Is it just me or are some of the ship designs kinda dumb?

I could be wrong, but I think there was a Science Channel, or Discovery channel show that did touch on this subject of space combat and ship sizes and I think one of the things that was discussed (I think Dr Michio Kaku was part of this), was that small fighters like what we have in this game are somewhat unrealistic. 

 

They could’ve been basing things on current technology, but the sizes of ships, all ships would need to be enormous for life support, power reactors, engines, armor, insulation, weapon systems all of these kinds of things. So small fighters I believe were pretty much ruled out as “not practical” and almost all ships would basically be the size of star destroyers or the enterprise for example.

 

Thats why the Human race came out of the assembly line with a perk called imagination, a wonderfull thing when used properly. Now this perk enables people like the devs from this game to create spaceships completely full of awesomeness.

 

In other words and without wanting to discredit other fabulous games like Homeworld, the subsequent mod AFF and such, the ships here are ( visualy ) full of winsauce. 

It’s one of those things like saying chocolate ice cream is the best over the others but really there is no best just what you like. It’s just how art works there is no best everyone has their own taste and I’m sure for everyone that hates how the ships look there is just as many people that love them.

I’m just going to throw this out there but: 

Who cares ? The game is awesome, and there’s very few reasons to get butthurt about that. 

Tier 3 Fed Frigs are the sexiest.  That is all.

Tier 3 Fed Frigs are the sexiest.  That is all.

One Smexy Space Zamboni !!

Homeworld series had some pretty ‘realistic’ ships.

 

I’m not so sure about that. Their shapes were inefficient (sphere would have been more sensible) and they had no means of dissipating all the heat that would be generated by the multi terawatt energies they harnessed for combat.

 

It was an extremely fun game, though!

Why do you assume these ships are not meant to re-enter atmo?  Maybe some are…

Why do space fighters wings?

Easy Answer from a Design Point for Gunpoints so you are enabled to create a crossfire and not have one fixed point up front or elsewhere to fire from.

Arc Design Lasers would draw large amount of Energy if we go realistic because in order to make a laser collide and bounce back out… well you get the picture… And 360 Turrets would mostlikely have a slow turn rate in order to not break the game.

Your wish is clearly to impower Frigates even more. But you are simply exchanging what you want for more HP and SP Thats the deal. Take it or leave it. In a Frigate one mistake won’t cost you your life imidiately while in smaller more agile ships it will. The Game is quiet Balanced as it is. And sorry to break it to you but a frigate isn’t supposed to take out interceptors.

I could be wrong, but I think there was a Science Channel, or Discovery channel show that did touch on this subject of space combat and ship sizes and I think one of the things that was discussed (I think Dr Michio Kaku was part of this), was that small fighters like what we have in this game are somewhat unrealistic. 

 

They could’ve been basing things on current technology, but the sizes of ships, all ships would need to be enormous for life support, power reactors, engines, armor, insulation, weapon systems all of these kinds of things. So small fighters I believe were pretty much ruled out as “not practical” and almost all ships would basically be the size of star destroyers or the enterprise for example.

 

During WW2, there was a theory that fighter planes would become obsolete because long range fortress type bombers with 360 degree turret coverage will murder them. 

 

Which didn’t happen because the nimbleness of fighters allowed them to survive high-aspect fire from the bomber whereas in a low aspect environment on the fighter’s terms his multiple non-turreted (I.E. much lighter and smaller for the same punch) weapons would cause enough of a havoc on the bomber to bring it down without giving the bomber a chance to do the same. 

 

A turreted weapon is a heavy investment in both size and weight. The more nimble you need the turret to be, the bigger the investment:

 

The turret of an anti-tank 20mm mg weighs several times the weight of the mg:

 

ah-1_cobra_turret_02.jpg

 

 

The turret for an anti-aircraft vulcan is a monstrous beast:

Thales-Goalkeeper-CIWS-300x207.jpg

 

In space, you don’t have to worry about turreting a weapon if you can turn the ship around. But a large ship can’t turn fast so it has to turret weapons any time it needs to worry about small nimble ships. 

 

Since the ship’s facing doesn’t effect it’s flight characteristics, small ships can benefit from carrying non turreted weapons, whereas heavy ships cannot. This means that a small ship’s “power to size” ratio is much higher than a large ship’s. Small ships can also benefit from a number of other important technologies (S.A. slanted armor) that a large ship cannot benefit from, bringing it’s “power density” even higher. 

 

End result: space combat will very much have nimble “small craft”. they may not be the asteroid hugging, swag powered scooters that we see in computer games today, but they will probably be streamlined (slanted armor) to some extent. 

If you want a reason for spacecraft to have wings though…

 

Heat dispersion.  In a vacuum, you can’t just let heat pass into surrounding air, due to of course the lack of said air.  And considering these ships are generating enough power to fire plasma-based weapons, cooling is probably of some concern. 

 

Wings allow for an easy way of adding some surface area that can be used as a radiator to get rid of heat by direct release of infared or other wavelengths of light. 

 

They also are a good place to put weapons you wouldn’t want exploding right next to the cockpit in the event they took damage (not an issue in this game obviously but still).

 

And of course, if the technology is advanced enough to make everything transatmospheric, they let a craft make use of wings for stearing and when the vessel enters a planet’s atmosphere.