Shrike: I think, in imagining that warships would use heavy armor, you're envisioning one type of combat that likely wouldn't take place in space. Tanks, for example, are pretty heavily armored because they're built to be in the center of the action, blasting away. Battleships and airplanes can have external systems all they like (airplanes do less so for aerodynamics; say helicopters, which don't need no stinkin' aerodynamics) because they're not built to get hit a lot. And this is likely what a space battle would actually be like- space is HUGE, movement through it is really slow, and at any rate almost any amount of armor wouldn't be doing much good against a burst of plasma or a focussed heating laser. Conflicts would likely take place with the different forces separated by MILES, with lots of really big ships rather than large amounts of small, easily destroyed, inefficient fighters. "True" spaceships would be snipers, not tanks, and would be built accordingly.
Never mind that sensors aren't gonna do you much good inside several feet of metal, that shield generators probably wouldn't generate a very effective shield under the fiftieth layer of hullplate, that fighters can't just tunnel through armor, and that heating/waste/exit ports aren't gonna lead into nothing.
That's all in the abstract, though. This ship, I don't like the way it looks like an airport riding on a rocket. Some of those things DO belong in a hole inside, and at least set it up so that it doesn't look like it only has gravity going down. The greebling looks quite sweet, good variety there. It's a pity that you can't really see it unless you're up practically on the ship itself, and that that must hog a hell of a lot of processor space.
