You cant. for lore reasons. the ships are designed to be flat/arrowhead like because of how are FSDs work.
FD dont care how are lore works.
I wouldn't really say the type-6, 7 & 9 are flat. They are slightly arrowhead-shaped, though. That could easily be incorporated into an asymmetrical design.
Edit: Just look at the Millennium Falcon. I'd say that's pretty flat and still arrowhead-shaped.
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Not for human ship designs, no. Asymmetrical ships don't make sense engineering-wise, it overcomplicates the process of designing mass distribution and thruster layout, which can become a big pain if something fails mid-flight. I wouldn't mind seeing ships with different kinds of symmetry than the bilateral designs the current ships have. To take a couple of interesting design motifs from star trek; maybe trilateral designs like Tholian web spinners for big human cargo haulers, or radially symmetrical tubular flowers like V'Ger for alien ships. I think they're kind of going the latter route with the look of the crashed alien ship we saw in 2.1, so who knows.
elite combat is focused on ww2 style dogfights, with some inspiration from naval ships.
That doesn't leave alot of opportunity for asymmetric design.
Mass would still need to be somewhat centered for correct thruster operation.
It might look cool but I don't really see a point.
Why would you want to have that kind of a design, what advantage would it provide?
A real life example of asymmetric design is some ducati motorbikes in order to allow for quick maintenance and wheel removal. Aka single sided swingarm. It is quite a minor change, compared with say....a sidecar.
Following that thought, I'd be a little more interested in a detachable cargo / passenger pod. As in the salvage ship from andromeda, the one the female lead owns, names are escaping me atm!
That doesn't leave alot of opportunity for asymmetric design.
Mass would still need to be somewhat centered for correct thruster operation.
It might look cool but I don't really see a point.
Why would you want to have that kind of a design, what advantage would it provide?
A real life example of asymmetric design is some ducati motorbikes in order to allow for quick maintenance and wheel removal. Aka single sided swingarm. It is quite a minor change, compared with say....a sidecar.
Following that thought, I'd be a little more interested in a detachable cargo / passenger pod. As in the salvage ship from andromeda, the one the female lead owns, names are escaping me atm!
Yes please.
Imperial Explorer was asymmetric if I recall. Also had pretty decent jump range. But since dedicated role ships must be inferior to generalists, as an exploration specific ship, it'd have the same jump range as Beluga, I am quite certain. Because this seems to be the thing now.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Still want one, though.
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Asymmetric, does not mean imbalanced. This is how sailing vessels work. The keel is working against a fluid, rather than air, granted; but it has additional mass to counteract the sail. So it's possible to rig the sails to hit a balance point; it's the variability of wind that tends to imbalance the design.
It's actually entirely possible to build a ship with asymmetric design, and yet have a centralised mass and in-line thrust (it's also possible to have neither, but that's a design decision or compromise, rather than physics issue). This isn't really an issue to resolve, in a computer game where ships are a graphical representation of stats, and have stabilising thrusters, and don't even have split throttle.
If Elite was like DCS, then you'd have control over starboard and port engines and be able to leverage vectoring to pull some amazing manoeuvres. But ships in elite have a ridiculously simple drive line and benefit from thruster stability (unless you are a mad-person and drive with FA-OFF 24/7). Even with FA-Off there's no sense of vector ability. So there's really nothing to solve as far as asymmetric design is concerned.
Imperial Explorer was asymmetric if I recall. Also had pretty decent jump range. But since dedicated role ships must be inferior to generalists, as an exploration specific ship, it'd have the same jump range as Beluga, I am quite certain. Because this seems to be the thing now.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Still want one, though.
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Asymmetric, does not mean imbalanced. This is how sailing vessels work. The keel is working against a fluid, rather than air, granted; but it has additional mass to counteract the sail. So it's possible to rig the sails to hit a balance point; it's the variability of wind that tends to imbalance the design.
It's actually entirely possible to build a ship with asymmetric design, and yet have a centralised mass and in-line thrust (it's also possible to have neither, but that's a design decision or compromise, rather than physics issue). This isn't really an issue to resolve, in a computer game where ships are a graphical representation of stats, and have stabilising thrusters, and don't even have split throttle.
If Elite was like DCS, then you'd have control over starboard and port engines and be able to leverage vectoring to pull some amazing manoeuvres. But ships in elite have a ridiculously simple drive line and benefit from thruster stability (unless you are a mad-person and drive with FA-OFF 24/7). Even with FA-Off there's no sense of vector ability. So there's really nothing to solve as far as asymmetric design is concerned.
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I just installed that game tonite. Free to play!! Woot! Why grind for a conda when theres this? lol
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I think that was the point.
Most likely won't happen. FD is focused on efficiency as they are overloaded with the workload and the expectations of the players. On the FAS for example they just mirrored one side and pasted it on the other which is why any text was mirrored as well so I have to read from the right to the left.
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I have no idea why some people have an obsession with asymmetrical ships. They have no practical sense and not particularly asthetically pleasing.