You know in space there's no air in space,right?It make sense that you wouldn't have to make an arodinamic starship.As long as the ship is mass symmetric,or has the thrusters placed in the right spots,the ship will perform just fine.The Millennium Falcon is a good example.I also have an asimmetric design called the SF-1 Raptor,but planed ahead by having the heaviest systems placed on the left side,and its wing on the right.
And...your point? What does aerodynamics have to do with anything? It's about inertia and direction of thrust.
Your example of the Millennium Falcon is bad for a host of reasons. First, it actually does have to obey aerodynamics because it's a transatmospheric craft. It certainly should fly in space just fine because it's CoM is still in the centerline of the ship even with the offset cockpit. In atmosphere though, it's not even a viable lifting body, and requires a massive degree of hand-waving and "black box" sci-fi tech to make it work. Which is fine, in Star Wars. But, clearly, it's misinforming certain people who are otherwise incapable of understanding that it wouldn't work in real life, at all. It could be a fine space transport, but in atmosphere it's a death trap.
Also...asymmetric.
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First, no matter what, the CoM and the Point of Thrust MUST be in line with one another by default if the ship is to be controllable. You actually seem to somewhat realize this, so I'm not sure why you got hung up on the idea that I'm talking about aerodynamics.
Second, the farther the mass is spread out symmetrically from the PoT, the stronger the structure has to be to pull it all along when the mass in front of the engines wants to move and everything else wants to stay where it is.
Third, the more "structural integrity fields", extra engines, extra AG for the crew inside, and extra mass needed to keep the ship functional, the more vulnerable it is. This is because it needs more power, and more fuel, and has a bunch of systems to waste power and volume on that it doesn't need at all.
Any ship that adheres to those design constraints will ALWAYS...ALWAYS outperform those that try to get clever with them. Ships that use more efficient designs will need less power, and so carry less fuel, and be more stable as they'll need fewer systems to maintain control of the ship.
Efficiency of design is absolutely and universally superior to aesthetics. But...frequently, such a design "looks good" to us in the end anyway
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All this works fine in the game, but that annoys me because clearly too many people are having issues with separating the mechanics of the game from the way things would actually work. I'm half expecting the future of human spaceflight to result in unimaginable disasters as we start to build commercial interplanetary ships. But all this is why I prefer games like Kerbal Space Program.
Nevertheless, what I actually meant by having informed ship design that affects performance, is adjacency bonuses for parts. Put them together in the right order, get some big bonuses. Having multiple potential bonuses would mean it's necessary to choose what you want your ship to do and design it to get those bonuses. You could never "eat your cake and have it too". Additionally, a better reinforced "Rock Paper Scissors" relationship between the different weapon/defense would mean ships arranged to take advantage of certain bonuses would be vulnerable to certain other kinds, which would in turn be vulnerable to the first kinds. So it would not be possible to build a single kind of ship to dominate the universe, as it has been in GCII.
That, and no more "jewelry" of course. From that point forward, every component would have an impact. There's no such thing as "free" in design. The only exceptions would be the "invisible" hard points like in Kryo's mod. Though even using them would give greater flexibility, at the expense of adjacency bonuses, for instance.
I'd prefer also to see a "power" metric and "manpower" metric added to the requirements of ship design and the selection of parts, but that may be asking too much of the community, since they seem to be intent on waiting to be shocked by how bad they are at...everything. Also better handling of life-support and range...it's currently abstracted to the point of ridiculousness. Abstraction is necessary, I get that...but it's just nonsensical at this point.
Oh well, again, c'est la vie.
