are cool.

But it led me to wonder about ship variants.

And whether it would be possible to alter the mapping slightly between I, II, III, IV, and special variants of ships- and how much time that'd take.

Maybe change the locations of the colors?

Little extra fins... maybe longer chassis... color pattern variations...

Larger models for example or perhaps an extra component to the model.

Or we leave them as is, and let the devs add more content.

I agree with the blade guy. Remember that the bulk of the client is made up of textures, maps and models, and that the Devs are trying to keep its size as small as possible, specially now that new ships are coming our way anyway. Though it would be cool to see little changes to a ship variant, the sheer amount of info would make the client far too large.

or, you just change the shaders a lil bit. I'm sure Inc devised multiple shaders for each ship and then picked his favorite. This way, he could use the others as well.

Only the new/updated ships have shaders, though. So that doesn't help the old ones much...

I disagree with chassis size change. The vulture doesn't need to be enlarged, it would take away one of its advantages (of which it doesn't have too many).

if the vulture chassis was enlarged it would become rather useless.
It's already hell to dodge flares with it, try dodging energy fire... its size ONLY comes into play if its flown correctly, and even then, if you can get it offbalance with a well placed juke, its open season.