Battle-Scarred Galactica

Space is a cruel harsh infinite environment made incredibly inhospitable by the cruel minds who wander there, preying on the weak and foolish. It’s no wonder that of teh trillions of souls in the galaxy, only a fraction choose to leave terra-firma to seek fame and fortune amongst the stars.

Our chosen existence is one of boundless possibilities; our steel vessels carry us through episodes of pain and wonder and are an extension of our own fears and dreams. Every single vessel is a gleaming example of precision engineering and technological majesty.


This makes the similarities between each vessel very striking. Once when I returned from an excursion of a hundred days my ship appeared exactly the same as when it departed, despite the tale played, the story of which should’ve been visible upon the armour. It’s a shame that, although we all have individual ships, we all look the damn same no matter the age, use or configuration we respectively harbour.

This similarity serves to interrupt the suspended disbelief that we enjoy and reminds us that New Eden is not as advanced as the reality it portrays. I’m not interested in the technological excuses for the omission, only that effects should be layered upon our ships' surfaces to represent the life that our ships have endured; otherwise we simply shimmy around in apparent identical vessels which makes ownership far less personal than it should feel.

I resent shiny and new, I desire dents, scrapes and burns. I think this befits better the New Eden we all bear.

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4 comments:

phantam said...

got to agree, the fact that the ships are all identical is truely annoying, no costumization is my #2 complaint, right after "BETTER EFFECTS!" The fact that a railgun that misses me according to stats still hits me every time is stupid.

You should do a counsel proposal for "age" of ships shown graphically on the hull, that way atleast theirs something to show a ship that has survived 4 years in space vs one bought brand new.

Latro said...

Ditto. I've heard the argument since I joined EvE that ship markings would somehow cause the implosion of the Tranquility and possibly end all life on Iceland, but hull damage and markings ala STO would add to the immersion.

Mat Westhorpe said...

Total agreement here. It can't be too resource intensive to change the colour of the skin with time. If other MMOs can manage the degree of customisation that they do, there must be some leeway on Tranquility.

It'd be nice to have a corp or alliance logo too and even a basic colour scheme.

Perhaps the individualisations could only be visible on the ship that is the focus of attention, ie. a player's own ship by default, but any other ship only when specifically focused on. This should minimise lag at both client and server ends.

And, like icons, there could be an option to turn it off.

phantam said...

the fact is the corp/alliance ownership is already known as its shown in overview, so that being tagged onto the ships shudnt be any more than a CLIENT SIDE gfx addition... age of ship is 1 frigging number transmitted with the ship, they cant say that its too much, as the t3 ships have to send 5 extra values than any other ship (subsystems) so why the heck can't they add 1 extra # for age to show aging on the hull, just a number that is age, and dictates the client how old that ship shud appear or "battlescarred"

The fact is all of this is CLIENT SIDE changes, except for very basic data that they'd have to send from server some of which is already sent... (corp/alliance etc) if they dont want the corp logos getting pulled for all the ships, all they need to do is create a secondary server that just gets a mirror of the logos at downtime, and then the clients pull the gfx from that server, on a short timeout, so if servers busy the ship just doesnt get the logo on it.

Check in the assembly hall theirs a post regarding gfx enhancements where i even went into why the hell does smoke/fire always come from 1 f*cking spot in the hull on every ship every time, and why the hell do guns that "miss" still show as impacting every time, if a XL laser misses a frigate wtf is the frigate still engulfed in the beam?!?!? The client knows it missed just render it properly!