I think all ships we use are built to emphasize function over form. Yes, even most Amarrian designs. Rest is just personal preference for aesthetics.
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This is so true. I’ve flown all kinds of ships from all manufactures, including pirate hulls when it is called for. Flying a sub-optimal ship increases my chances for mission failure and puts the crew at greater risk. Pride doesn’t add anything to tank. Just like honor.
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Amarr hulls are blessed during their creation and are designed based on well established religious principles. Why would we ever want to fly anything else?
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Umm … so, while I’m not really saying there are warships that are “built for appearance,” Ms. Teinyhr, there are definitely some decisions being made about what’s valuable, why, and how.
Amarrian ships have a religious role; their cathedral-like appearance isn’t coincidence. That form is part of their function. The Gallente are less direct about it, but it’s hard to find a Gallentean design that doesn’t look kind of … uh. Like it’s wrapped in plastic, I guess? Caldari intentionally reject that exact aesthetic, reaching for rigid-looking structures and hard angles whenever they can-- even when they don’t have to.
(Caldari interior design can be austere to the point of being unsafe, and stuff like ergonomics is aggressively disregarded. Being comfortable is too … Gallentean, I guess?)
Matari ships are probably the purest examples of “function over form” still flying, and some of them, ah, kind of resemble a flying industrial site? So you’re not at all wrong about Matari designs.
Otherwise … yeah. “Function” might be first (we are talking warships, after all), but “form” definitely is a thing that gets taken seriously.
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Doesn’t really change what I said either way. It’s just personal preference for aesthetics for most people. And hey, if people want to deliberately trip up themselves by that, well, thats their right?
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If that’s so, did we really disagree at all to begin with?
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No?
postmustbeatleast5charactersf****gconcord
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Okay!
Hm. A thought … like Lord Lok’ri said, Amarrian ships really do take their aesthetics seriously. There are a few places where I kind of wonder whether the principles they work on were, ah, sort of being strained by what they were being asked to incorporate?
Compare the Confessor to the Coercer or the Slicer or even, like, an Apocalypse or Abaddon, and you’ll see that the Confessor has a whole lot of unusually undecorated, utilitarian-looking superstructure at the prow, which apparently is so important that moving the ship to defensive mode mostly involves partially putting a supplemental coat of armor over it. I’m not clear why that couldn’t have been armored in the first place and why it can’t be armored more completely. (Mass, maybe? It’s not like turning a ship into a solid ball of metal is usually something the Amarr shrink from, though.)
Anyway, it’s pretty unusual for an Amarrian design, so I think it must have to do with all the Sleeper tech it incorporates. It seems like that one specific area of that one specific ship’s kind of bowed to necessity, even if it leaves it looking more like an Amarrian construction site than a finished cathedral.
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Couldn’t any ship be blessed at creation though? I don’t mean to poke fun with that I’m honestly curious.
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If you need to shield tank, my Lord. And all my hulls are blessed during creation, no matter the design. However, when buying hulls off the market, what’s to say they were not made by some Blooder out in null who baptized them in blood?
Addendum:
I certainly love Amarrian hulls. In fact, I have an Aeon in build at the moment. And though several people opined I should have gotten a Nyx, I value the Aeon’s tank more than the raw damage. If I ever get an exclusively for ratting Super, it will be a Hel, because shields naturally regenerate. And the Hel can apply as much damage as a Nyx. (And, let’s face is, there’s a House Sarum SKIN for the Aeon.)
The Guardian is my favorite ship in the cluster. However, for certain fleet fights, shield tanks are needed, because shield reps apply at the beginning of the cycle. And when 250 bads are shooting at the FC, cycle time matters. In fighting the Drifters, agility mattered an excessive amount. And while the sig radius from the shield extenders ultimately killed the Basilisk as a platform, it wasn’t entirely clear that the Guardian could fit a tank necessary and be as agile as needed.
Generally speaking, most of the time, it doesn’t matter what race designed your ship. However, in those edge cases, it not only matters, but is ultra-critical.
Post Addendum:
A perfect example of an edgecase is soloing a Drifter battleship. No Amarr hull under cruiser sized can do it. The command ships can just face tank the Doomsday. However, I know for a fact the Daredevil can solo it. A frigate. I think a Vigilant probably can as well, but I don’t know for certain that has been done.
