External decorative blocks?

So we got a pack of decorative blocks, they're nice and all but something that's perhaps far more lacking in Space Engineers is external decoration. Just look at virtually any spaceship from any source - they've got pipes, raised panelling, long antenna arrays, flaps and all sorts of components and various doodads.

Look at this ship for example. See at all that detailing:



This is a critical source of detail we're sorely missing in this game. I hope Keen can do something similar.

 

Letters mod should be in vanilla. or what about decals?

 

It would be nice to have external deco blocks, but the LOD the way it is..may end up making the ship look worse off in the distance..

 

Those are greebles, a staple for model makers. Of course I always wonder why a spaceship would run a big fuel line outside the armor, but that's just me.

On the other hand you can do some crafty things in vanilla. Those light armor half blocks and corners put side by side. Catwalks and cover that are not welded look good too. Stock ships just expose refineries and other utility blocks for a more interesting look..

The same goes sc for the inside, add some angle blocks in the ceiling with lights behind them, glass panels not welded and vents with colored lights for great effect.

 

Armor blocks with greebles. The greebles can load on some of the closest LODs since they are decorative. They could be modeled on the armor block rather than being a separate block to sit on the armor block. That way they can't be spammed outside of use on armor and the devs won't have to model the underside of the greeble.

 

Cause there's no room inside SE ships for that stuff

Yes, there are all manner of wire and cable mods available out there and I believe I have every one of them. Still, I'm so busy just trying to finish the main build that I haven't gotten around to the greebling yet.

Yet, the minute Agagath made it popular to grind down a block to enhance the look of a ship was the minute Keen should have started working on detail stuff. Grinding down blocks can only get you so far.

In fact, I submit that "decorative" blocks should be called "detail" blocks. I don't think I'm "decorating" my ship when I put a toilet in it. In the model railroading universe, adding things to a basic model to make it look more realistic is called "detailing". There's a whole industry dedicated to making model railroad detail parts. There's actually money in being a company that makes HO scale grab handles for model railroad box cars. That's "Old School DLC"

 

I got a bad case of greebles once, but some bed rest and antibiotics eventually cleared it right up.

 

@Stardriver907
Build a refinery ship with a docked mining ship, then put everything a crew would need for a week out in the belt. Its amazing how fast the size of a ship will swell. Crew quarters , mass, maintenance bay with airtight doors and a separate engineering to keep those pesky reactor leaks safe. I love the thinking process.
I was on the Hornet last year, everything was so cramped. You can't build like that in space engineers.

 

There are quite a few guides on youtube for anyone wanting ideas to avoid a flying brick. I can seriously recommend Splitsies channel, he has an old but very much still relevant small tutorial series about designing ships and has started a brand new "how to get started" series.

Heres a link to the first episode of the design series:

 

Not to me

Keen's design philosophy is based on building ships that look appealing with no regard to what is inside. The only space your character needed was a cockpit somewhere so you could control the ship. That's why all this time Keen never paid any attention to the kinds of blocks that one would otherwise expect to find inside a ship (or station). That's also why when you build a ship to accommodate an astronaut you have to spread everything out in order to make the room. I build ships by arranging the essential systems first, and then squeezing in crew accommodations where I can fit them. Most people would then cover all that with a layer of armor, but I don't do that. If the crew can breathe, that's it, the ship is done.

 

I'm about to release a whole series of flying brick designs. There are several advantages if you're designing with some requirements in mind... besides being a brick.

 

One man's brick...

 

It's the ISO standard.

 

In survival I start with just a platform style base, in space and on a planet. Then I progress to a ship. The ship always follows what might be more rp than just function. I build function, then wrap it in airlocks, windows, things that make it more realistic than just game function. With all of this I never fly in a brick, my function must have form. I don't do a lot of the blocks that are not welded, but ribs and corners, half corners, not really like grebbling because I like a smoother look. Yes, that does mean everything is covered in armor.
In the never surrender scenario, angled heavy armor is a big deal to combat suicide drones. I like the OP model, that would make a good never surrender goal. Store some defence drones and a tug to deploy them, and a few fighters.

 

My latest, and so far biggest, large block ship project - 'Vilnius' Battlecruiser - follows the way steel girder skyscrapers are made: first the outer shape and supporting traverses give the rough shape of the hull and inner structure and then I start filling sections and decks with floors carrying important machinery, conveyor network etc. The last is furniture, crew accommodation, lights... All this internal design is actually more fun than designing the outer skin later. And the whole thing won't result as a brick either. I don't worry at all about detail level. It's insanely detailed.

 

If I play survival most of my stuff is going to be brick looking or very basic. That way if I get hit by pirates, a shower or I just goof up and crash my ship I haven't lost much. Creative is the only time I try to make things look "nice"

 

When I was a kid, spaceships were either flying darts or flying saucers. There is a lot of old science fiction media that still tends to influence what we believe a "spaceship" should look like. What's true is that we have nothing currently in space that looks anything like what we thought we would be putting in space back in the 50's. When Star Trek came out they split the difference and gave us a flying saucer attached to a dart. It was the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", and particularly the ship "Discovery" that upended the notion that spaceships should be sleek and smooth, and made greebling a thing. After the first Star Wars movie, sleek and smooth took a back seat to highly detailed. In order to startle their viewers, the Borg cube appeared in, I believe, the first season of TNG as the exact opposite of Star Fleet design aesthetics and representing the epitome of logic-based design. May not have been much to look at but was more than a match for the pretty ships. They made us respect the brick.

I will say that people that get upset because everything they build ends up looking like a brick are usually the same people that are obsessed with symmetry. If you believe the left side of the ships must be an exact copy of the right side, the top and bottom must match, and the front and rear need to be similar, you can easily end up with a brick. My advice is that if you keep ending up with a brick you might need to start breaking some of your own rules

This is why I leave crew accommodations for last. The Navy does the same thing. Build the ship and then shoehorn the crew in there somewhere. Still, it's hard to put in the stuff that adds to the cramped feeling like pipes, valve assemblies, junction boxes and various machinery that you have to share passageway space with on a military vessel (as opposed to the 4 lane superhighway passageways on any of Star Trek's ships (minus the NX-1, of course ).

But, we were talking about external stuff.

 

I look at it this way. If I can build a small fleet of capable utility ships that are fast and easy to build and repair, I can rapidly progress to building the larger ships that I want. I want ships in survival that offer a huge ROI for advancing in the game.

 

been muttering that to myself in a few different games lately.