EVE General Discussion

Name 1 ship in real life that isn't symmetrical.

( I mean fundamentally, not some tiny off rigger)

Yes I am aware of physics. I have a university degree. But why go through all the trouble of complicated thrust balancing to compensate for some stupid asymmetrical design when it's much more efficient and easy to manufacture symmetrical ones?
What happens if ones of your off kilter engines break down? Sorry it's not the standard size one so you have to custom order it.
What if a you need to enter a gravity well of a planet? Well your structure creaks because no matter which way you orient yourself you are imbalances.

It just makes little sense. It only has aesthetic effect. No practical reasons.

Considering the fantastic job they did on the Nemesis, the hound is a massive disappointment it looks terrible, hardly any effort has gone into it they essentially just lopped the top half off.

Fortunately EVE doesn't care about thruster placement because they don't use thrusters. Some sort of -insert technobabble- drive system that doesn't use Newtonian physics.

True, the ship itself is amazing, but the model is bleh and lacks detail compared to all the others.

Also, EM torpedo and bomb effects are awesome.

CCP touches something it breaks.

Bombs not doing any dmg to each other, then bombs doing max dmg to all other bombs, now bombs dont go off if u warp or cloak.

Didnt your mama ever teach you if its not broke dont fix it? Guessing not.

You want bombers to be the next AoE doomsday??? You seem to be making them obsolete.
If you want them to be that then perhaps you SHOULD keep it so bombs dont hurt each other so EVERY BOMBER can use the bombs intended for his ship.

You people spend more time breaking **** than doing anything else. Logoff your toon, and do your job. If you dont know WHAT IS BROKEN contact me and i will give you a honeydoo list

I've been operating in Low Sec recently, so I wasn't aware of a bug with bombs not doing damage when warping out.

Have you tested this, or are you just going by damage notifications?

I ask because in the past occasionally damage notifications don't show up for bombs if you are in warp, yet still do damage to the target.

I know its a hornet's nest, but i'll have to ask you to please elaborate on this ....

Not much to elaborate on, but I'll do it anyway.

None of the space ships in EVE are symmetrical. The real-world space ships in the real world aren't particularly symmetrical either. Some lifting vehicles (Ariane, Soyuz, Proton) are, but the stuff that actually travels through space is not (eg. probes, satellites, space stations, space shuttles).

Before someone objects to that last one, let's get to the important point: symmetry comes in several dimensions. On earth, only one really matters — left-right symmetry — because things like gravity and aero/hydrodynamic forces take care of the rest (in fact, asymmetry that takes advantage of these forces is what makes boats and aeroplanes work). In space, left-right symmetry is irrelevant because left and right does not exist (because “up/down” does not exist, so there is nothing to relate left and right to).

This is not a symmetrical shape. This or this is symmetric. If you're going to complain that a space craft is not symmetrical, the idea of symmetry you must adhere to is the latter, not the former, because the former is only symmetrical if you can disregard up/down symmetry.


Historically, we have constructed this trope in fiction where space is like air (and space ships are like fighter planes) or where space is an ocean (and space ships behave like boats or submarines… sound familiar?) because that's what we know and can relate to from every-day life. So we bring this notion of thinking that left-right symmetry is all you need because that's how boats and aircraft are designed. It's further reinforced by the space shuttle, which is only designed that way because it needs to be able to operate in an atmosphere (where the aforementioned aerodynamics make the up-down asymmetry a good thing, since we can use it to keep the hunk of metal from tumbling end over end). For space travel purposes, it's not really symmetrical at all…

…but the thing is, it doesn't need to be, because the shape is almost completely irrelevant at that point, and the asymmetry can be compensated for through proper engineering to ensure that it doesn't tumble (more than we like) in this environment either. That's why we can send off such a mess as Galileo and still have it both fly and face in the right direction.

The Scorpion definitely isn't. The Rokh scores fairly high, but it's still quite top heavy.

Other contenders for actual symmetry are the Zephyr and the Minmatar Shuttle, but they both have prongs and protrusions that keeps them from being properly symmetrical. The Avatar might look like a good candidate face-on, but from the side, it rather looks like the poor mushroom is about to fall over…

So does the 747 you linked =)

Well, not like mushrooms, i mean not symmetrical when looking from the side.


Also, the bloody Capsule is a good candidate ...