First time poster, long time fan of Star Control. I am immensely excited about this game - especially the ship designer capability. I've been tinkering a bit in the beta, and I have some questions about setup of components. Let me show what I have been attempting to design and then see if I can explain the trouble I am having with it.
I'm an 80's kid, and I'm a big fan of the Rylan Gunstar from the movie The Last Starfighter. I figured I'd see what I could do with the design tools to attempt to create something close to it.




Things went OK with the aesthetics of the design - I got about as close to the source as I think I am going to be able to get. (The proportions are still a little off with the shape of the "bowtie" which extends off of the fuselage.) The problem occurred when I outfitted the ship and attempted to use it in a test battle. For right now, I have equipped it with the Charbroiled laser primary and the point defense laser secondary. The orientation of the engine mount, thrust mount, and primary weapons seem to be working in a way which doesn't seem to be as I would expect. The center of the fuselage of the Gunstar is a large cylinder, and you can see that I have put the engine mount on the rear of the cylinder. While in flight, the orientation of the thrust doesn't quite look correct, as it doesn't seem to match up with the "nose" of the ship on the opposite end of the cylinder. I can live with that. The real problem is that the primary weapon isn't "zeroed" on the nose of the flight path of the ship at all, and it doesn't seem to matter where on the hull of the ship I have the primary weapon module placed. I have attempted to get some screenshots of this, but it's proven very challenging... I have marked up two of these images to try to show what I mean.


It's difficult to see this without it being in motion, but the momentum of the ship, the thrust of the engine, and the orientation of the fuselage (and nose) are pointing one way, but the actual fire emitted is traveling in a direction which is several degrees off center. The red line shows where I would expect the fire to go, and the circle shows where the actual "bolt" is. I get the same result with every laser-type weapon which I have attempted. Even something with basic homing capabilities such as the nuclear missile still starts out with a significant arc off of the expected center of the flight path.
Does anyone have any advice for how I could attempt to correct this? I have moved the primary weapon module all over the ship to no avail, and I have also moved the engine mount and thrust mount all over the ship without any change. I've tried to be very meticulous about using accurate coordinates for the placement of all components on the ship, but I did have to fudge in a few places due to some shape irregularities. Thanks for any advice which you can provide.