I have characters on each nation, though I prefer Serco because that's what I started with. Honestly, I think they're all pretty much alike, except that Serco has fewer people.

I play other online team games and note that many people attempt to align with the majority when they can, and will leave if they discover they are in the minority. It's a fairly typical human behavior.

The backstory has some bearing, but I think far fewer people have personally read it than is claimed. I think Serco is in the right for responding as they do in the present day, but it's written in such a way that more than one conclusion can be drawn.

It is a trend, as Thinkhen and J.B. said.
Veteran Serco players turned Pirate, lobby Devs to nation-change them (turncoats...) so they can Pirate all the better and have access to Serco (and itani) nation ships, rather than do it the hard way (level up a new UIT character).
As a couple of ex-Serco pirates admitted to me, they are not UIT, they are unaligned and the UIT flag is just a "flag of convenience".

Part of the problem is that you can get the ibg at 1/2/? where as you need 4/4/? to get the svg. id bet atleast some noobs changed over to itani just because of that, why not make it 2/2/-/-/- for both of them? I know others have said that before.

Another problem is noobs are probably more likeley to pick the itani or uit then serco, simply because the serco are red wich is usually used to indicate danger or serve as a warning.

also there are numbers to consider, with the ratio of serco to itani serco noobs are more often going to find themselfs tryign to level doig bp agenst 3 itani players for each of them. and thats if they survive the warp animation into deneb.

Deneb is broken for Serco as well, which doesn't help. When everyone (including other Serco) appears as red on the radar, and 'target nearest enemy' insists on selecting other Serco, it makes it very difficult for newbies to fight effectively.

Sam (who also came away from the background with the idea that the Serco were the good guys, and the Itani were evil Nazi Space Monks).

No, no, sammy, the Akaneese are the evil Nazi Space-Monks, the Itani are just clueless, pansy Space-Monks (with the notable exception of SKV).

Do Canadian Akaneese commit acts of genocide by dropping large nuclear turds into large population centers?

I remember i kept saying that more ships should be released. Until mecha told me something like "Have you even tried all of the available ones yet?"
So about the "hard way" you mention Foo, of leveling up a new char. Fuck that, maybe you have the time and patience to do that, but i dont.

thomas92, perhaps that is because I suck with flares. So be proud, be Itani, be debris.

tramshed you suck any noob could beat you with a bit of luck

If tram sucked at PVP, luck would not be required, spidey.

The Itani are blue, which tends to attract a lot of new players. And this is perhaps the way it should be, as the Itani are perhaps uniquely suited to serve the best interest of new players. The question is not why new players choose Itani, but why so few veteran players move on to being Serco. Some new players choose Serco because they where feeling aggressive at the time, and the RED team caught their eye, only to discover later that KOS UIT was a better choice for their purpose. So... If you are a veteran player, and you don't play Serco, then ask yourself "why not?". What keeps you playing Itani? What would it take to encourage you to play Serco.

P.S. and a little bit of backstory for the uit to direct wannabe pirates away from Serco and strait to uit.

Lets look carefully at the back story, and realize that the Itani have two major factions. The Akaneese, and the rest. This gives Itani some rp room. Perhaps if we added a little bit of backstory for the Serco to give them more than one rp path, our veteran players might find Serco more interesting.

(and a little bit of UIT backstory to to redirect wannabe pirates away from Serco and strait to UIT.)

In my opinion, what should be stressed more is that if one likes agile, light armored ships, go blue. If one likes heavy, slow, hard hitting ships, go Red. That usually seems to create a good spread of players in most games.

I'll admit playing Serco is a lot more challenging at the moment. But that equals fun IMHO. You're usually fighting three people at the same time, but if you're in an SCP a lot of times you can kill all three of them.

Hopefully what will happen is the devs can balance this out with cap ships if numbers continue to be the same. I always thought the Itani should have slightly better light fighters in general, but the Serco cap ships should be the best in the game. Maybe the Serco have the most expensive/best cap ship available while the Itani have less able, but cheaper cap ships. Then it might take two Itani caps to destroy one serco, but in cost it would even out.

The reason I didn't start as Serco was because of my preferred play style. I enjoy the lighter, faster ships as opposed to the heavy, hard-hitting ones.

(Truth be told, when I first joined in Beta, I was UIT)

Im loved!