LETS BUILD A GODLY SHIP TO FIGHT ANOTHER GODLY SHIP SO THAT OTHER GUY CAN BUILD ANOTHER GODLYU SHIP TO BEAT OUT GODLY SHIP SO WE CAN BUILD ANOTHER GODLIER SHIP TO BEAT HIS GODLY SHIP WITHOUT ANY FORM OF LIMITATION OR DRAW BACK FOR THE AMOUNT OF POWER THESE GODLY SHIPS NEED IN ORDER TO OPERATE THEIR GODLY SYSTEMS.
This is literally the point of PvP building. You annalise formulas, you form and test theories, you look for design patterns that give you the most bang for your buck, you incorporate those patterns into your designs, you run some more tests, you make hard choices between contradictory possible metas, you run some controlled combat tests, you make revisions based on new findings, you run "real world" combat tests, make more revisions based on how opponents counter your ideas... it IS a perpetual arms race. That is the fun of PvP building!
But it is only fun if the improvements that there are to discover are numerous, a bit esoteric, not individually game breaking, do not force an aesthetic, and become counterproductive at a reasonable point.
Needle ships are individually game breaking, super obvious, force an aesthetic, and become an unreasonable limitation before you even start to get near basically acceptable levels of balance, much less full optimisation.
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What we need is a motive to include decoration blocks and extra hull blocks. That's the price of an interior.
There already is, it's just that not everyone has the patience to build a DETAILED interior.
A lightweight decorative block (like a .01 mass motherboard) is an obliterative which can waste weapon damage if smartly placed. Open crew quarters placed near the outside of your ship make for a fancy form of spaced armor. Buttresses and other organic details on the outside of your ship help with armor layering and spacing explosive damage as well. Extra hull blocks in your interior reinforce your ship's aHP for way less weight and cost than more advanced forms of armor; so, those RP interiors actually increase the survivability of your armored exterior without exposing your hull to "bleeding-off" you ahp