The "Battleship Bridges Problem" (and Hello)

Beautiful proof of the concept that readability and lore don't have to be mutually exclusive.

The game designers of Magic The Gathering recognize 2 Appreciation Profiles: Vorthos and Melvin.

Vorthos appreciates the complete package of a card: how name, art, flavor text and mechanics form a card greater than the sum of the individual parts. Melvin analyzes separate components, in particular the mechanics. It's Emotio versus Ratio. A hybrid of the 2 profiles is called Melthos.

With this knowledge in hand it's interesting to compare timmon26's boat-shaped mech with Neutrino's approach to the "Battleship Bridges Problem".

Neutrino favors the hard mechanics and functionality of the unit and is willing to adapt the in-game lore to accommodate for them.

An important thing to keep in mind is that resources are limited, in particular time and money. When it comes to units in Planetary Annihilation, I can imagine a Vorthos or Melthos design to be more costly up-front than its Melvin counterpart. I can also imagine a Vorthos design igniting a spark of inspiration. Whether Vorthos, Melthos or Melvin is more rewarding in the long run, that's a question for the business analyst.

Me presses the plus one button

OP, you're a pretty cool guy, and I think that this is pretty cool.
I hope to see it ingame.

For this illustration I was working with GIMP on a mac, which is very clunky. I might do some more speculative fan art on my main computer if I have the time. If I do any more PA art, I'll start a thread for it.

I definitely have a Vorthos-ish mindset. I think Morrowind would be a great example of a game that sacrificed playability in service to its lore, and was made better for it.
Of course PA isn't Morrowind. Gameplay really is "King" in this case - the mechanics have to make for a well balanced multiplayer experience. But once the needs of gameplay are identified by the designer Melvins, the artsy Vorthos can come in and work within those specifications. In the case of the battleship bridge, looking like a bridge is mostly a silhouette thing. What that silhouette is of can be tailored to make sense in-universe.

As always, great design Timmon!
Turreted ship bridges is the kind of idea that is very hard to think about, but very interesting once suggested. And it would definitely fit the PA style like a glove.

This is an excellent soulution, I would give it more 'eyes' though... Like 63 more...

Nice idea, tiger approves! Ships with personality + PA art style = awesome

Great stuff, readable and flavorful.

Looking at another angle what if we move that art style over to other units not just boats what about satellites, tanks, gunships etc.

To give a overall art them to all the units in the game

Did you just put a head on a boat? Haha, sweet! Sounds like a good killbot solution to me.

Edit: When you consider that a ship's bridge is basically the brain, eyes, and ears of any modern naval ship, it makes perfect sense.

I also can't see the image. Can anyone host it somewhere other than Imageshack?

http://imgur.com/4mPPucg

Thank you.

Good stuff.
I approve of this idea if there are enough funds and time to allow it in game.

I would only like this idea if it means I can have eye lasers on my ships

Nah seriously its very cool and should be considered

Yes this is very cool, I really think the ships have a look that's too generic compared to the rest.
When I read about this topic first (I think it was on one of the streams), I started imagining other possibilities, like the ship without anything on top to make space for bots and such, but this is much better.
I wouldn't say the devs have to do it exactly like this, even though that'd be awesome, but I believe this is definitively the way to start thinking on the ship design.
Very original.

Smart. Very smart. I approve!

The thought of having a battle ship "look" at me makes me a bit nervous.

I'm not sold on this. To me, visually, turrets are how you quickly identify gun mounts.

We could give it a gun.

Nice work It looks good, but what you wanted to achieve isn't really clear to me
Instead of a traditional bridge you have that big "head"? To me it looks like a bridge that is able to rotate - in the end it's the same effect, you have a command central in the middle of the ship. It just looks a bit more futuristic then a normal bridge - if that was your goal then it's a good idea.

• A bridge is designed for humans. There are no humans in the game. A robot battleship in this game is not manned and therefore it is hard to justify the existence of a bridge (even when throwing in vestigiality).
  
• The silhouette of a contemporary battleship is important for readability.

The design is the compromise between those two stakes.