
This was the very first, very ugly ship I ever made. I am definetly ashamed to post it here.
I loaded Ship Maker, determined to make something better than Ol' Beastie up there. I started, tooled around with parts, finding ones I liked and ones I didn't, and, once I'd get a model to something approaching completion, I'd find some miniscule flaw in it that would drive me batshit and would thence dispose of it and start all over. Here is Iteration 1:

Initially I wanted something with a flat, rounded hull at the front (a bit like the FPA ships from LoGH), but I decided I didn't like it, so I extended the 3's which made up the solid, flat prow into the pointy shape you see here. I then gave it some ridiculously, stupidly over-powered weapons (can you even call it a newbie ship without those?), loaded it in the sandbox, and felt it to be a marvelous failure.
So here is attempt Iteration 4, complete with little Lego-style step-by-step pictures:

Standard core, of course. Placed it at coordinates 1000, 1000 for easier calculation in mirroring. I heard someone here say that real men mirror by hand, so this move facilitated that.

The initial phases of building and coloring. I felt I wanted a dark navy interior with a cyan exterior: call it tropical space camouflage.

Here's where the main structure comes out, along with a shot of the parenting. It was here that I noticed it was taking on a pseudo-organic shape, plus I really liked the smooth, oblong diamond shape the hull had, so I stuck with that for the rest of the time.
I'm kind of obsessed with having straight lines and having everything blend. I also use the smaller pieces almost exclusively.

Here, the design and coloring of the ship is finished. I liked the way the ship looked here. Sort of... "fishy" in a way. When I loaded it in sandbox, though, the "eye" from the core was buried under those two 4's, and I didn't really like that. It ruined the faux-organic thing I had been digging while I was building it. So, I scrapped Iteration 4 and began work on Iteration 5. I also changed the core to Alien for, I dunno, kicks, I guess.

Here is Iteration 5 as he stands now. The only thing I didn't like about him was that his "teeth" were rather... understated, compared to Iteration 4's. So this necessitated the creation of an Iteration 5.5, if you will:

At first, I extended his body outward a bit and gave him some kind of half-moon eater mouth... thing. I hated the way this looked almost immediatly, so I continued to play around with it until I got this:

I used two 20's to act as "gums" and gave him three rows of teeth. Now he has a very pleasant smile, no? I really liked the way this looked, so I decided to start slapping on weapons:

Here he is with all of the weapons on and tested.
...
I know what you're thinking. "Bang Doll, you oddly named slaphead, that's literally the exact same image you just posted! What gives?!" Well, I liked the design of the ship so much... that I decided not to mar it with the big, blocky, grey shapes of the weapons modules. Here's a shot before the modues were shrunk:

The big, stupidly overpowered main beam cannon, hallmark of any newbie ship (which looks as if it emits straight from the eye, an effect I quite like) two tachyon launchers (which were going to be missile launchers, but then I discovered missiles shrunk with the launchers, so...), and six particle guns in strategic locations for point defense. I quite like this simple loadout.
Now, after tweaking around with its stats, I just had to upload it to the database, and make this thread.
...and give it a name...

That'll do nicely.
http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... ICTHYS.shp
Comments and criticism are, as always, welcome.