Err i think you missed the joke.
that was funny on several levels.
ust looking at your ship again Dys....
i was thinking about it recently, and i realized i have trouble building ships that
don't look like they're from star trek. i guess for one thing, they're some of the most visually interesting ships in the world of Sci Fi. let's compare.
Star Wars: a giant ball of metal with an embedded satellite dish, plus huge wedges of cheese. not exciting. the rebel ships look rather utilitarian. the ships generally don't look more interesting until the prequel trilogy, which just sucked.
Stargate: the earth ships look like direct descendants of modern naval ships, which adds believability, but not style. gouaould ships are designed to be a plot twist (they land on pyrimids), and Ori ships look like toilet bowls. Wraith ships are kinda cool, as were the Asgard, but in general the ships in the SG universe were too view in design variation to capture my love.
Starcraft: okay i do like Protoss ships. judging by the info about SCII they've released so far, it looks like the Protoss fleet is getting some nice expansion. Terran ships are gritty and utilitarian, if a bit few in number. and that leaves the Zerg, which don't technically have ships but evolutes, but either way considering that they come about as a result of intelligent direction, i'd still consider them a form of a technology. okay, yeah, starcraft is pretty damn cool (sidenote: did you guys ever hear about the not-likely-to-be-finished Starcraft Ghost? it was supposed to be an FPS set in the SC universe).
Battlestar Galactica: fraking awesome. period.
stock GalCiv2 ship designs: okay, there is variety here, and something like consistency for each race. but seriously... i'll grant that SD's art department's done great things for the game in TA, but when it came time to actually build ship templates, it's like it was a bit of an after thought for the most part. and justifiably so, since they left us with the ability to build more or less unlimited variations. still... when i look at these stock designs, i can't help but think, "i wouldn't board that hooptey ride for all the BCs in a mumbler".
that leaves Star Trek. and the thing about ST is, there's just so much material to draw from. between 5 live action series and a cartoon, 10 movies and more printed fiction (sanctioned or of the fan- variety), you've got a more elaborate (not to mention inconsistent) mythos than most, if not all, world religions. it's not wonder the Futurama epi, Where No Fan Has Gone Before, features "...star trek fandom [evolving] into a full-blown religion."
but more than that, i think by TNG they were starting to design ships with aesthetics in mind first. actually, i think that's what they did in TOS as well, but the production budgets and technology at the time left things looking worse than modern flash animation. but hey, you can't make everything a perfect masterpiece a la Industrial Light and Magic. oh wait...
anyway, yeah... that was a total ramble (brought to you by too much coffee and too little work this morning), but it did have a point. once development of GC2 has settled down, i hope to develop a mod that makes the game more fun, realistic and enjoyable. and that will also include new ship designs and additional custom races. i'm sure more than a few of these ship sets will be resemble ST designs.
as a side note, i've been watching some of the Federation & Empire mod designs roll out, and they're pretty good
