I have a hard time sometimes, determining what I am targetting, and even though all the data I need is available on different screens and tools, it's not all available the instant i need it.

I suggest that in addition to showing me the target's name and guild, and sheild%, the hud should show me a target's nation, even if it's a NPC. I would also like to be able to mark targets on radar, and then target something else, so that in a crowded fight, I can easily retarget and track opponents. Sometimes radar is a sea of green dots, and it seems like any modern system would allow you to tag a target. Tagging could be a color change, a shape change or a partial ring... something simple... just to indicate to the player that it was an adversary.

last time i looked it did state after targetting the nation the player is on.

He means on the radar. So you can distinguish hostile forces there before selecting. Many times I have wanted this too, or at least something like this would have come in handy. Especially on guild escort runs when it's mixed nations.

Yap, the radar info is still a little sketchy, but that will change with the new UI; maybe not immediately, but eventually. What's tricky is that it also involves the faction reworking in some cases (mostly the green/red dot criteria) so it might take a while. For the moment, a combination of the radar, 'u' screen and the nation/faction colors (all Serco vessels are Red, all TPG vessels are green, etc.) is your best ally.

what we need is a custamisable IFF system. where everything starts either red or green (you chooses which) and is changed to the other according to a set of rules (anything that fits any one of the change catagories will change) so for example:

i concider pilots friendly unless otherwise noted so i set my initial radar state to green (so every ship will be green unless it is made red by another rule).
next i decide that anyone who fires on me is an enemy (so i check the box to turn any ship that has damaged me red on the radar)
then i decide i don't like Xang Xi so i set my radar to turn all Xand Xi ships red on my radar.
then later i decide o don't like character X so i add him to a list similar to the buddy list that taggs him as red on my radar.

etcetera etcetera

sounds perfectly simple to me, make it soÉ LOL