The Eye of Eridani - Rev 1

[Vader_is_Bored]

Greetings All!
I have myself a nearly finished ship that is in need of some constructive criticism. So, without further ado, I give you: The Eye of Eridani








It's supposed to be both good-looking and functional.
The giant eye beam is just a low power salvage array meant just for the cool looking effect, but it also has plenty of real weapons. A 4x heavy long-range missile volley, a heavy long-range beam, a light heat-seeker volley, and a 4x medium continuous beam array. Plus 4 free-floating light long-range beam turrets and 4 ugly looking PD turrets.
Defensively, I've crammed in 1.4million shields w/ 15k regen, 1mill armor, 36mill power with 1mill regen, 20% ion defense, and a radar jammer.
(But, I've never actually been in a pvp fight, so I have no idea if those numbers are good or not. It kills pirate stations just fine...)

On the aesthetics side, I'm very proud of my great eye, the free-floating turrets, and the engine-beam tail section, but I could use some advice on how to make the talon and saucer sections look less boring.

This is my first serious attempt at building a ship, so I'm sure I've made plenty of noob mistakes. Feel free to point 'em out.
It's up for download in the Community Content Section...

 

[MrFURB]

A 4x heavy long-range missile volley, a heavy long-range beam, a light heat-seeker volley, and a 4x medium continuous beam array. Plus 4 free-floating light long-range beam turrets and 4 ugly looking PD turrets.

This looks okay so far. The four missiles make for a good opening volley, and the long range beam should help zap away shields while the missiles are in flight to insure the impact hurts. Have you thought about applying an ion slave to the beam to specialize it against shielding? It might help.
You could also test out having a few dummy rapid fire missile turrets. They don't need actual damage, they are just shooting missile flares for the enemy point defenses to shoot at. The large number of fast moving missiles make for excellent distractions allowing your high damage lock-on missiles to slip through and tear people up.
Your volley of heatseekers may allow you to counter small drone swarms, fighter wings, and warhead torpedoes but will have limited use against other ships of your size. Heatseekers tend to be an all-or-nothing weapon, a kind of 'screw everything in this sector that isn't me' that overloads everything with missile spam. That said, single outputs of 10 missiles can be underwhelming when saying 'screw you' but better for randomly tossing bits of damage at things that manage to get behind you.

Defensively... You may want to look into getting some more Ion passive working there. Unless you have good thick advanced armor at the front of it, other PVP-oriented ships are going to be able to 1-2 KO your ship by hitting it with a single heavy ion cannon or beam volley and immediately afterwards flood you with anti-block weaponry. Reinforcing your shields with ion (negates up to 60% damage, meaning your shields last 2.5x as long) goes a long way towards insuring that your shields aren't popped immediately and you have time to retaliate or GTFO.

Hope this helps.

 

[jayman38]

Personally, I'd be proud to call that done, but if you need some suggestions, here are some random ones. See if you like the ideas:
1. Add parts to the end of the angular pincers to make the ends of the pincers "pinch" towards the beam a little more.
2. Maybe add some purple light/greebling to the plain parts of the pincers.
3. Maybe extend the back of the pincers all the way to the back of the ship.
4. Maybe add some stabilizer "wings" to the tail parts.

 

[DrTarDIS]

eyeball/sphere could use a splash of colour. red/brown/purple details? camo?

I like the cat's ete salvager. the spikes are cool. maybe serrate the "blades" ?

 

[Vader_is_Bored]

All good ideas y'all, thanks! Especially serrating the straight edges on the blades. But after a little more testing, it looks like MrFURB is absolutely right, its defenses are REALLY weak. And there's no space left to cram more into. So, it looks like this ship is a dead end for now. But thanks for the good ideas to incorporate into my next serious build.