how about some missions or pseudo missions which let you try out beta equipment? these missions could be available from research stations who are developing new or adapting old technology, and they need pilots to test it in the field.

this beta equipment could be a mish mash of various current technologies or something a little more exotic, and in either case there should be a chance that it will either stop working altogether, stop working for a time, or completely explode and halve your hull integrity.
obviously, the chance of something going wrong should be higher with more exotic things so that any player would only have the advantage of using this new technology for a short time.

these missions should be rare and, in non exotic cases, should not stop you being able to take other missions as usual. whether being able to use the equipment would be reward enough to take these missions, i shall leave up to others.

any ideas, thoughts, insults?

There already is a TPG Test Pilot mission, you get Raptor for finishing it

i meant as just individual pieces of equipment that you could bolt onto whichever ship youre using at the time to give the player a temporary boost in engines, hull armour, weapons, etc until it breaks. i think itd add some more variety to the ships out there.

Very good idea. Ion likes.

Adds more variety. Although I don't like using a hyperbole, *anything* that adds variety is a good thing...

I'm shooting for something along these lines, except with basically "black market" equipment. This would be available in Corvus and various other more-sketchy locations, and would be like "remanufactured" or "modified" equipment. Probably with boosted stats in some aresa, but also with a risk of equipment failure (potentially even catastrophic equipment failure.. your special Neut III explodes and damages you a bit). The tradeoff would be the special stats and the lower-level availability.

ah, sweet. thats awesome :D

Hehe. Sounds kickass.