Suggestions for my WIP Carrier?

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    starmade-screenshot-0000.png starmade-screenshot-0001.png starmade-screenshot-0002.png starmade-screenshot-0003.png starmade-screenshot-0004.png starmade-screenshot-0015.png starmade-screenshot-0016.png starmade-screenshot-0000.png starmade-screenshot-0001.png starmade-screenshot-0002.png starmade-screenshot-0003.png starmade-screenshot-0004.png starmade-screenshot-0015.png starmade-screenshot-0016.png starmade-screenshot-0000.png starmade-screenshot-0001.png starmade-screenshot-0002.png starmade-screenshot-0003.png I've been working on this for a while and have ended up in a sort of rut:

    -I don't know what turrets to put on it, there is room for 12
    -I don't know what systems to put on it
    -It is made entirely out of advanced armour (I don't know how I feel about this)
    -How should I make it more visually interesting?
    -Any good hallway guides or suggestions? The way the bay doors open I need a ~50 long hallway across both sides of the ship.

    Any other thoughts?
     

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    • Community Content - Bronze 1
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    • Legacy Citizen 5
    You have a really interesting design here, and I love the overall silhouette. Some advice specific to your questions:

    -because it is a carrier, test out 2 heavy beam guns on the top and bottom, and fill the rest of the large turret slots with rapid fire cannons. then cover other small areas with anti missile turrets. the reasoning behind this: you should have a few guns to deal with frigate/large assault type ships (then again this is what your drones/fighters are fore), but you mainly need to watch out for the types of enemies that your fighters are vulnerable to: enemy fighters and mass missile spams.
    -make sure to put a jump drive, anti-jump, lots of shields, a scanner, and lots of engines. (of course then power to run all this). other systems are obviously nice, but I think these are essential for a carrier.
    -I would take some advanced armor out, in order to make the ship faster, and also to look better. your biggest defense for a carrier should be your fighters, turrets, and your jump drive. then shields. then armor. your fighters are really your armor. if you have enough to be effective, then your opponent will have to focus on them and not you. (of course i could be completely wrong... its all up to how you wish to dictate your fleets)
    -to make the ship more interesting, I would, as I said, use what you have right now as a really awesome silhouette, and start carving out/tacking on large details. once you have that, then you etch in smaller things like pipes/slaps/strips/grills/general greebles.
    -For hallways I just experiment with lights, struts, wedges, depth behind mesh, whatever I can think that follows my build style. a lot of the time what works is what follows your layout well.
    If you are in a rut, work on another ship. do a lego replica, I can suggest many that would give you a challenge, then revisit this one and I assure you will be better and have a clearer mind.
     

    Edymnion

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    First problem I see, your pickup rails aren't going to cut it.

    I've played with multiple carriers, and they all suffer from one main problem: The drone AI sucks big hairy ballsacks. They will fly in to that pickup point at full freaking speed, and they will have epileptic seizures on top of them trying to dock.

    This means you want your pickup rails to extend far away from the actual ship so that the drones don't crash into you and send you spinning (which just confuses the other drones even more).
    [doublepost=1483630013,1483629571][/doublepost]Second, you need more fighters.

    I recommend 3 fighters for every single other fighter (like Isanths) you plan on going up against. So for a standard 3 ship pirate wing, thats 9 fighters. Less than that means its very easy for them to gang up on a single ship and blow it out of the sky. You want to overwhelm your opponent with more targets than they can reasonably fire at.

    That or you need bigger fighters with lots of shields, armor, and bigger weapons. Just based on how they look in the screenshots, I don't think those are going to be more than a nuisance to an enemy.
     
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    I agree with both of them, especially in the second picture it really warps my mind how the ship looks, you really need to add some pipes and stuff to add perspective and shape to things. The drones you show are really inefficient space wise, your pickup rails should be on the runway and then you have lots of control to where they go. You can stack them in like tie fighters on the top and bottom with a bit of rail-logic know how. I really like the design, and the turret mount points.
     
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