Very nice and promissing.
Only one major thing still missing and keeping me (and probably many others) from subscribing again: players!

"Only one major thing still missing and keeping me (and probably many others) from subscribing again: players!"

You, and possibly many others, could instantly rectify that yourselves.

Circular logic is circular logic is circular logic is...

Hell, apart from the shitty comments he sometimes makes, like this one:

*Done. Perhaps he was taken by unreported mystery crashes?*

I generally agree with Whistler. People saying they ain't playing cos there are a lack of players, could fix that by loggin on?

[edit]

Random drunk rant, and not aimed at FiReMaGe, I think he is cool and has done lots for the game - but I sometimes think the IRC relay is a bad thing - it enables players to be chatty, and even role-play without actually being in-game.

[edit 2]

Maybe if Mom got off his ass and made a Jabber link, you could like show "spectators" as online users. Just a thought.

I like that idea, maybe show IRC'ers as a different group though...

Spine

I think a teensy bit more thrust wouldn't severely overpower it. Either that or change the model (which seems like a lot more work), but even with more thrust the current model is way easy to hit.

I disagree with whistler. A perfectly balanced but static VO gets boring. This is why many seasoned players are not here anymore. Not much changes. Besides, there are several examples of ships not "balanced" such as the prom.

As a seasoned player, I have witnessed the extreme frustration over unbalanced ships in the past. The archived posts regarding the valk, the prom, and the cent go on and on and on... The fallacy of "all the old/new players left because the game does/does not have [whatever the topic is]" gets trotted out all over the place. There are many reasons why people stay or leave. I agree that VO's period of slow development was rather dull, but I don't think that recklessness can or will be the best path.

Hrm. I'll agree with Whistler.

MissionCreek - the one thing that makes VO special is its combat. There are plenty of other space games that allow you to trade and mine, the process is essentially the same across all of these games.

However, the one differentiating factor with VO is the combat. (Well, OK Mac and Linux support but that's off the point.) When you change one small factor of combat (like the Valk Rune's infiniboost) entire legions of players and their strategies go out the window. Yes, you can say "Adapt." But changing the ships overmuch DOES seem to create situations where you can never please everyone, no matter what you do.

A number and word:
3.2 Valkyrie

You forgot the 3.2 rails, Lemming.

Edit: Actually, going to add in a bit more on this. It seems to me that older seasoned players more often than not leave for reasons other than ships being balanced. Namely, personal life issues and not having time anymore to play with internet spaceships as well as VO's general lack of Awesome-Long-Term-Engaging-Activities, which the dev team is currently working hard towards. Purposely adding in an unbalanced ship/weapon/tradegood/thing or changing a balanced ship/weapon/tradegood/cat to be unbalanced would probably be met with torches and pitchforks by most players who become disadvantaged, and perhaps even a few who use an unbalanced ship/weapon/tradegood/house/orangepeel against other players in order to reap the benefits.

I don't think I've once ever heard, "Ugh, this game is too balanced. I think I'll go play some other internet spaceships game where there are undestroyable superweapons about."

Edit2: From my personal experience, this sounds like wistful and baseless speculation:
I disagree with whistler. A perfectly balanced but static VO gets boring. This is why many seasoned players are not here anymore. Not much changes. Besides, there are several examples of ships not "balanced" such as the prom.

Edit3: Personal experience of having an account for five years.

Whistler: While I agree that imbalance can have problems, I don't think I'd compare overpowering the hornet to the issue with proms and valks. The problem with those is that they're limited to one faction, and while it's possible for everyone to get them, only a small portion of the player base is willing to suck in their pride and bot up to get the enemy ships. An uber-hornet (while not good for many other reasons) would be freely available to everyone and not cause quite as much of an issue.

Here's what most people do NOT get about "balance" it's -not- about making all the ships the same, that would be quite easy to do.. It's about making sure -EVERY- ship has strongpoints, that are counterable by another ship, with opposing strongpoints. It's about making sure that no single ship is better than all the others.

Large ships should have the obvious advantage of more armor and more firepower, with the drawback of less speed, less manueverability, and larger target area.

Small ships should have the advantage of smaller target area, more manueverable, and faster, with the drawbacks of a couple lucky shots gets you toasted, and your flightsight gets smelly from all the motion-induced nausea...

Problem is, that ship sizes are.. odd, in some cases. And manueverability isnt given to some ships that should have it.. and -is- given to some that shouldnt: scp
EZR

The UIT Marauder needs a buff, IMO

Whistler noted that when unbalance exists there is a great volume of discourse on the forum. This seems to support my point that change drives interest. Players may not be perfectly satisfied with "balance" but change made them passionatly involved. A response by the devs to a cry for a balancing change to a liberal ship modification empowers the forum users.

Change drives interest!

/facepalms

Sounds great!

/facepalms with both hands.

I concede. You are immune to my puny logic. I bow to you as I back away slowly.

Wow. Just wow...

I hear lotsa talking but no listening.

Nothing new in that Leber.