Some of the Kilrathi ships may not be shinemapped at all and use the default texture since many of our models are still WIP. And, the Kilrathi ship have a rather bright copper colored hull. Or do you just mean that the shine effect is too strong.
And we are using the explosions because we want to make WCS as different to the original FS2 as possible, we try replace every single effect of stock FS2 to make the game feel as unique as possible. Plus I'm sick of seeing the same boring orange explosions all the time. The OTT explosions would be perfect if it wasn't for the ugly color fading(****ing damn ani color limitations). They are very colorful(the colors change from yellow to white to orange to a dark brown) and they look very powerful compared to the stock FS explosions: at first a blinding flash of light erupts from the ship, and then the rest of the explosion fades out-perfect for capship explosions. and the white cloud explsion animation thingie looks cool (only disturbing thing is the ugly color fading again) to at capship explosions, since it's a lot longer than the explosion file mentioned above, and it looks as if the gaseous rest of the mayhem is slowly dissolving. Now if the color fading would be better and the shockwaves would be blue, I'd be a happy man.
Another thing that ticks me of is the standard FS missile explosion.ani. It takes long to dissolve and is dark orange which makes it look very weak. If you are escorting a ship and don't look at the escort display, it's easy to miss if it gets hit by a bomb since of this unspectacular explosion. That's why I'm working on a special impact explosion for the torpedoes for example. When something gets hit you won't see this puny explsion but rather a white hot flash of light followed by an explosion cloud dissolving. Now you definitly get it when a capship gets hit, since half of it will get consumed by a blinding flash, as it fits for an anitmatter warhead.
