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[Ken]

Nice, I love the look of the new Minmatar one as well!  Here's hoping for a vertical Gallente and Amarrian desty.

[kalaratiri]

I think the new minmatar destroyer is plain weird... But I actually rather like it. (Although, the comment on TheMitanni that it's a nose hair trimmer is going to haunt my dreams)

[Saede Riordan]

It starts to grow on me, then I take another look at it, and hate it, then when I close the window, the design starts to grow on me again. Clearly it is a minmatar space fungus.

[kalaratiri]

Not quite the place for it, but whatever. CCP Fozzie went into some detail about the choice to make the Tristan the drone frigate, while the t2 drone frig, the Ishkur, is based on the Incursus body. Also gives a minor insight into the Nemesis redesign. https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1932514&#post1932514

Well you see there's a funny story about all this.

Back in YC 105 when CreoDron was beginning the design process for their new Ishkur-class Assault Ship, they naturally looked first to the (retroactively) drone-centric Tristan as a base hull. The project lead Masalle Ambrette acquired a large number of Tristan hulls for prototyping and set her team to work.

However two major technical challenges quickly arose. Roni Darieux himself had given them their design targets, and he was adamant that the new ship had to be the pinnacle of drone carrier technology. The Ishkur must be able to field a 50m3 dronebay as well as top of the line armor plating for a Frigate.
 
These goals proved difficult to meet using the Tristan as a base hull. Although it had the largest dronebay of any existing Frigate at the time the Tristan's hull layout did not allow for easy expansion of the already significant bay. In particular, the port side bulkhead quickly lost structural integrity when the internal supports were scaled back in order to expand the bay. Attempts to meet the armor plating requirements also ran into difficulties as the Tristan thruster systems struggled to keep up under the heavier load. The classic thruster pod design of the Tristan hull did not provide easy expansion room to upgrade the thrusters either.

After numerous failures in the prototyping process the CreoDron team decided to change course and build the Ishkur using a completely different hull. They eventually settled on the Incursus hull as the next logical choice. Although the Incursus did not have the same base dronebay that the Tristan offered, it was more easily modified and the conversion from the Incursus' advanced armor repair systems to the Ishkur's superior resistance and plating systems proceeded relatively smoothly. As a bonus, the team was able to carry over the Incursus' superior hybrid weapon damage boosting technology and create another strong selling point for their new Assault Ship.

Although the Ishkur project resulted in what would prove to be an extremely successful ship (in both direct ship sales and additional profits from increased use of CreoDron's advanced drone portfolio), Masalle Ambrette was left afterwards with thousands of mangled Tristan hulls that had failed the prototyping process. In order to recoup some of the development costs, CreoDron sold the hulls cheap as scrap to the highest bidder.

They say one woman's trash is another woman's treasure, and when CreoDron put the 'scrap' onto the market one smart scientist saw a diamond in the rough. Ruborraude Eyghelet, a rising star at Duvolle Laboratories, had just been recently put in charge of a top secret development project on contract from the Federation Navy. Her team was designing what would eventually come to be known as the Nemesis stealth bomber, a dramatic departure from normal Gallente battle doctrines that would help keep them competitive in the battlefields of the future. Eyghelet knew that the Nemesis would need to be a radical departure from previous frigate designs, but building a new hull design completely from scratch would take a portion of her limited budget that she could not afford to lose. When the report of the mangled Tristan fire-sale crossed her desk she immediately saw an opportunity to cut her costs.

The damaged Tristan hulls were reformed into a barely recognizable state during the prototyping process to accommodate the battleship sized missile launchers and bomb deployment system, with only the iconic front plating remaining to visually connect it to the frigate it had once been. The dronebay was converted into a bomb and missile storage bay, and the Duvolle team also managed to ingeniously convert the advanced tracking computer on the Tristan into an efficient missile guidance system. In the end Duvolle and Eyghelet managed to create the Nemesis while keeping costs down to only 14% overbudget, easily beating the market predictions and sending Duvolle stock to the highest it had reached in years.

It just goes to prove that the world of spaceship construction is more complicated and fascinating than any of us would expect.

That end bit just added in as a "Well you try rebalancing the whole damn game :l"

[Z.Sinraali]

So, ship balancing is supposed to be considered retroactive? I always considered them to be regular design updates, not time-traveling ones. (I know, the question is why the already-built ones change. But that's easier to accept than Oceania always having been at war with Eastasia. [IP rights are -really- strong in EVE.])

[Saikoyu]

Huh, if the real ones end up being like this, I like the Caldari one, kinda sub like.

The Minmatar one reminds me of a American Civil War era Monitor or something.  The pillbox on top and the ram like fins on the front really push that look to me. 

[kalaratiri]

OP updated.

[Matariki Rain]

I love the lore-expansion offered in the notes.

But yes, I'd played hull changes as some odd and all-encompassing kind of product recall and refit, not a retcon.

Edited to add that the Minmatar design has a definite "tick" thing going on.

[Saede Riordan]

ORE frigate is actually really cute in a spaceshippy kind of way. I ♥ the design.

[Jev North]

_o_ hug?

[kalaratiri]

OP Updated.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Caldari - I still say it looks more Gallente than Caldari. Shouldn't Caldari designs be getting more minimalistic and anti-aesthetic as the war drags on and resources become tight? 

Minmatar: Notsureifwant.jpg. It looks like someone took an ORE barge, gave it a rust paintjob and stuck it behind a bunch of solar panels. I mean, yeah, the Mael and Tornado look more finished, but they don't look like bricks glued to random bits of shiny metal plate either.

ORE Frigate: Oh, I -love- this little thing. I may train ORE frigate just to hop in one and see what it feels like to fly. If the Caldari have been loosing their industrio-functional feel over the years, then it's apparently gone into the design of this little critter.

Gallente Destroyer: Okay, between the ORE Frigate and this, faith in the design team officially restored. It's some kind of wierd cross between the Battlestar Galactica and that Republic Cruiser that briefly appeared in The Phantom Menace, with a bit of organic flowing lines thrown in for flavor. And I love it.

[Graelyn]

That Tempest model makes me want to fly Minmatar.

Seriously!

[kalaratiri]

That Tempest model makes me want to fly Minmatar.

Seriously!

It is rather gorgeous :3 It actually looks finished and totally makes up for the new dessie. Return of the nano-tempest gangs maybe..? Or even armour RR...

[Victoria Stecker]

mild caldarification of the tempest to make up for non-caldari-looking cal dessie and turd-looking minnie dessie?