So I downloaded this game last night and went through the tutorials. I started as Serco, but got to looking at ships on the Wiki, and the Itani Valkyrie looks to be like the type of ship I would most like to fly.

I realize any race can fly anything, given enough effort, but is being Serco and wanting to fly an Itani ship going to be a pain in my ass? Or is it relatively easy to get into an opposing faction ship?

I am mostly interested in checking out the pvp aspect of this game. I'll trade or whatever to pay for stuff but mostly I just like to blow stuff up. Is the Valkyrie a good ship for that? Anybody want to show me the ropes and get me headed in the right direction?

if you want the itani ship become itani, at the moment it is easy to be multi nation but that will be changing and then you won't be able to get it

that is not necessary and absolutely true, i would expect some sort of opportunity to get the enemy nation stuff somehow. but indeed, if you want to get it twice as fast you should also create an itani alt.
you will eventually fall in love with the game and have at least one alt of each nation.

however...if youre like me and too lazy to start an alt, heres the way to go

start by botting (killing hive drones) in itani space until your standing reaches -200, so that you can dock at an itani station without the sf (station guards) blasting you

after that do missions for the itani until you reach sufficient standing to get the Valk X1

-600 is where the strike forces and turrets stop shooting at you, not -200.

Regardless, when the faction standing system is fixed, Tusc will have to decide on his Serco character which side he wishes to permanently become aligned to. It would be much simpler and easier for him to just start a new Itani character than have to deal with the repercussions of having a character with good standing on both sides when the system changes and requires him to pick a side; that way he can have a character on each side that can use the special ships.

I had only gone through the basic tutorials and run like 2 missions on the Serco character. Last night I deleted him and rolled Itani. I know, I could have rolled an alt. But main character must have the correct name.

Got to 3/3/1/1/- last night on the Itani. Thanks for the quick replies, better to restart before I had much time invested in the other guy.

The SCP is just as good as a Valk in terms of blowing 'stuff' up. It all depends on the pilot.

Different strokes for different folks. The valk is for very twitch-based, light arms combat. That is why it is very fast. Now, even though I love my valk, I suck at twitch based combat and my reflexes are like those of a hippo (or shippos). So, I would probably do better with Prometheus. So again, there is no best ship.