i would wager more people have died flying aircraft during peacetime than during war time... flying is dangerous! there are storms, cross winds, equipment malfunctions, problems with landing systems, power shortages at ground stations, snow and blizzard conditions, ice, storms, turbulence, navigation problems, map malfunctions, and not to mention stupid american battle ships that blow up airliners, or stupid soviet migs that shoot down lost airliners.

wouldnt mind a bit more of that kind of thing in the game.

Simple!
1d6
1: You smash into the roid on your left
2: You lose turbo for a bitsy
3: Your left gun port refuses to work
4: You cannot turn left
5: Your ship explodes
6: The client crashes

Gremlins. We need gremlins.
(Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the gremlin on the WW-II bomber? Hahaha one of the all-time best)

I agree, space travel should be more involved:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11369

Any time you add some artificial bad luck lottery it seems really contrived, and bad luck already happens in the game (jumping into rocks, hitting four ion storms in a row, etc.)

I do think that damage to a ship should affect its performance. If someone's ship is down to 14%, there's no way they should be able to turbo off at full speed without the thing falling apart from the thrust. The current Quake-style deathmatch system isn't doing much for the immersiveness of the game.

Ion storms can be actively avoided, albeit the UI for that needs work in my opinion.

Otherwise, I agree with igni ferroque's post (and many others') in that storms should have side-effects on you ship. What these could be can be found in countless posts.

Yap, I'd much rather see the ship performance drop as it gets damaged (a la Xwing or Wing Commander) than have to do a lot of tedious stuff, time and again, just to get my 100% healthy ship from leaning to the right as it flies in open space.