To me a ship built based on a previous work (film, television, anime, whatever), no matter how pretty or well done, simply means to me that somebody had a lot of time to invest. It says nothing about the builder's creativity, or more importantly to me, their ship design expertise. Moreover, I invariably question it's functionality in the game, and that to me is a killer. A ship that sacrifices function in favor of chrome, is to me a poor ship.
That does not mean that a functional design has to be ugly. There are plenty of ways to make such a ship visually interesting, even stunning (which I aim to prove to you all in a few months). To me however, visual evidence of surpassing function is itself a thing of beauty.
Simply cramming in a largely random assortment of weaponry and shield blocks into whatever space is left after the 'important' stuff like being pretty and having 'roleplaying' interiors (that virtually no one will ever roleplay in), to me is just bad ship design. I realize that most people think ship design is the process of making pretty shapes and exteriors. To me shapes and exteriors you can make pretty 'after' you get the ship design right, design meaning a rigorous planning of strategy, of the ship's function to fulfill that strategy, the systems which will optimally fulfill that function, and the other supporting systems the ship will need. Once all that has been identified, a large part of the structure of the ship will be determined by that. Only after that structure is identified i
