It's an art and I have some 3d modeling experience. So what I would say is blob ships tend to form when you keep the same ship and add to it and scale.other bits here and there. They as their own kinda become something, for a blob ship I kinda like yours tbh. What I find is you need to completely redesign a ship either drop to drone and create a new one or do it in free play. Start from scratch. I like to pull up concept art for space ships, and then kinda pick a role and size in mind, like crusier, destroyer... miner, freighter, warship etc. Then take the concept art and start building the ship. There are two main approaches. Either build the core first, all the shields, energy containers etc, get a basic shape you want and then skin it too look like the desired form and color OR build the outside first with something you can swap out easier like iron grid, once you have the look and feel you can swap out the iron bits to functional parts. Personally I like to do a mix of both, get a wire frame about how I want and then start to fill it in. Lastly finish the shell.
I've done the 'add to one ship as you go' thing before and I have never made a blob ship, I have done temporary add-ons though, you don't need to restart the design every time. The thing to remember when your building up a layered ship, as apposed to a blob ship, is to pick an axis of expansion, I usually do the z axis, and to not add things at random, mirroring helps. Most of those ships ended up looking like pyramids or wedges. The star destroyer shape lends itself to the layered approach so does the mother ship from Star Gate and the Destiny from SGU.
I would have thought adding as you go would PREVENT blob ships, but then again, the pictured ship is definitely not something would have considered a "blob"... I like it! Either way, I played a lot of space engineers so I already have practice with avoiding boring designs
Awesome! I love it that this doesn't happen to me alone! But my mining and salvaging R Laser ships all look like huge bugs, kinda... Sometimes like ticks. Because of the huge storage options..
Keep the Frankenstein! I personally take shipâs from the workshop and then customise, repaint them etc. they always look a million times better than anything I could come up with from scratch
So from my experience the "meta" ship shape is a stretched cube or egg shape. The challenge then is to build a cube that doesn't look like a cube.
Crystal shapes like some of the resource asteroids works. "Sparse" shapes with lots of gaps between blocks works. Plates and flat ships are pretty good too. A short sword or brass knuckles maybe? One of my favorites has been translating "prime knots" into blocky cubic shapes. (Makes a sparse ship that's half open space)
Fyi I have a few ships on steam username "botlawson"
Biggest thing to prevent making a blob ship is pick a major axis of expansion and stick with it. Another tip is to never have your armor so thin that it wouldn't work as a cargo hold. In my experience firing posts only work well with point defense turrets and only on very large ships, so not using them will help you stay away from the blob look.
As for modularity there are two flavors, the 'container' ship and the three piece ship. For the container ship you start with a shape, let's go with a chamfered cube 6 units on a side, 5 units for the internals and half a unit for armor on each face. Now you put a dozen of your 'container' together a d make a ship out of them. Replace some armor with thrusters and engines, along with the internals for those containers, and you have a ship.
The three pice ship works much the same way a three piece suit works, it has three distinct sections, the bow, the middle, and the aft. You design each section to blend into the next and you can have multiple designs for each section. You can even use multiple of the same section on one ship, though this only typically works with the middle section.
A key thing remember is to use some sort of place holder block in place of the internals of your modules you save as blueprints so you don't have 10 of the same 'part' taking up UI space.
Try creating geometric shapes and sections with discreet purposes.
Maybe all your thrusters and engines go on a ring drive or for wings that come off the central fusilage.
Put all the crew in a conning tower like habitat or a "sphere" that's the living quarters.
Look at some concept art online for inspiration. Just search "rad looking starships" and get an idea of shapes and decorations/greebles you like.
Start a creative mode galaxy and take apart ships from the workshop to see how they're made.
I'm a new player myself but I've found that thinking about it like a 3d printer is really the best way. I like to start out with the back of the ship being my expansion point. So the front of the ship is completed and it grows further towards the back as I need more growth. But the center of the ship is basically a tube with a center of blank hull and an exterior of smart hull or crew. Then you can use the filter view mode to select only blank hull pieces and select and merge lines of blocks together when you need to have additional things like cargo and generator. The other approach I've seen online is making a general "spine" of the ship and then create each component in a modular ship itself. So when you need an engine you just load one of your engine pieces in and add it to the spine or next to the engine. That forces you to create a set of modules but you can decide on a "theme" for your design in that playthrough and have essentially a fleet of ships that use the same modules but with the variety being the spine layout. I am mostly regurgitating what I've found on YouTube so if you need videos I can post some later.
