Has anyone ever thought of ships to have cockpits off centered? (Like off the X center location)

It would be quite interesting instead of all the ships that have cockpits in the center.. Though they are supposed to be produced at stations located in the neutrial(grey) systems.

I got a little lost with this. Do you mean that ships would not be symetrical? For instance, the cockpit would be deliberately placed to the left of center? I've seen construction equipment and European truck designs like this.

The Cormoran from Parsec has a pretty cool asymmetrical design:

http://openparsec.sourceforge.net/images/gallery/cormoran.jpg
http://openparsec.sourceforge.net/images/monthshot_jul99.jpg

I know what you mean, seen it in other games, and love the concept. Ships don't need to be symetrical, nor do they have to be aerodynamic - we're not going near any atmospheres ;)

What I'd love to see is ships with the cockpit moved way to the back (i.e. large freighter/barge type thing - bulk of the hull visible from inside the cockpit.), maybe a design not unlike a motorcycle with a side wagon (large engine with a small cockpit attached to one side? Dunno).

There are some cool ship designs along this line on the Eve Online website. Played it a bit during beta, they had quite a few good ideas and quite good 3D designers as well.

The engine does not appear to support seeing your own ship from inside the cockpit. Some of our current ships should have portions of the nosecone visible from the cockpit, but don't. It's one of the things that irks me about WGAF.

It used to do that, a long time ago. It looked stupid. But we didn't actually have cockpit interior models either.

Hm different cockpit interiors for different ships would be great too, now that you mention it ;) Differently shaped and sized viewports (small slit for the large freighters, near 180 degrees view from a light fighter, you know) - could probably be handled with 2d overlays or something.

I see your point on having the ship exterior visible from the cockpit - if that's a technical limitation of the engine. 2D overlays won't quite cut it there...

yeah, I think seeing INSIDE the cockpit is a ways off interms of civilian, widespread technology.

I like the idea of asymmetrical craft...it would make things a little more odd and realistic.

FM, I think they mean in the format like the "Millenium Falcon" from Star Wars, it's cockpit was on the Starboard side, not centered up.