Evolution of Design

LJSmith

I've been through plenty of phases over the course of my ship designing. The first ones of course are always the smallest, assuming you're starting from the campaign. But then they grow and mature, as you earn more credits or begin to branch out into creative mode, and understand more and more what makes a good ship in Cosmoteer. So what phases have you guys gone through in your main competitive designs? Have you changed styles very much from when you began? Here's my story:

This is the first real main ship that I used during the campaign- the idea being that a minimum surface area was best to avoid damage to the internals of the ship:
image https://i.imgur.com/pRpLldd.png

Next, I upsized, and added "wings" (mostly for extra mobility):
image https://i.imgur.com/ONLB6L1.png
It should be noted that the awesome paintjob was applied later, when I had way too much time on my hands.

Then I decided to make a truly fearsome capital ship, one that would destroy anything the game could possibly throw at me...
image https://i.imgur.com/yZpPJ9l.png
The idea behind this station was to constantly rotate, ensuring the shields were maintained and given time to recharge, and that the mixture of cannons and teslas would be given time to reload while those on the other sides of the ship were turned toward the enemy to fire. Plenty of armour and point defence, for a balanced defence, and plenty of missiles (since missiles are A: awesome, B : long-range, and C: able to fire even when facing away from the enemy). I gave it an awesome paintjob, a ridiculously armoured core for the hell of it, and was satisfied.

Untill I discovered the slight problem with chain reactions in the reactor blowing entire corners of the ship to hell.
Much later, I designed the mk. II variant, mostly by copy/pasting the sides of the mk. I multiple times:
image https://i.imgur.com/Kc6sp9o.png

I made an effort to prevent reactor chaining, added more fire extinguishers (not that anyone uses them anyway), added more teslas and made the core around twice as big and reinforced with shields. This is the largest I could possibly make this station without making it completely square, which would also limit its ability to fire two sides at once, have greater surface area and not look as cool. When constantly rotating, this ship is nigh indestructible against others in it's credit class.
It also, in my opinion, has the raddest paintjob of all time.

CursedPh4nt0m

LJSmith My first ship was this:
image https://i.imgur.com/t1EZQoh.png
I endet up with this before buying a Wolf:
image https://i.imgur.com/JkW4wLi.png
The upgraded Wolf:
image https://i.imgur.com/LU9x7jf.png
A bit later I first used creative, which led to a former Crescent Wrath looking like this:
image https://i.imgur.com/DztPTh2.png
Trying to use the space given, I also built sume cubes (I'm not gonna post every single one of my ships) and kept building bad stuff until I found several building guides on the forum, which led me to building okay stuff like this:
image https://i.imgur.com/QfC1TGd.png
and eventually rather good ships like this one (my personal favorite):
image https://i.imgur.com/7QIxUmB.png
(Didn't stop building cubes tho:
image https://i.imgur.com/SseENYH.png
)
Now I'm mostly building modded ships (and drones):
image https://i.imgur.com/O745wRq.png
Still couldn't overcome my bad habit of endlessly adding stuff (mostly weapons):
image https://i.imgur.com/7zWU3ZZ.png
Thanks for reading my "story"
Ph4nt0m

Jenwuf

LJSmith
Ah, ship building evolution... here i go

image https://i.imgur.com/CSg6ltw.png
my "first" ship, in reality, this was not the first, however was one of the origional designs i made.

image https://i.imgur.com/aKOwyP0.png
a 3rd generation cruiser, by this point i had made a faction, and begun using mods, the shape was now larger, and overall more unique.

The "Undecided" Era

at this point, i was usure as to what i wanted my ships to be...

suddenly, i decided to change the design entirely, this was due to multiple factions beginning to use a mod that added side shields, contrary to the bubble shields from the star wars mod. This, as seen above, heavily influenced the designs of the era.

then, yet again, i decided i disliked the old designs. And so, decided to copy the star trek shape, however made it my own in some ways. however the top design is actually a older 3rd gen design with the front flipped to act as a tail.

Then... i finally decided:

image https://i.imgur.com/P3SYSbD.png
the 4th gen cruiser ildiran class
a design i believe to be one of my best, even against my newer ships, it still packs a hell of a punch, and due to it being a flying chunk of armour, it is a very tough ship to completely destroy.

image https://i.imgur.com/nR2C90R.png
TSC rebels Era^
image https://i.imgur.com/C9fsxmt.png
STE Era^
these two ships are the Equality class, as you might notice, it marks the begining of the STE's ship design style.
alongside this the TSC rebels where a rebel group, hence them taking a old ISC ship (ildiran) and adding two missile prongs to it's side.
later, once the rebellion had won, and became the Second Tau Empire, they widened the rear thruster area
alongside shortening its front while changing it's coulors to the new STE Red-Yellow-Black style.

image https://i.imgur.com/QQDL5zn.png
old^
image https://i.imgur.com/rQeZWJH.png
new^
a dreadnought class ship, had to be changed severely due to the 0.14 update, and the invention of my mod.
this starts the new armor styling for the STE

image https://i.imgur.com/Dp4fMBc.png
wilhelmshaven^
image https://i.imgur.com/hcFs5zR.png
Deadlock class^
and so, the new idea of having spaced disposable armour panels instead if shields became the norm, and this is where i leave it, due to the above ship being what i currently use.

so.. after much trial and error, i have a ship design style that is easy to make, functional, and more importantly ones that i like.

culanns_hound

Well, I started out making ships like this at first.

image https://i.imgur.com/AOS5uj1.png

Which lead to this as my final design for the campaign.

image https://i.imgur.com/FV591ZI.png

Than I moved into creative mode and made this ship after a lot of trial and error as well as borrowing design ideas from others when I first came here. The whole point of this ship was to make something that could beat someone else's at the time.

image https://i.imgur.com/yiOYY6j.png

Of course I had to update and change that ship over time as well.

image https://i.imgur.com/ZBgyQZS.png

Than I made my first faction which lead me to make ships I though of having tails and bells.

image https://i.imgur.com/3Mun8p7.png

image https://i.imgur.com/mfLuUzP.png

image https://i.imgur.com/hCKQqbf.png

image https://i.imgur.com/CqHCOsN.png

They were surprisingly agile.

