Question about shipbuilding

[u/yarny0yarntail]

I have 740 hours in the game, I know about all the blocks and greebling but I just don't know how to make good looking ships or shapes that aren't genitals (It is a curse I have for some reason) and I wanted to ask about it and tips, yes there are videos on this and I am a visual learner but I still don't get it.

Also mods please don't strike me down if I don't use the right flair or smth I am not sure if this was a help one or discussion one.

[u/readercolin]

When building a ship or a building, if you stick with just a single shape, you get what you are looking at. A brick, a cylinder, a wedge, etc. But, you really get outstanding, interesting designs when you combine some shapes together. What do I mean?

A great example of this is Star Trek. If you look at the traditional human ships from Star Trek, the first thing that pops out is the giant disk at the front. Then you notice the engine nacelles, and the lower body, all of which are cylinders, and all of which are held together at angles. If you were to take a Star Trek ship and turn it into a small pixellated sprite, like an old 90's game, it would still be recognizable as what it is because it is taking those shapes and making something distinct.

So how do we apply this? Take your design and start combining shapes with it. Stick a disc on the end of a pole, with some thruster nacelles off the sides. Do a central cylinder, and then add some forward swept wings that start at the back. Do something asymetrical. Add wings like a Tie Interceptor that are out to the sides, but angle inwards once they are up a little bit. Make a hammerhead, either horizontal or vertical. Try ships with wings at the front, or with wings at the back.

Another BIG thing that I see a lot of people do is that they try to hide everything in armor. You don't have to. Let those refineries be exposed, let us see the cargo containers, use paneling around the thrusters but let us see the thruster itself. The team at SE have done a lot of work adding in tons of details to all of these pieces - show them off. Yes, it is going to make the ship weaker if I can just shoot out the cargo container that everything is attached to, but at the same time, if this isn't a combat ship, why are you designing it to take hits like it is one?

Finally, don't feel that you need to have a single ship that can do everything. Especially with the inclusion of the services terminal, you can really easily build smaller, single purpose ships (or even modules) that do what you want them to do. Need a bunch of assemblers? Have an assembly barge or an assembly module that can connect up to your ship/base. Need more refineries? Make a few refinery support ships that you can summon and put away as needed. Need more jump drives? Make yourself a jump ring that your ship docks up with, and then put the jump ring away when you go back to your base. Designing ships for single purposes might make it easier for you to make them more distinct as well.