Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Honestly, the core (ie good) minmatar ships look good. These are the cane, the stabber line, the rifter line, the slasher line and the maelstrom. Also, the vigil line, the tempest, the cyclone line and the thrasher look ok, but not awesome.

What do all of these things have in common, other than being viable PvP ships ?

They are close to symmetrical, and mostly they draw your attention along them. The cane and the stabbers always look like they are coming to stab you. The cane and the thrasher look like some kind of medieval weapon that will bludgeon you to death. All of these ships have a thrusting, aggressive, masculine look and thats exactly how minmatar should look.

Some ships can stay close to how they are atm for sure, just with some little redesigns in the details (like the phoon should be a little longer and thinner to be less squat) emphasizing pointiness and a no nonesense straight line look. Particularly the rupture needs to be less vertical and ideally more like a cane. Also the bellicose hull needs a lot of work, maybe even a start from scratch. Its just urgh.

nope, thrasher is awesome as it is. there is some resemblance to fish, but it still looks bad ass. period. :P

if minmatar hulls are getting a redesign, it should focus on adding more detail and an appropriate polygon count, but keeping the actual hull more or less intact.
for example the prowler has very few polygons (especially in the middle section where this generator thingy is), but i like its overall shape. would be a shame to get it replaced with some streamlined, gallente suppository...


-> as for the rupture, the vertical nature of this hull is part of the charme. same here, keep the ship but add more detail.

though i favor the minmatar spirit of rust and roughness, i have to say the new hound is quite sexy. the new reaper on the other hand has no minmatar-spirit at all. i think its a gallentian cuckoo-fledgling

Hi people. I'm the Art Director of EVE and I thought I would give you some heads up on the process of the design, redesign and V3´ing of the Minmatar ships.



Applying the V3 shader to the ships only affects the material of the surface and not the geometry. Therefore nothing is going to get more streamlined because of the V3 alone. The new Reaper however has a little too smooth edges and I hope we can fix that one day.

The Hound is a factional (Brutor) variation of Minmatar and therefore looks different from the rust colored classic tech 1 Minmatar ships.

The concept artists are redesigning old ships in-between assignments and whenever they get some extra time. My direction for the Minmatar ships is to keep the dirt, grime, steel beams and visible engine part under plates with negative spaces. But also a little more functional, believable design with the rust toned plates that might not actually be old iron rusting away. This is something that we established a little bit with the Hurricane and I would like to continue with. In some cases we are just limited by technology. The complexity of the Minmatar designs makes them very heavy on the polygon count and in some cases we have to simplify the design. And coloring in yellow rust on the classic design might result in a weird colored rust on the tech 2 variations.

It is really great to see how passionate you are about the look and feel of your ships and I do value your feedback.

Just dont force them to be fully simmetric. That would loose most of their personality.

The few symetrical minmatar ships that have a strong personality are the vertical ones like rupture and naglfar (taht one is by far the most amazing design ever in any game). The maelstrom on my eyes do not look minmatar at all and have no personality, looks horrible and plain to my eyes with nothing to make people say WOW look how interesting that is.

For all god's sake do not make tempest symetrical or I will need to go to iceland make all cars there assimetrical with my hammer!

Don't bother, after an Icelandic winter most cars on the road are indeed asymmetrical.

Personally I'm not a fan of the new hound (really don't like that one) or reapers. I think design wise it's good to bear in mind the history of the Minmatar. Ever since they freed themselves from Amarr they have been locked in a constant struggle to stay free, without the resources the Amarr have to back themselves up with pretty sleek ship. Functionality before ascetics. I think the carriers represent the Minmatar design philosophy perfectly.

"Look we designed a new ship."

"Great. But I think it needs more armour."

"Don't worry we'll stick two plates on the side. that should work right?"

*five minutes later*

"Perfect!"

It is nice to see that the art team is open to constructive criticism. As is CCP generally when it is genuinly constructive and polite and not just trolling.



Yes. They're called fail sails.

More posting like this from the art department please! : D

Shush I don't always reread what I type.

Don't get me wrong I'm all for redesigns. I just don't think the reaper fits in with either the old or the new as far as design goes.

As for the hound I'm not arguing that one isn't Minmatar looking I just personally think it's really ugly. I think the majority of the redesigns have been good so far. I think the stealth bombers actually look pretty good (apart from the hound). I like the way that they fall in line with fighter bomber design a bit. Also they actually look like they're made out of stealth materials and painted with radar absorbing pain now.

I'm just hoping new technologies in computing don't override the design concepts of the race.


Actually now that I think about it it would be nice if they designed the tech 1 ships (appart from destroyers and BC) as pre-republic designs and tech 2, destroyer and BC hulls to be more up to date designs. I realise that's what BC are now but I hope they keep that feel when they redesign.

yeah, i like the hurricane/nid/hel, so i'd like to see that style continued, too :D

oh, and, just out of curiosity, are y'all gonna be v3'ing the various NPC/unique ships, too? like the sansha destroyer, Society Cruiser, Apotheosis, Freki, etc.

I actually like the look of the Hound, it now looks like some sleek hunting dog. which its suppose to be. The stealth bomber i have a problem with is the Amarr one, but i dont like most of the Amarr ships so...

I agree that the Reaper is a little to rounded and put together for the most part. Personally I feel it needs to have a bit more of the frame work showing through in places. I think the ships should show more frame work if its a tier 1 (yes, I know the tiers are going away) then if its a tier 4 or 5. The lower tiers should look like they are thrown together and a bit ratty to fly. Like a old rusted jeep over a newer rust colored jeep. Both are jeeps, both are rust red, both have the same idea and utility, but the newer one has more panels covering the engine and isnt missing a headlight or door.

If we could get updated models for all T2 ships that take the idea and lines from the T1 version, then upgrade them. Like the new Stealth Bombers had happened to them I would much appreciate that. I realize that would be a while down the line, as in years. But i wll wait.

There was something else I wanted to add but forgot now....