After that I did a complete update of all of my campaign ships to create another faction. For said faction I created a few other ships that I kept in the theme that I was quite proud of.

image https://i.imgur.com/GCTb3cy.png

image https://i.imgur.com/dzVkU8L.png

image https://i.imgur.com/H9xeucj.png

The elements of my builds haven't really changed in quite some time but they work for me more or less.

Oneye

I will post my "story" here once I get on my old computer in a week or two. I like to think I started off quite nicely for a noob, but you can tell me what you think after I post.

DH50

Ok... So the first ship I ever built was a massive chunk of metal called "The behemoth". Unfortunately, I can't show it because I forgot to save it before having it fight the Archangel. It lost horribly. Then, after some experimentation, I built "The Wall"
image https://i.imgur.com/cNNVeON.png
It was a very bad ship. However, being the noob that I was, I thought it was unbeatable because it beat every built-in ship. Shortly afterward, I found the forum and began to lurk there, finding ships and beating them with the wall. That's where I first found @Teg and his amazing ship modules. Then, using those, I built "The Guardian".
image https://i.imgur.com/MJb775q.png
Though this was actually a pretty good ship (Also the first one I ever posted on the forums) I wanted to build something that was fully my own. So fast forward a bunch of build guides and looking at ships on the forum, I built this ship, which I am still quite proud of.
image https://i.imgur.com/AYNT0dY.png
(This was also the first ship I ever attempted to paint!) This is the Conquest v8, being, As you might have guessed, the eighth version. After this, I created my first dreadnought ever, in the same style of the conquest.
image https://i.imgur.com/19yDZbF.png
After this, I began to become more active on the forums, leading to today!

LJSmith

I have to say, I'm really loving seeing the different styles people build in alongside how they developed- It's really cool!

albin_xl

My paintjob wont get a story as it is the same as when I started (horrible)

CursedPh4nt0m

albin_xl This post is about your building style rather than your painting skills. Posting ships without paint or with bad paint is no problem at all. (At least here.)

albin_xl

CursedPh4nt0m I was just joking I wasn't gonna post anything anyways.

LJSmith

CursedPh4nt0m But feel free to mention your development in painting as well, I know I'm fairly proud of mine 🙂

Oneye

Here it is! (finally)
So I am going to take the text of my introduction, and add the ships in.

As you all know, I am 0neye. I started playing 8 months to 1 year ago and am still addicted to this game!

The noob stage

I found the game through Lathlands videos, and the first time he said it was free I instantly downloaded the game. I started off in bounty hunter, and played through a few games to get used to how to play. Then I went back and watched more videos for a few days before doing anything else. Once I finally got back to playing I went straight to creative and built my first few ships.
The Brawdza
image https://i.imgur.com/r8IIIwQ.png
And the Mini-brawd (no I did not care about the spelling)
image https://i.imgur.com/Qc6ubop.png
And my 5th ship, The Sha-NAN-a-cans XL. Yeah, I was bad with names...
image https://i.imgur.com/v1pFyNK.png

After a few months I had built some ships like this.

image https://i.imgur.com/cmVW2lp.png
And this.
image https://i.imgur.com/rKy24Lf.png
They weren't very good, but at the time I thought they were godly.

The sort-of pro stage

Anyways, fast forward a few months and you get a younger me building his first wall with help from @SpaceCat.
image https://i.imgur.com/6OkBoKI.png

With more testing, I finally built a wall that could beat @SpaceCat.

The Vulture
image https://i.imgur.com/NZzLyMD.png

And then contined building walls.
image https://i.imgur.com/NhZ9zLM.jpg

This is the main thing that let me become better at building. Then multiplayer (online, not LAN) came around, and I started playing regularly. I did quite well, (prob because of the walls) and started experimenting with other designs. I built a few broadsiders, and got help from @WillieSea on my first (and best) broadsider. The "Pike" was quite good, it had about 10 cannons per side and was very tanky.
(not .ship because it is still by best broadsider)
image https://i.imgur.com/OcgwMgn.jpg

I continued building walls until I took a break for a while.

image https://i.imgur.com/WWy4uuF.jpg

When I came back I had an urge to write a guide, and got help from "Coffee" and "Necrobite" on discord to make most of the pictures. As you know this guide is the (pretty popular) "Do's and "Don'ts" for building thread. I continue to update it today. -> https://forum.cosmoteer.net/d/4578-dos-and-don-ts-for-building

In this most recent update, laser triangles became really good. So, as always I followed the meta. I have made a few laser triangles since then, and am enjoying playing MP and making new ships.
(old versions)
image https://i.imgur.com/T5H9hIy.jpg

image https://i.imgur.com/ZeJJ2Ng.jpg

Equalizer

Pre-Historic (before shields)

Standard Cannons are Over powered

More Firepower Efficiency

Maximize Missiles

Some what better looking ships Interlude

Small Thrusters are Over powered

The 'Experiment'

The First Laser Missile Triangle

Definitely Not a Ship (same as one of the previous ships but embedded in this image.)

kola2134

This ship started as this
image https://i.imgur.com/r1glFgz.png
Then i took it and made it into a heavy freighter
image https://i.imgur.com/cM8Mt0K.png