@Pendrokar, that looks really good, but I would be extremely careful with using other people’s work in your project, especially when you don’t even know who made the model. This is one of the main reasons why our whole contributions “program” was discarded by INS.
As for NMS, beautiful, hope I don’t end up buying a PS4 for it…
@cybercritic, oh sorry, forgot to mention I was making that in early 2013, at which time I could have recalled the modeler’s name easily, but now that the old forum and FTP server is down, it ain’t that easy to find out. But ok, a google search of “thor infinity battleship” did bring up a CG render, created probably by modeler UniversalPainkiller himself.
@LucasFIN did have a whole line of those ships, some nice ships in that line. They were not good enough for some reason…
Yes I had a large civilian line of ships. But Thor was a military ship and from a different line (that sadly had only one ship).
There was a more evolved version off Thor with a longer part behind the bridge. I guess only UPK knows where it is now.
The community was aware of this. The contribution design document specifically stated not to include directional thrusters as part of the model for small/micro sized craft.
A small series of dots would be all you’d see for the landing thrusters on any of the flying cars or micro ships (Squall cargo lifter not included) and that’s only if the model had been fully textured.
Aww man, that thing looked so awesome with all those swooping extras on it. Community feedback focused design at its finest. 
Well if we were to get back on OP’s topic. As was discussed in exploding stations topic, if a space station falling from sub-orbital would not survive re-entry, then the same goes for capital ships(note this about planets with an atmosphere):
Not sure what were community’s last thoughts on large capital ships ability to enter planets with earth-like gravity on the old forums. It was either they would not have enough thrust to counter gravity or if they could, it would all use up all energy leaving nothing for shields or weapons, therefore making it defenseless.
Actually, with an atmosphere it’s not impossible for a significant chunk of a capital ship to reach the surface of a planet with some structural rigidity remaining.
First off, if an intact space station finds itself on a sub-orbital trajectory, it’s not a space station. Depending on the materials it’s made of, and the apoapsis of the trajectory, it’s also entirely possible that it would not only make it through the atmosphere but survive landing with only minor cosmetic damage (using an alloy of unobtanium, indestructium, and mithril).
To go from a stable orbit well above the atmosphere to a decaying orbit that will see you to the ground within a single game session/I:B round? You’d need a significant change in velocity. Receiving that change in velocity all at once, say in an explosion, is unlikely to happen to a large piece of space station without turning it into multiple smaller pieces of space station (and while small pieces of undesthril could still make it through the atmosphere relatively intact, they wouldn’t look like much on the surface of a planet).
A capital ship, designed to operate and maintain altitude within the corona of a star, would be far more likely to be made of undesthril and thus might well end up making it to the surface (at least in significant chunks). Especially since a combat situation might well cause short-term changes in velocity to be made without considering their effect half an orbit later - by which I mean a capital ship could intentionally put itself on a flat suborbital trajectory (excellent for safe reentry) to try dodge a torpedo, fail, and find it’s engines offline.
Well, this would not happen randomly. This can happen, if a capital ship is for example hiding next to a big planet and collides with it for some reason.
IIRC we didn’t have thoughts on it, because it was a rule, capital ships would not be able to enter the atmosphere, they would need to use smaller craft to access planet surfaces.
I thought capital ships could enter atmospheres, but not remain there long as they could not land – the constant thrust required to float would limit their time above the surface.
I don’t recall the exact reasoning, just that we stayed clear of that topic, as IA probably made a comment on it. Anyway it doesn’t really matter what was said on the old forums, we could see capitals entering the atmosphere in IBS if the devs decide it’s something they would like to add.
A ship with engines capable of getting it anywhere in a 1/1 scale environment, without boring players to death, is going to be able to pull a heck of a lot more than 1G.
Although I think the old forum community verdict of a majority yes (marginal) was based on it looking cool.
Devs choice tho, don’t think they outright confirmed either way.
I thought that whole thing was due to a mix up between actually landing and atmospheric flight. Not sure if it ever got corrected or if the answer was buried in one of the old impossibly long threads we had back then.
Still, it’s not like many of the old design statements from IA still stand if it did.
Course, a capital ship sitting still and countering gravity with its engines rather than sitting in orbit would be going a heck of a lot slower through the atmo if it fell from the same height.
That goes against, now I-Novae’s, philosophy of “See that moon/star over there? Yeah, that ain’t no simple background, you can get to it.”. IMO it should be possible and I already gave my gameplay reasoning for demotivating captains of capital ships to try landing on planets.
In Mass Effect, ships longer than ~400 metres are said to be unable to land on medium and high gravity planets(wikia), with the exception of reapers. Although the Terran ship that is destroyed on Earth in Mass Effect 3 by a reaper looks to be longer than 400 metres(~ 2 minute mark).
Again:
Land on ground =/= Fly in atmosphere
I think the possibility to land a ship should be constrainted by physics! If you land a 400 meter-ship on natural ground, it will most-likely not be stable.
I think such big ships should also get structural damage when landing on a surface with the gravity-forces (which are pulling in a different direction than the main thrusters).
At least, just not allowing ships to dive into an atmosphere (by law :D) is crap!!!
And the fact that capital ships don’t have landing gear 
This ^^
Some ships are just made for spaceflight only. The extra mass required to increase the structural rigidity in order to operate capital sized ships within a planetary gravitational environment is not as cost effective as designing/building multiple smaller/atmospheric entry craft to perform the same tasks. I also remember from the old forums Flavien saying cap ships could enter atmospheres, but they will not have landing gears and the fuel cost is quite prohibitive, so it really makes no sense to want to do that. In any event, for I:B, this is a non-issue IMO.
Well, this thread is not about landing (capital) ships on planets. It is about having them collide with planets. If this ‘planet’ is not a planet but a small moon, a collision can happen for example if some of your navigation instruments fail and don’t warn you.
It started out that way, yes.