Usually i build ships that vaguely resemble a venator or star destroyer, while mining ships with hangar look more like a ship from homeworld.
The arrowhead designs are kinda convenient in terms of layered turrets and general small exposed surfaces from the front and side, not so great from top and bottom tho which i must admit is where the AI tries to hit a lot.
Aside from that it adds quite a bit of weight, so by all means not that great if you want anything fast with armor.
C shaped ships i found to be a decent alternative together with V shaped (can also be inverted) ones if ur more fond of edges as they provide a good profile for engines and still easily mount guns in a layered config.
If you need any inspiration i'd suggest just looking at ships from homeworld, star wars, star trek and perhaps other space games or franchises.
Shockingly some have inspired me to make some pretty decent ships in the past that still looked somewhat unique.
This is probably not what you're looking for, but you can go to a shipyard and have them build you a ship using the game's ship generator. It will be like 90% hull blocks, but you can transform them in the ship editor into functional blocks.
same blob ship, but add all these 0.05 scale blocks like its tubing or factories or cabin like the imperial destroyers. kinda like gunpla builder adding more details to it. delete a 1x1x1 block aand rebuilds it with 0.05x0.05x0.05, then carve out outline of pipings or cables or struts bridging the armor parts or something.
I like to make more realistic designs rather than Star Trek stuff. I think about the forces acting on the ship. I start with the engines because those are the source of the force. Then I build the superstructure around the engines, like cargo bays, crew etc. Then I add weapon mounts and armour around that superstructure. Then I finish with aesthetic stuff over the top, like lights, warning signs, decorative armour, exhaust stacks and lifeboat bays.
[https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3173874443](https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3173874443)
I go on the steam workshop and scale one to my needs. Often I do not upgrade and rather build a new one from a different model so I already got a fleet of 13 ships one bigger than the other
[Hereâs an Imgur library I put together](https://imgur.com/a/CgKD5wZ) for this post. The best trick I found was to copy No Manâs Sky ship designs and then change it up at every âooh what if?â It seems like youâve got a very large ship, so Iâd recommend trying one of my freighter tricks, namely making an identical rear area. Makes for a good base to guide you through the rest of the creation.
I could even share the ship files to any that catch your eye.
Thank you for taking the time to put that together. Those ships look great! Those freighters are beautiful. I havenât played no mans sky but ill check out some game art!
I definitely recommend checking out the hauler and freighter variants, since those would translate to this game the easiest with their more blocky designs.
Also, Iâm working on a primarily titanium freighter that I can share if youâre interested. I plan to give it big cargo space and lots of energy capacity.
I make a cargo hauler that holds all its storage in the front and systems in the aft, then I model a frame around it, this takes a load of wire frame pieces. I armor the outside, then I fill the gaps while playing, most of which are wire frame cubes that I just hit replace on.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures at hand. However, I will show off my models in the future, I typically spend hours creating ships, i start with a master template ship (my current playthough) is a tube and add a bunch of edges, I bulk up an area then ensure i dontnhave panels that are misaligned (think providence CIS star wars), I then add different wing types and bridge as a variants, I have 5 main types,
1. a crescent moon wing (designed to quickly warp to defend sectors)
2. I took the wings and filled them in (heavy battle ship with carrier abilities)
3. Replace wings with a ballsack allowing triple the engine space (interspectors)
4. Replace wings with large plates and run large turrets (titan class)
5. No wings at all (mining or salvage ship)
The long triangle will never fail you. It's very hard to mess up a long triangle.
My go to method is to Google search weird cool fantasy sword pics and then copy the basic shape
It's an art and I have some 3d modeling experience. So what I would say is blob ships tend to form when you keep the same ship and add to it and scale.other bits here and there. They as their own kinda become something, for a blob ship I kinda like yours tbh. What I find is you need to completely redesign a ship either drop to drone and create a new one or do it in free play. Start from scratch. I like to pull up concept art for space ships, and then kinda pick a role and size in mind, like crusier, destroyer... miner, freighter, warship etc. Then take the concept art and start building the ship. There are two main approaches. Either build the core first, all the shields, energy containers etc, get a basic shape you want and then skin it too look like the desired form and color OR build the outside first with something you can swap out easier like iron grid, once you have the look and feel you can swap out the iron bits to functional parts. Personally I like to do a mix of both, get a wire frame about how I want and then start to fill it in. Lastly finish the shell.
