Ok, let's admit it, we've all been hiding our excitement about Josh's statement

JoshParnell wrote: Can you imagine having a ship generator that could produce ships on the quality of EVE?

and it's gotten me thinking, what makes those ships look interesting? it's all in the tiny details, those little wires and bolts that make the ship look like it's gone through the manufacturing process rather than blobbed on screen by the computer. So why not make those things procedural?

Think about it, cooling pipes going from the cooling module (a suggestion within a suggestion, suggestception? ) to other heat generating modules, engines, weapons, generators, Wiring from the central computer to all other modules, power conduits from the generator, wiring from the antenna to scanner, and so on, all these little details that make ships look like ships, obviously not all of these will be shown on the surface of the ship, but they'll be somewhat showing between the platings.

Also if shields fail and you take a hit to those wirings things'll go wrong, like if the wires to one of the turrets got severed it'd go haywire, or the coolant pipes make it over heat and explode? and you'd have to dispatch a repair drone to fix the damage, i'm just excited by the possibilities, and if LT isn't gonna have this maybe LT2?

I'm personally not a fan of greeble. It makes it seem like nobody bothered to design the craft properly. Same with jigsaw hull plating with wide black seams, as if welders forgot how to make a good weld in the future.

If you have a component on the hull of the ship, by all means, include some piping and wiring to it. But creating extraneous greeble just because this patch of the ship looks devoid of detail I find to be lazy and poor design. If there is no detail, then there is no detail. Plenty of things are just like that.

I'm 100% for greeble. It makes ships look interesting. Rule of cool.

ThymineC wrote:I'm 100% for greeble. It makes ships look interesting. Rule of cool.

That looks amazing to 3d print

~Sly

ThymineC wrote:I'm 100% for greeble. It makes ships look interesting. Rule of cool.

Your picture is the rule of hideous, not rule of cool. There is nothing cool about that thing. That it makes no sense is bad enough, but even worse is its not even attractive.

Things built to look like they actually work, by people with at least half a clue about engineering... That is cool. Not some mass of scrap metal someone who just discovered the bevel tool spat out.

War with gifs. :/

If greeble is a damageable/functional thing, I think the problem will solve itself. You stick all your exposed wiring out where I can shoot it. I will use a modern invention I call a "hull" to protect it. We shall see who comes out on top.

One of the rules of cool is that being dead and on fire is the least cool you can be.

CutterJohn wrote:Your picture is the rule of hideous, not rule of cool. There is nothing cool about that thing. That it makes no sense is bad enough, but even worse is its not even attractive.

To each their own. What is 'cool' is always subjective.

Things built to look like they actually work, by people with at least half a clue about engineering... That is cool. Not some mass of scrap metal someone who just discovered the bevel tool spat out.

This is something that will be a design choice by Josh. Ultimately if Josh wants to put such things in, they will be in. Likewise if he doesn't care for it or finds it too difficult to pull off. We have to also be completely cognizant of the target audience as well. We already know that LT is going to be based more on things like Freelancer than something like EVE or KSP. Rule of cool for LT will not be the same thing as Rule of cool for other games. Please respect that.

Sorry for the immature gif I posted last night.

I'm in favour of different factions having different styles; some would design ships with heavily greebling, others would opt for a more utilitarian design.

Like I said in this thread, I'd like the differences in ship designs to be based on meaningful choices e.g. what is most appropriate given local resources. So I'd want factions to decide on how much greebling to use based on meaningful reasons as well. This would necessitate that greebles had some kind of importance to gameplay - what could be the advantages and disadvantages of having highly greebled vessels?

I think with really large ships, greeble almost becomes mandatory. In Freespace, you had a single subsystem you could take out that would completely disable or disarm an opponent, even on many of the capital ships. With cap ships here, it would make more sense that each weapon became it's own subsystem and thus just firing blindly at the area around it might do something.

I never liked in Star Wars when they're attacking the larger ships you see firepower hit the surface, but the surface is unharmed (yeah, I know it was more of a limit of the technology at the time and not much of an accurate portrayal), but you'd think destroying some of those things would have caused problems somewhere.

I personally like plates and seems with as little greeble as possible.

BFett wrote:I personally like plates and seems with as little greeble as possible.

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I quite like those designs, particularly the first.

Sweet mother of mercy....

Greebles. I like greebles.

Wouldn't mind seeing some variation between ships from different manufacturers. Ships for greeblers and greeblephobes alike.

DWMagus wrote:I think with really large ships, greeble almost becomes mandatory.

I dunno, I think it's more a function of how exposed a given ship is to external damage (for example laser beams)

A hull is just a waste of energy and materials if nothing is going to hit your systems big enough to damage them. But if you're likely to have people shooting lasers at you, the more you can hide away inside a protective shell the better.

well, the greeble i imagined would look somewhat like this
greeble really is anything added to a flat surface to make it more visually interesting, yes, probably a fighter won't show as many wiring as above, but what about gigantic capital ships? space stations and so forth, and i imagine that shields are more important than hull in a futuristic space battle, because once shields are down, wiring will be damaged regardless once the hull is damaged, obviously the more essential wiring and pipes would run closer to the centre of the ship.

or greeble could be completely aesthetic, where lines would run in certain directions through the plating, this would be something you'd see on fighters.