Why not?
In theory, all you\'d need to do is build a ship with excellent combat qualities, then build \"eye candy\" around it. The eye candy would just have to include enough reactor cells and thrusters to cover its own weight without slowing down the underlying battle platform too much.
Of course that\'s only really an option for huge ships. If you put \"eye-candy\" around an agile little fighter it would easily double its mass, slowing it down too much. So at least for those its strictly form follows function.
I guess the real problem is the different mind set of the people designing these ships. People who make pvp ships are effectively engineers, their design principle is effectiveness, form follows function and function alone, and once their ship has the stats they want and performs like it should they are done.
On the other hand you have \"designers\" with the ambition to create beautiful ships (or re-create movie ship designs as accurately as possible) Their focus is not performance but details, up to the point where they deliberately make poor engineering choices for the sake of better looks. (Especially if the movie ship is badly designed to begin with in respect to the world- and StarMade combat physics)
What we need is the steam punk engineer, who can build an imperial era-esque battlecruiser that doesn\'t only pack the punch but also looks the part.
In any space ship, but with StarMade physics in particular you want the most amount of volume (for engines,reactor,weapons) with the least amount of vulnerable target surface.
So generally compact ships, cubes, spheres, bulky and packed forms are generally superior to sleek, elongated, delicate, fragile dainty designs.
This rule however has exceptions. A minimized surface exposes the few components that have to be on the surface by definition: Gunpoints, turret hardpoints, cockpits and hangar bay doors to name a few are very easy to target on a cube or sphere. If the surface is bigger and \"less smooth\" due to eye candy, it might make aiming at vulnerable points more difficult. This is even more apparent with the latest missile damage modification, as a missile hit with shields down won\'t blast away half the target vessel anymore but leave only moderately sized craters.
On the regular \"battle cube\" that crater would likely eat away reactors, shield and weapon structures. A Ship with an \"exe candy hull\" would first loose pinnacles and jutties, bridge structures and domes, but would require at least one more hit in the exact same place to be entirelly split open or disabled.
Another problem with the eye candy in pvp is of course repairs. Repairs to a 100x100x100 cube is easily done in the advanced editor, by placing 10x10x10 blocks of the raw material in question.
A delicately crafted hull in comparison is too time consuming to repair. Its near impossible to do so in battle, and with any significant battle damage (especially if spread over the whole surface thanks to small caliber hits from fighters/turrets while shields were down) you\'d effectively have to scrap it and buy a new one. Or leave the scars as they are and just patch them up a bit
After all, battle scarred capitals have their own visual appeal in this game
