by Islacrusez » Sun Oct 13, 2013 7:47 pm
Honestly I don't think the GW designers ever quite got it anyway. Either that or they got lazy. All went south around the time they started stretching existing designs to make new ships. If you see the chart comparing all the sci-fi ships known to man, to scale, you'll see just how derp most of the GW ships really are.
As for bridges, there are still uses for them. They can be useful for visual inspection of the bits of the ship you can see, formation flying, navigating tight spaces (formation, asteroids, docks, shipyards, wreckage). There's also the fact that they don't particularly need to be there at all, but still can be. There's no reason why they can't be a relic of the days of old when they were necessary. Remember WW2, when Northrop designed the flying wing. The Americans said no, because it didn't look like a plane! Now look, one of their most advanced stealth bombers, the B-2, is a flying wing. Sometimes designs stick about because that's the way they've always done it (especially in the military), and sometimes because they look right, not necessarily because they're necessary.
Even something like Imperial ships, with a massive bridge and half the view blocked by a massive golden statue. It makes no sense in reality, but internally it makes perfect sense because it's the Imperium and they are that daft. That, at least, is viable design.
Another thing to consider is an armed incursion of the ship. A central command section as you might find on a submarine is going to be much less defensible than an elevated bridge with only one way in or out. Sure it has other weaknesses, but at least in BFG you can't target hardpoints that way, and the penalties for it getting hit aren't as drastic as say Rogue Trader.
In a way, scratch-building Ork ships is easier than making them digitally. Why? Because you can build up the layers and the progression will seem natural - because it is. You bolted something to the ship, then you bolted something else to that. That's how Ork ships would have developed and the aesthetic is very distinct. It is far more difficult to do it all from the ground up in a 3D program. My only advice would be to try and replicate that procedure, or at least keep in mind the progressive growth of an Ork ship. If it looks like you've thrown a number of shapes at a wall covered in superglue, it won't look right.