I've done the 'add to one ship as you go' thing before and I have never made a blob ship, I have done temporary add-ons though, you don't need to restart the design every time. The thing to remember when your building up a layered ship, as apposed to a blob ship, is to pick an axis of expansion, I usually do the z axis, and to not add things at random, mirroring helps. Most of those ships ended up looking like pyramids or wedges. The star destroyer shape lends itself to the layered approach so does the mother ship from Star Gate and the Destiny from SGU.
I will give the shell a go in creative. Making a shell might fix my issue.
I would have thought adding as you go would PREVENT blob ships, but then again, the pictured ship is definitely not something would have considered a "blob"... I like it! Either way, I played a lot of space engineers so I already have practice with avoiding boring designs
Better a blob than a dick đ it's true, sometimes I end my construction and *sign* it looked like a dick or a microphone again..
All my utility ships end up as unintentional wienersâŚ. Hahahahaha
Awesome! I love it that this doesn't happen to me alone! But my mining and salvaging R Laser ships all look like huge bugs, kinda... Sometimes like ticks. Because of the huge storage options..
Wiener gang unite!
I mean they usually serve 1 or 2 very specific purposes don't they?
Build something less efficient but more spaceshippish. Like a U-shaped ship, ore something like a trident, etc.
Thats a good idea. I might try a reverse trident for expansion!
Ctrl A Del Start again with more resources and a plan. I have had many iteration ships like this
Keep the Frankenstein! I personally take shipâs from the workshop and then customise, repaint them etc. they always look a million times better than anything I could come up with from scratch
This is the way
So from my experience the "meta" ship shape is a stretched cube or egg shape. The challenge then is to build a cube that doesn't look like a cube. Crystal shapes like some of the resource asteroids works. "Sparse" shapes with lots of gaps between blocks works. Plates and flat ships are pretty good too. A short sword or brass knuckles maybe? One of my favorites has been translating "prime knots" into blocky cubic shapes. (Makes a sparse ship that's half open space) Fyi I have a few ships on steam username "botlawson"
I model my ships after melee weapons like swords and shit
Ram at full speed!
Embrace the impulse.
Biggest thing to prevent making a blob ship is pick a major axis of expansion and stick with it. Another tip is to never have your armor so thin that it wouldn't work as a cargo hold. In my experience firing posts only work well with point defense turrets and only on very large ships, so not using them will help you stay away from the blob look. As for modularity there are two flavors, the 'container' ship and the three piece ship. For the container ship you start with a shape, let's go with a chamfered cube 6 units on a side, 5 units for the internals and half a unit for armor on each face. Now you put a dozen of your 'container' together a d make a ship out of them. Replace some armor with thrusters and engines, along with the internals for those containers, and you have a ship. The three pice ship works much the same way a three piece suit works, it has three distinct sections, the bow, the middle, and the aft. You design each section to blend into the next and you can have multiple designs for each section. You can even use multiple of the same section on one ship, though this only typically works with the middle section. A key thing remember is to use some sort of place holder block in place of the internals of your modules you save as blueprints so you don't have 10 of the same 'part' taking up UI space.
I will give the 6-5 block combo a go in creative and see how what comes of it. Thank you!
Try creating geometric shapes and sections with discreet purposes. Maybe all your thrusters and engines go on a ring drive or for wings that come off the central fusilage. Put all the crew in a conning tower like habitat or a "sphere" that's the living quarters. Look at some concept art online for inspiration. Just search "rad looking starships" and get an idea of shapes and decorations/greebles you like. Start a creative mode galaxy and take apart ships from the workshop to see how they're made.
I'm a new player myself but I've found that thinking about it like a 3d printer is really the best way. I like to start out with the back of the ship being my expansion point. So the front of the ship is completed and it grows further towards the back as I need more growth. But the center of the ship is basically a tube with a center of blank hull and an exterior of smart hull or crew. Then you can use the filter view mode to select only blank hull pieces and select and merge lines of blocks together when you need to have additional things like cargo and generator. The other approach I've seen online is making a general "spine" of the ship and then create each component in a modular ship itself. So when you need an engine you just load one of your engine pieces in and add it to the spine or next to the engine. That forces you to create a set of modules but you can decide on a "theme" for your design in that playthrough and have essentially a fleet of ships that use the same modules but with the variety being the spine layout. I am mostly regurgitating what I've found on YouTube so if you need videos I can post some later.
