First ship... how to decorate bland areas?

[DrTarDIS]

Rest space is very important. I've seen ships that are so busy that you lose the sense of shape, proportion, or purpose.

Mmm, to you anyways. People like me find glory in fractal geometry. The alb there gets a Mandelbrot hard-on going for me. Helps that the colorscheme looks a bit like snow-camo, also that it's full of bitz. Also that it's form does follow it's function: good chunk solid, but fairly well planned decks and halls
All good if your eye is not one that enjoys patterns for the sake of patterns. There are, however, plenty of people that get off on that stuff.

 

[Nerva]

One tip that I learned to make nice looking ships is this. Build your systems first, then build armor plates over important parts and then fill in the gaps between the plates with hull. If I were designing a real spaceship that's how I'd do it, and it seems quite applicable to this as well. I'm no great ship builder but since learning that I've gotten much better.

 

[Edymnion]

One tip that I learned to make nice looking ships is this. Build your systems first, then build armor plates over important parts and then fill in the gaps between the plates with hull. If I were designing a real spaceship that's how I'd do it, and it seems quite applicable to this as well. I'm no great ship builder but since learning that I've gotten much better.

Yup, there are two equally valid build methods.

System First and Shell First.

System First is what Nerva mentioned, building all of the systems you want the ship to have, then figuring out how to build the hull around that.

Shell First is, obviously, the exact opposite. Building an interesting hull, then trying to squeeze as much into is as you can.

Some people prefer one or the other, many use both depending on what they're doing. Mining ships are often System First due to how large the mining array is (you're new, so yours probably isn't that big, but 10,000+ block salvage arrays in waffle patterns at set row lengths are very common, so they take some work to build around). Drones usually are system first as well, due to wanting them to be as tiny as possible while still packing maximum punch.

Then of course we have cruisin' ships, not to be confused with cruisers. Cruisers are large battleships, cruisin' ships are "Holy crap, that looks awesome!" ships to fly around in and look... well... fly in. Those are usually shell first because their entire point is looking cool.

 

[Panpiper]

Yup, there are two equally valid build methods.

System First and Shell First.

I do a bit of both actually. Before I lay blocks in the game, I will have built the ship in my mind and on paper first. I will have a rough idea of the shape and the angles needed within that shape. I will also know precisely what systems I want on my ship, how big they need to be, what weapons and sizes, prebuilt turrets, how much volume I intend for RP space, etc.. Turret arcs of fire will also be predetermined. All that done, I will geometrically calculate the size and volume of the final shape and pad the final volume by 5-10% to cover any detail changes, oversights and expansions.

For a small ship, the very first blocks I place will be the power system, so as to be certain it is generating to the full soft cap. For very small ships, it is often the power system that defines the shape. In a larger ship where reaching that power cap is trivial, the first thing I will place is turrets onto a skeletal frame. This to ensure I build for maximum fire arc and minimal occlusion. In both cases, as I outlined above, I will already have a very good idea as to the necessary dimensions of the ship.

All that said, my decorative skills are virtually non-existent, and any cool factor that arises from my ships is usually the visual testimony to the extreme devotion to function.

 

[KiloZulu]

My early ships were plagued with cramped quarters, over-sized turrets and under-sized carrier bays. Now days, I often build a small model version of the ship to make sure I like its lines and identify placement of components. Then I build the turrets, shuttles, and fighters. Next, I build a frame for the ship to dock these entities in place, shifting their location as I nail down the proper proportions. After that, I build out the living space - connecting up corridors to the framed hangar, determining core access, and the organization of associated rooms, so the kitchen is next to the galley, crew quarters and bathrooms are near to them, etc. Some skinning naturally occurs during this process, as I nail down window locations, airlocks, hangar doors, and turret collisions, but I finish closing up the hull at this point, and then it's just a question of filling in all of the components I want for the ship.