looks nice but how are you going to animate that?

Don't HAVE to animate all ships.
Some ships look good without any movement.

blasphemy

lol

TBH, battle animation makes all the ships look dumb. Normal animations like a glow is good.

Making the DS that Feather has move imo is like:
"$60 billion dollars down a rat hole"

This is true, some ships will look super awesome with battle animations like any of the delquad variants. but others like Equanimizer and other simply designed ships would look much better with glows or effects.

I fully agree. For example, the Cadet and its relative ships the Enforcer and Constables do not really lend themselves to articulated models. Instead the "battle" animation for these ships (which I'm trying to figure out how to do with the Cadet) would be for them to have rows of red and blue lights flash. When combat is over, the lights go off and the ship goes back to cruising the highways. In space. Now all we need are unmarked Enforcers patrolling the universe...

"Honey, is that ship in the lane next to us an EF cop?"
"Um, I don't know. It kinda looks cop-y, but it could just be an elderly person who likes sedans..."

/ first person looks over at the enforcer."

"Oh, okay it is an elderly person. I can see him in his driver's side mirror."

/pulls the ship on ahead and past the enforcer, which suddenly lights up with red and blue strobes hidden in its headlights and windshield.

"Oh S**T! It's and elderly cop!"

the DS though really lends it self to the combat animation. I far prefer a DS with opening wings then a static ds model.

Thats called a Wyrm.

An easy scaling of the spikes could be the combat animation. So say the spikes are 1/2 or 3/4 the length they are, and then they extend. Ill do the textures some time next week, I am without my large monitor and tablet this weekend.

Or you could make it sprout three times as many spikes like something akin to spawn. 1:16 in the video =P

I personally always thought the DS should look like a fighter version of the Narada.