Small ship design discussion and showcase

[Moraligus]

There have been some amazing big ships, there is nothing more impressive than a well built battle-cruiser but it seems like small ships don't get enough love these days. The larger ships have a lot of room for detail and lots of flexibility for creativity but perhaps a worthy exercise of skill is how much you can do with little detail at all... Post your best small ships here and share any small shipbuilding tips you may have.

to get things going i will start you off with a fighter and a dropship:

 

[SkylordLuke]

nice job! cant wait to see more of them

 

[godsgopher]

Actually I couldn't agree more. Doing more with less space isn't easy. I think the other thing that keeps many smaller ships from being in the spotlight is a 100k DPS AI guided turret will make extremely short work of them. Still I support this thread and as soon as I'm home Ill see if I can find a few of my own small craft to add in.

 

[Keptick]

The only small ship I ever made is a small drone, upgrading it is just a load of fun!!! I've managed to boost every single stat without increasing the size (and making it look better).

I've had some good jousts with cirdanoth too, it's fun.

 

[testkil]

they look like ambulances ^^

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I have a bit of a crappy computer so I have much more of an affinity for smaller ships.

Here is a little construction freighter I was working on today. It's unarmed besides a small defensive turret.

I actually almost scrapped this thing, I love the design but the stats were so bad. With the changes to thrust its not a bad little freighter now.

 

[Moraligus]

Sven_The_Slayer

its so cute! its like bumblebee got tired of being a Volkswagen and decided to become a spaceship! also it looks like you have shadows on, turning them off will double your performance and using the new textures with bump mapping will look just as good and put less of a strain on your computer. the more you know

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Sven_The_Slayer

its so cute! its like bumblebee got tired of being a Volkswagen and decided to become a spaceship! also it looks like you have shadows on, turning them off will double your performance and using the new textures with bump mapping will look just as good and put less of a strain on your computer. the more you know

I really like the shadow effects, I lowered my displayed segments until I could comfortably run shadows on "best". If I have any trouble with 1000 segments I'll lower it back down to 750, and you'll be surprised how far 750 segments will actually go. Also I am not a fan of the realistic pack, I don't like the hull textures or support systems and besides that is actually my own personal texture pack.

 

[Moraligus]

I really like the shadow effects, I lowered my displayed segments until I could comfortably run shadows on "best". If I have any trouble with 1000 segments I'll lower it back down to 750, and you'll be surprised how far 750 segments will actually go. Also I am not a fan of the realistic pack, I don't like the hull textures or support systems and besides that is actually my own personal texture pack.

hmm. i will have to try that the next time i am taking screenshots

 

[Elit3]

I have a bit of a crappy computer so I have much more of an affinity for smaller ships.

Here is a little construction freighter I was working on today. It's unarmed besides a small defensive turret.

I actually almost scrapped this thing, I love the design but the stats were so bad. With the changes to thrust its not a bad little freighter now.

You could always revamp the insides.

 

[WolfChild]

Sven_The_Slayer Moraligus

When it comes to shadows, I tend to have them off while I build (I get about 70 fps), and change to "Ultra" shadows for screenshots (about 15 fps). I absolutely adore the shadows, but fps is a higher priority for me.

On a different note, I built a very small fighter I could show here, if you would be happy for me to.

 

[Moraligus]

Sven_The_Slayer Moraligus

On a different note, I built a very small fighter I could show here, if you would be happy for me to.

absolutely! that's what this thread is for.

 

[Reilly Reese]

I've got a Mantis

 

[JimmyJamba]

These two are my favourite little ships. Most people would probably consider these nothing more than drones. For now, both use the faction block placed in front of the core as the main line of defence. The strength of the faction block is more than likely going to change so when that happens I'll have to go back to the drawing board. The Zen Interceptor is by far my choice if I had to pick one. It's fairly cheap and quite nimble but unfortunately will be nothing more that a nuisance to anything bigger than itself. I tend to deploy a handful of them with activated AI around where I'm building.


Zen Interceptor:

Arrogate Fighter:

 

[Keptick]

I really like the shadow effects, I lowered my displayed segments until I could comfortably run shadows on "best". If I have any trouble with 1000 segments I'll lower it back down to 750, and you'll be surprised how far 750 segments will actually go. Also I am not a fan of the realistic pack, I don't like the hull textures or support systems and besides that is actually my own personal texture pack.

750 segments will actually load things all the way up to the max render distance (which doesn't affect performance). however, try it with a large entity and you'll barely see half of it (depending on the size). Changing the setting only affects the amount of stuff you can see at once, not the range.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

750 segments will actually load things all the way up to the max render distance (which doesn't affect performance). however, try it with a large entity and you'll barely see half of it (depending on the size). Changing the setting only affects the amount of stuff you can see at once, not the range.

How far something can go is an expression, I'm not literally talking about visual range. My server doesn't have anything nearly large enough to be effected by cutting the max segments down and building with shadows on lets you see how things will look when you are done and you can easily toggle lighten mode. I did turn off shadows last night to take some screen shots and there was a significant performance increase. If I played PVP I'd be worried about it but as I only play on a private server I don't have to worry about performance as long as the game doesn't chug to0 hard.

I posted three of my mining craft last night, even the largest is probably still considered a small ship
http://starmadedock.net/threads/united-colonial-systems-shipwright.87/page-2#post-3509

 

[Moraligus]

so i challenged myself to build a good looking ship that fits into the default docking space, this is what i came up with:

 

[Moraligus]

i challenge you all to build a drone that fits into the minimum docking space and i hope to see some cool creations come out of it

 

[Reilly Reese]

Hmmmm Interesting challenge gives me a chance to add an Isanth Drone to my Isanth Pack BTW what tex pack you using?

 

[Invadr]

We really need to advocate to the 'powers that be' to create a game mechanism that gives turret mass penalties to turret speed. If those huge 1000 dps turrets were proportionally slowed by how large they were, it would give smaller ships more survivability. Which would increase their usefulness in the game that is not currently there right now.