Opinions on various shipsets
 

Hey all, I just wanted to get some general opinions from people on the various shipsets you can download from PBW and elsewhere. I suppose the more compete question should be:

What does an opponent's shipset have to provide to you in order to be satisfactory for you?

OK, now here's the background to that question. I'm always downloading a new shipset when I PBW. I like to keep things interesting with new shipsets that people haven't seen before. I'm also a little compulsive about not having the same shipset as someone else in the game.

Malfador's website gives some guidelines on shipset creation: same color scheme, and similarity in shape, and points out that the top down model must be clear so everyone can recognize it.

So I download this shipset, and write an emp for it, upload the emp, and then I say, "Better check out this shipset". Well, the race portrait was fine, but the escort portrait was a little dark, then ... Well, the ship set turned out to be ghastly, it was made up of random ships of other shipsets, at first glance, you'd never know what you were looking at.

So I find this other shipset, called the Dragons, nice renderings of dragons of different sizes. They look pretty nice, breathing fire at other ships (good work there Andres). But, they're all pretty much the same, just different sizes. You can't really tell a destroyer from a light cruiser from a battle cruiser. Or is that really important.

I occasionally ponder working on a shipset of my own. I was gonna use POV-Ray to make metallic bumpy ships using the blob function. But I wonder if with my limited skills I can make them all unique enough.

Question is, is any of this important to anyone else?

[ May 02, 2004, 18:51: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do you mean to ask what makes a shipset look good?

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do you mean to ask what makes a shipset look good? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes. No. Not really. Kinda. Wait ... um .. nnnooo. Umm. What was the question? Oh yeah, OK. On a level it seems I'm trying to ask "What looks good to you?" Which is a pointless question, I know.

To distil the question down, what would make a shipset look so bad to you, that you'd hate to play against someone who uses it on PBW, drop out of the game, put a shot gun shell through the monitor, hunt down shipset designer and give him an atomic wedgie, that sort of responce.

Yeah, you could just not use the shipset, and let SE4 substitute. That completely solves the problem. So I am kinda trying to find out what looks "good enough" to "most people". Just to avoid that being necessicary.

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, that's much easier to answer.

I would have to say that compiled shipsets usually get on my nerves; except a few, most compiled shipsets are poorly done, where people grab pictures of the defiant, enterprises, imperial destroyers, borg cubes, asgard ships, some fan made sci-fi creations from the net and horribly distort them to fit the sizes that se4 uses and proudly proclame it as "the best shipset made, ever" or "I made it all" or "They're all my creations".

Besides that, there's little that ticks me off, although off-scale renders (Ie: half of the ship is cut off in the picture) come close.

Edit: and no, it's not a pointless question, not at all.

[ May 02, 2004, 19:18: Message edited by: TerranC ]

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

I don't mind looking at a new shipset, but I agree that it should show ship sizes proportionally. Also, colony ships, war ships, carriers and transports should look a little different; enough to distinguish quickly by sight. This one is a little vague, because if it is an alien race, who knows how their ships are designed, but this is a game afterall. I don't mind a little learning curve, but if ships are too similar or if larger sizes in kt are shown as smaller graphics, I hate that. Some shipsets are downright deceiving; their BB's are smaller than their Cruisers!

Just my $0.02

Slick.

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

I hate ships that don't really look like the hull size they're meant for, i.e colony ships looking like warships or vice versa. It just looks silly I think.

And as mentioned before, shipsets with ships ripped from tv shots just look down right....tryhard I guess? So what if your Baseship looks like a Borg cube?

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

For a shipset to play well, there are a couple things to keep in mind.
- Logical size progression.
- Direction; No blobs. It should be easy to see which way the ship is heading on the mini.
- Colors; Make them visible. I hate the Shadows.
- Flags and population bars; Make them match the shipset color.

Easy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If I had $0.02 I would spend it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

I like ship sets that are interesting and athstetically (sp) pleasing to look at.

I try to make interesting ships but I know that most are just ok and are really no where near the quality that they could be.

If you were to make a ship set, I would say to you do what you want and make the set the way you want it to be. Don't worry about anything else other than if you like it.

I like the Starwolf set the most, but it is one of the least downloaded sets I have.

Re: Opinions on various shipsets
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's probably more due to the fact that it is one of your older sets. Not to say that it's out of date, merely that everyone has already downloaded it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

As far as shipsets that make me cringe, I have to point out those sets that don't look like they belong in space. Among that painful tribe I would list such sets as Nintendo (all the ships are turtle shells, game controlers, and kirby's *shudder*), the Fractal Domain (just a bunch of fractal patterns with virtually nothing to distinguish them), the Akah [look like a series of biger smoldering charcoal brickettes(sp?)] and the Space Vikings (sorry Rollo, every time I see a cartoon longboat scoot through the depths of space it makes me cringe).

When it comes to what makes a shipset attractive, I tend to like a staged progression. A similar look for Escort-Destroyer, one for Light-BsttleCruiser, one for BatleShip and Dreadnought, and Baseship by its lonesome. An example would be the way I reordered the Sol Collective to make the Technocratic Enclave.