I love the Vasari cruiser! The TEC one isn't too bad, either. The Advent one isn't my favorite, but then again, most of the Advent ships aren't my favorites.

I think that's what makes it perfect as the envoy cruiser. It's saying to the opponent "Do what we want or we will come over there glass your planets "

I don't miss the reference when looking at the ship, but it fits so well with Advent in my mind that that takes precedence.

It's not the look the bothers me, it's the size, what the hell does it need to be as big as a continent for?

Agreed, thats my only complaint, theyre huge for non-capital ships. Shrink em a little bit (and their icons too Jeez) and theyll fit nicely.

seriously? your just noticing the scale is a 'tad' off? look up 'sun', 'jupiter', and 'red giant' on wiki. if the game were to scale, yellow stars would be 109 times the diameter of the terran planets, gas giants would be up to 12 times the diameter of the terran planets, and a red giant star would dominate at 21800 times the size of a terran planet. sure, there are some stars the size of the earth (white dwarf), but there are plenty far bigger stars. oh, and the distances between planets would need a 'touch-up' too.

Actually, it'd be cool if the planets moved in orbit around the star, maybe even have the stars move. you'd have to anticipate how the phase lanes would change. could make for some interesting strategies. defending would definately be harder, but your ships could be cut off alot easier depending on your timing.

The orbiting planet idea was tried during the beta of SINS. Found to totaly unfun from what I heard. Was removed. Ask Anntar or any of the beta testers.

I'd imagine if they orbited extremely slow, it wouldnt be too much of a problem, maybe in SINS 2 they'll work that out.

Hahaha, don't take me for a fool, I know it's barely worth mentioning scale overall, as you have to ignore the scale generally but one thing that's hard to ignore is the scale of ships next to ships and I just don't get why they are so big compared to other ships that are meant to be full of thousands of people.

Well if your trying to project power...big is better...

Being mostly an Advent player, I really haven't gotten a good look at most of the other envoy ships, but personally I really like the look of the Advent's.  Although I do agree the big white bulbs look a little off to me.  Kinda like they don't have a real texture on them.  'Course, they may very well only have a temporary texture at present too, who knows!  Would be kinda neat if they could somehow be made clear, or transluscent, and the blinking light at the end of them put inside to flash through them instead.

I can't say I ever really saw them as christmas ships though.  But it's a rather funny thought all the same.  The bulbs sorta seemed more like the light on an angler fish to me more then anything else.

I didn't think 'christmas ship' either, I thought 'Arabian Nights in Space', with all the cheesy b-movie implications attatched. It doesn't really fit with the artwork either, except for perhaps one of the new portraits. Everything else about them leans more on the hight-tech aspect rather than the desert-world back story, which never seemed too important anyway, except as a way of differeniating their preferred-planet choise (TEC-Terran, Vasari-Volcanic, Advent-Desert). Except this one ship with a very frail-looking design considering it's a cruiser.

The Tec could stand to lose the inexplicable 'legs' on the back which seem to be the engines, the only reason the Argonev constructor had them was because they were meant to represent the arms that would form the base of the starbase build. The front looks fine though, fairly utilitarian whilst clearly not geared for combat.

The Vasari one generally seems ok, a bit tall towards the rear perhaps - the sudden increase in size nearer the end of the fusilage is a bit abrupt.