EVE General Discussion

Even if you do just make one half and mirror it, that just makes it easier to build a base model. Once that is done you just go back and start adding smaller additional pieces to the base you designed. You can do asymmetrical design with a symmetrical piece as your base.

The "beauty" of the old Blackbird was at the point of its explosion. Enough said.

I liked it at first glance, but have gradually soured on the new design. I'm starting to fear these recustomizations.

FaithInCCP--;

that's enough,

Unlike human faces, where we all -- arguably -- have some kind of baseline preference for certain appearance traits (symmetry being one of them; there have been a number of studies done that help explain why beauty is beauty), a predilection towards a certain style of car, or boat, or house, or... yes... spaceship is likely affected by any number of non-preprogramed life experiences, sensations, and simple, inexplicable want (the very intangible stuff that makes us human).

The long and short of it is that this is outer space, and you could build a ship that looked like anything, ranging from this, to this, to this... to even something like this. And while some (or even all) of those designs might not be any particular person's cup of tea, physics being what they are, they could probably all be thrust through the void.

What you see as 'bizarre design choices' are, for many of us, what gives the Gallente ships their character. The Gallente are arguably, far and away, the most artistic race in EVE. They almost hedonistic when it comes to an over-the-top flair for the dramatic, the avant-garde, and, yes, the needless.

There is expression even in the superfluous, and while I am sure that every little dangly bit and protruding nacelle probably serves some kind of purpose, the Gallente have chosen to exhibit things where they are due not to need alone, but because -- for them -- form matters. (It matters to the Amarr, too, clearly... though they also follow a far more traditional design approach that involves more basal attempts to overawe and intimidate). If function ruled over all form, then every ship in EVE would look like either those of the Caldari or the Minmatar (and thank goodness they don't).

Yes, I see a sleeker, more rugged, and arguably more battle-ready boat in the new Exequror. But I also see a ship that lost a lot of what made it a very cool and exceedingly unique part of this little universe. The new Exequror is something more than what it once was, but also something less... and that's not a happy thing. It really makes me worry about changes to other 'scorned-but-beloved' Gallente ships like the Imicus, the Thorax, and the ever-present Dominix.

I welcome very much improvements to the models. I view with increasing fret changes so dramatic that they destroy the identity of the very thing they are trying to upgrade.

There are so many reasons why any (RL) spacecraft will be as symmetrical as possible it ain't even funny.

Center of thrust, weight due to reinforced structures, ease of manufacture, to name just a few.

Now?

At least now the ship looks like it's capable of flying in a straight line.

It would be stupid not to do it. It saves half the work, half the time and half the money. But in certain applications it's not the best thing to do, for example with patterned textures like the Gallente Navy camo. On most ships the mirror line is hidden or disturbed by parts with another texture, by geometric details, or just happens to make a good looking mirror line. There are even a few ships that have asymmetric camo on a symmetric hull.
On the Exequror the mirror line is visible over the complete length of the hull, with the exception for the little part on top between the engines. The camo pattern of the Navy Exequror enhances the mirror line so much that it hijacks your focus when looking at the ship.

There are a few more problems with he new model IMO. They're all details, but it's the details that make or break the immersion in the game. The ship has seven engines, but only three trails. I can imagine seven trails might be a bit much and look overdone, but having trails on the smaller engines, but not on the big main engines looks strange.
The warp engines light up when moving sub-warp as well, but in the out-of-warp rotation. I'd say if they're warp engines, they should only light up together with the warp animation. This also saves two trails, making it a total of five for sub-warp movement, which would look correct without looking overdone.
The bumpmap on the main body of the ship is very light, almost to the point where you need Photoshop to make them visible. It removes a lot of detail from the ship, making it look like the same or even lower definition than the old model.
The engines on the sides of the model are eight-sided cylinders. Every polygon saved is another one and for a game that's extremely important, but saving them on clearly visible supposed-to-be-round edges which even contrast to the background in almost every angle isn't the best way to go.
The satellite dishes to the sides of the ship... They look important, they look like delicate equipment, yet they are completely unprotected on a ship that is likely to see clouds of shrapnel.
The T2 model additions are missing for the Oneiros. They are even highlighted on the presentation sketch, so why are they missing?

Stuff like redoing POS, giving low sec piracy and carebear activities some love and fixing crappy market mechanics like the 0.01 isk fest is much more important, but if you're working at improving the immersion in the game you shouldn't ignore the details. The same goes for that we now have really beautiful asteroid belts, but the ships still go for a complete and abrupt stop the moment before they enter warp.

The Hyperion is symmetrical.

And neglected. Major drone boat, no drone bay.

And the Imicus still sucks. Imicus Imicus Imicus Imicus Imicus Imicus Imicus Imicus Imicus

Counter-point. The part of the brain that recognizes patterns as faces and immediately rates the symmetry doesn't turn off when we look at other things.

Symmetrical ships will appeal to more people than non-symmetrical ships; the trick is that we have, what, more than 200 ships in the game and they all have to be unique and easily recognizable somehow. Fortunately, the world probably has several thousand different models of cars and vehicles, and they're mostly symmetrical, so I think the issue with the ships already has solutions.

EDIT: Regarding "genius", it's more like they had Picasso-wannabe art designers and now they switched back to Raphael / Renaissance. I like the changes; keep the abstract in all the meta and stats we have to deal with when looking at the ships, and let their shapes be realistic.