Is asymmetric spacecraft easy to build？

[Mikoyan]

Is asymmetric spacecraft easy to build？
I think there may be times when asymmetric design is needed

 

[Maximum777]

I would assume that in the builder there's Center of Gravity/weight as well as Center of Thrust indicators of some kind and that if you line them up your ship will fly straight, and if there are then it would not be too hard to get a ship to fly well even when not symmetrical

 

[[QS] Combustible]

No is the simple answer. May appear every once in a while on a modular ship, but it’s much easier to make symmetrical ship and I don’t think many people will attempt anything else.

 

[MAXD]

It might be difficult to place balanced turrets . So you may have unbalanced firepower on each side. But may be it's not necessary.

 

[Engineering machine No.1]

Asymmetric spaceships are not suitable for use in wars, because casually destroying some parts of the spacecraft can leave the spacecraft in an unbalanced state, which is very dangerous.

 

[CalenLoki]

Asymmetric spaceships are not suitable for use in wars, because casually destroying some parts of the spacecraft can leave the spacecraft in an unbalanced state, which is very dangerous.

That apply to symmetric craft as well. So it's invalid argument.

Symmetry makes it easier and faster to design crafts. Especially if you use more planes of symmetry.

But both can be effective, if done right.

 

[Amos.37]

Regarding damage causing a ship to become unbalanced, I wonder how hard it would be to change thruster output via the universal tool or YOLOL to re-balance the ship.
Obviously this would make the ship slightly slower over all, and would not be practical during a fight, but if you can do this, then presumably you could also do this to balance asymmetrical ships.
This does mean an asymmetrical ship balanced this way would never be the fastest or most efficient ship, but if you're building an asymmetrical ship, efficiency probably isn't your top priority anyway.

 

[CalenLoki]

FCU+MCU does balancing for you, no need to manually adjust thruster output.
But as you said - unbalanced ship (either by bad design or battle damage) will loose speed or efficiency.

 

[Meetbolio]

Asymmetric spaceships are not suitable for use in wars, because casually destroying some parts of the spacecraft can leave the spacecraft in an unbalanced state, which is very dangerous.

This is true for any ship, not just assymetric ones.

 

[Trylobot]

The flight computer will likely do all the heavy lifting here. You just might not be able to get all of the available thrust put to work as often as you would with a more traditional craft. When a ship is damaged, the same thing happens.

So probably some hand-tuning and fine adjustment of thruster placement and distribution would be required to get as close as possible to full utilization in all directions. I'm sure if you're clever you'd be able to get really close, and build some really interesting-looking asymmetric ships.

 

[Dezlightyear]

I'll personally be designing and selling Asymmetrical ships that specialize in giving up some alignment/aim, for advanced flanking maneuvers that are unparalleled. These will be available in the Lightyear Bounty Hunter Arsenal.