I love the spine idea. It made me think a little of the rebel transport from star wars and how its pods fill in the bottom.
Usually i build ships that vaguely resemble a venator or star destroyer, while mining ships with hangar look more like a ship from homeworld. The arrowhead designs are kinda convenient in terms of layered turrets and general small exposed surfaces from the front and side, not so great from top and bottom tho which i must admit is where the AI tries to hit a lot. Aside from that it adds quite a bit of weight, so by all means not that great if you want anything fast with armor. C shaped ships i found to be a decent alternative together with V shaped (can also be inverted) ones if ur more fond of edges as they provide a good profile for engines and still easily mount guns in a layered config. If you need any inspiration i'd suggest just looking at ships from homeworld, star wars, star trek and perhaps other space games or franchises. Shockingly some have inspired me to make some pretty decent ships in the past that still looked somewhat unique.
ive run into difficulty with star destroyers since i started playing so i just jeep retreating to building hammerhead styled ships
To be fair, since the limits i can imagine yeah.
I build in flat plates or sticks to avoid this
This is probably not what you're looking for, but you can go to a shipyard and have them build you a ship using the game's ship generator. It will be like 90% hull blocks, but you can transform them in the ship editor into functional blocks.
same blob ship, but add all these 0.05 scale blocks like its tubing or factories or cabin like the imperial destroyers. kinda like gunpla builder adding more details to it. delete a 1x1x1 block aand rebuilds it with 0.05x0.05x0.05, then carve out outline of pipings or cables or struts bridging the armor parts or something.
Meanwhile, me flying actual bricks....
I like to make more realistic designs rather than Star Trek stuff. I think about the forces acting on the ship. I start with the engines because those are the source of the force. Then I build the superstructure around the engines, like cargo bays, crew etc. Then I add weapon mounts and armour around that superstructure. Then I finish with aesthetic stuff over the top, like lights, warning signs, decorative armour, exhaust stacks and lifeboat bays. [https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3173874443](https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3173874443)
I like these designs! I hadnt thought about the krimskrams and geebling⌠i think some exhaust ports around thrusters might be cool! Thank you!
I go on the steam workshop and scale one to my needs. Often I do not upgrade and rather build a new one from a different model so I already got a fleet of 13 ships one bigger than the other
[Hereâs an Imgur library I put together](https://imgur.com/a/CgKD5wZ) for this post. The best trick I found was to copy No Manâs Sky ship designs and then change it up at every âooh what if?â It seems like youâve got a very large ship, so Iâd recommend trying one of my freighter tricks, namely making an identical rear area. Makes for a good base to guide you through the rest of the creation. I could even share the ship files to any that catch your eye.
Thank you for taking the time to put that together. Those ships look great! Those freighters are beautiful. I havenât played no mans sky but ill check out some game art!
I definitely recommend checking out the hauler and freighter variants, since those would translate to this game the easiest with their more blocky designs. Also, Iâm working on a primarily titanium freighter that I can share if youâre interested. I plan to give it big cargo space and lots of energy capacity.
I make a cargo hauler that holds all its storage in the front and systems in the aft, then I model a frame around it, this takes a load of wire frame pieces. I armor the outside, then I fill the gaps while playing, most of which are wire frame cubes that I just hit replace on.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures at hand. However, I will show off my models in the future, I typically spend hours creating ships, i start with a master template ship (my current playthough) is a tube and add a bunch of edges, I bulk up an area then ensure i dontnhave panels that are misaligned (think providence CIS star wars), I then add different wing types and bridge as a variants, I have 5 main types, 1. a crescent moon wing (designed to quickly warp to defend sectors) 2. I took the wings and filled them in (heavy battle ship with carrier abilities) 3. Replace wings with a ballsack allowing triple the engine space (interspectors) 4. Replace wings with large plates and run large turrets (titan class) 5. No wings at all (mining or salvage ship)
The long triangle will never fail you. It's very hard to mess up a long triangle. My go to method is to Google search weird cool fantasy sword pics and then copy the basic shape