Hey Carkoth, I'm actually not sure, this was a surprise to us but we did discuss some points which may have made a ship more likeable.

- Don't use mods.
Mods are a personal flavor that doesn't apply to everyone. Fx, someone may like one type of modded door while another likes a different. When using no mods, you give people the option to implement their own mods and make their own modded changes to a ship.

- Make sure it works
Easier said than done but make sure that everything is connected through conveyors, that it is survival ready and never post it before you have used the ship in survival yourself. Posting a ship only to realize there aren't airvents in half the rooms and that you left out a important component wont make your creation likeable.

- Build the outer set of the ship first.
Typically when you buid the interior of a ship first, it ends up being blocky and not very pleasant to look at. When you get a cool design in your head, experiment with the exterior, make it so that it pleases you and add all the little details you'd like it to have. Once the exterior is done, you can then start experiment with the interior. It may turn out that you will need to make the ship larger or smaller to fit the things you want in it.

- The interior must be practical.
No one likes mazes or inpractical designs where you get lost or have trouble getting from one section to another in your ship. They don't want everything to be clustered up together either. Easy accessable rooms that have designated functions makes the interior of the ship easy to navigate and access.

- Don't seal off important bits of the ship.
Think where you want access points to the ships to be, airlocks and what rooms you need to get out of fast and which you don't. Most importantly, always make sure that a reactor has a open access point. Otherwise people wont be able to fuel the ship.

- No jetpack
With the latest update, you don't want to burn hydrogen inside your ship. Make sure catwalks and stairs are in place to access every section of the ship. We actually didn't know this would come but got lucky because we actually prepared the ship for roleplay scenarios ahead of the patch.

- Rename every airvent, door and important compartment.
Pressing K only to realise that you find yourself in a madhouse where everything needs to be set is a nightmare for any subscriber. We took the hours to rename almost everything, at least the important blocks so that a subscriber can quickly find them.

- Get a friend to give his opinion
The Orpington would'nt have become anything close to what it is now if I built this on my own. I had a second or third opinion for nearly everything we did with the ships. EnjoyCoke helped me out a lot here, we tested different designs, sometimes rebuilt entire sections to see if they would look better or be more practical. We were also very honest with each other and didn't take offense when one party said "This looks like crap, do it over/again".

- Field test the ship.
You don't want to post a ship that has obvious weaknesses or doesn't work. See how it holds up against various accidents, combat settings or peaceful scenarios. Play it yourself in survival mode.