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Shields, it should be noted, have been operationally demonstrated to be the better method for tanking supercapitals in pitched battles. There’s a massive amount of institutional resistance to this idea among armor supercap pilots, but the UALX and X47L fights demonstrated that superiority consistently and thoroughly. When the doomsday volleys are flying, in fact, your best option for survival is… well, already be pre-locked by the entire fleet of 250 force auxiliaries because spies are wonderful things, but after that… dual-tanked Erebus.
Or, you know, a Komodo. I mean, that thing’s tank is just obscene.
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Tell you what 
, i’ll throw you a bone. A kilo as total, like a tanker gas mask set. Then i can see the kilo you originally stated, and not just a mask that weighs a kilo…
(( https://www.armynavysales.com/m25a1-tanker-gas-mask-set-m25gm-1250.html ))
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Regarding ships, Gallentean ships are quite functional especially for making money, but I find I actually like Amarrian designs best. Hard to beat that classy look.
In terms of actually killing things though, I go Minmatar. Making money, Gallente. Staying alive, Amarr. Doing everything reasonably well but excelling at nothing (except range), Caldari.
These are broad generalizations of course and I will fly whatever the FC calls for, but that’s my view of the pros and cons of the ships.
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So … ah, since his lordship isn’t replying yet I’ll maybe take a try.
Basically, you can bless kind of what-please-you. You can sort of wander around a Caldari ship tossing little bits of holy water or oil or something and reciting verses from wherever while passing crew looks at you funny, at least until an engineer gets all up in your business for getting moisture near their precious electronics.
And, sometimes people do that. And maybe they feel better about it, after.
It’s a bit different from a ship that’s literally constructed on theological as well as engineering principles, whose internal and external structures are both meant to reflect the glory of the Kingdom of God in This World, and whose design is as loaded with religious symbolism as any cathedral. Basically any Amarrian design you look at is, at minimum, a flying shrine.
People have this way of assuming that the Amarr are anti-knowledge and anti-science, but there’s no way that’s true: they’ve not only managed to use folded space for energy storage (tesseract capacitors!), but also to design an extensive line of perfectly good combat ships that also pass theological muster as sacred implements.
(Sometimes I wonder what Amarr ships would be like if they weren’t designing to theological as well as practical specifications. Then I think of the Bhaalgorn, remember how much a people’s approach to this stuff reflects their overall outlook, and realize I like the Amarr approach just fine.)
I’m not sure how deep the symbolism goes; it seems to be stronger in some places than in others. Floor plan always seems to be laid out according to some principle or other; maintenance crawl spaces, maybe not so much. The major hallways of an Abaddon might be all gilt and alabaster with Scriptural verses lining the edges, but lift down a wall panel and you’ll find the same sorts of utilitarian electronics and conduits you find everywhere.
The more important something is, though, the more likely it is to have had some theological scrutiny applied. Some day I’d like to sit down with an Amarrian theological engineer (the job might exist by a different name, but it definitely exists!) and discuss the symbolism at work in one of their antimatter reactors.
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They didn’t. The Caldari did. Carthum likes to claim it’s their tech, but it’s Lai Dai’s. The capacitor transfer technology is literally the only thing the Guardian and Basilisk share.
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Yes, because we all know Caldari ships are known for their capacitors. Clearly scalar capacitors are the same thing as tesseracts.
No, Arrendis, you’re completely wrong here. While Carthum Conglomerate do manufacture most modern Amarrian capacitors, the underlying technology is older than the pairing. We have been using laser weapon systems for hundreds of years, and those have necessitated the development of capacitor systems to match. Secondly, Carthum is not a Caldari corp. It is an Amarrian one. That there is joint research alongside Lai Dai does not somehow invalidate all of the Amarrian scientists who are the majority in the corporation. Thirdly, capacitor transfer systems are not the same thing as the actual f.ucking capacitor.
We get it, you hate Amarr. But stow the b.ullshit claims.
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Hello, CONCORD? I need to report a murder.
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You know, after a few long days of planetside mess, there’s nothing quite like settling in with a loved one and an oversize bottle of Thukker whiskey, and reading through IGS as we capsuleers dig ourselves an ever-bigger hole to shout from.
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Always good for a giggle, at least.
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Oof its been a long day and I do apologize. Given that this is the wake of you being inoffensive at me for the first time and despite how the form of derailing the post isn’t kept, I ll see what I can do.
Feel free to wire at me the expenses of any eye examination bill that was caused from reading that second paragraph.
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