Ever since sec 15 opened and anyone could buy any ship, the number of player spacecraft models seen in Vendetta has essentially been reduced to 3: the Marauder, the Valkyre and the Prometheus. This reduces diversity in battles and caps, and makes getting rich a breeze for anyone.
Unfortunately, I know people would howl bloody murder if the devs removed the ability to use other nation's ships now, but I think it should be made harder. I suggest that these rare ships should be available "for rent" so they steadily reduce your credits the longer you keep them, and there should be a limited number available, say 5-10 per nation. That way they would be a lot less common and the game would be more varied again.

*sigh* You don't know how hard it is to refrain from just filling up this posted with just four words in all caps repeat many times.

It's not that I don't agree with you, but I think you are completely missing the underlying problem here.

But there are people that are going 'howl bloody murder' at my suggestion that the problem is that the non-special ships are too weak, and the special ships just a tad too special. In the long run I think everyone will enjoy the game more if there is something closer to parity between all the ships. Otherwise, its going to be just like multiplayer XvT - everyone is in the 'advanced' Tie-Fighter. (You don't know how much I cringed when I saw the words 'advanced' describing the ships).

The non-special ships still need to have some type of advantage to counteract the strength and agility of special ships. Fortunately there's at least one good example in the game that illustrates my point. Take a look at the Warthog and the Valkyrie. The one L-port on the Warthog makes it deadly at closer range, but its hull strength is very weak. The Valkyrie can dodge the advanced gatling turret fire with its high agility, but it only has S-ports. Basically, it should be that sort of thing where there's a tradeoff between agility and availability of weapons.

As a long term goal I'd much rather see the unique ship styles (as in unique to each nation) of 3.1.x be restored. In other words, eliminate the labeling of "special" and "non-special" by simply giving a uniquely designed scout ship, fighter, medium fighter, heavy fighter, advanced fighter, etc. for each nation. For example, the Itani can have the Valk as the own advanced fighter, while Neutral Territories would have a super version of the Hornet as their advanced fighter, and maybe a super Vulture or super Warthog for Serco. They simply won't just look different for each nation, but they would each have slightly varying specs to fit their role adequately. That way we won't see everybody be fixated to "the best" group of ships.

I think it should be easy to get the ships, but hard to get them out of that sector.

Celebrim is right, the ships need to be rebalanced in the long run. However, at this point the only thing ships are used for is fighting and trading, which makes balancing difficult. However, once more variety is added to the scenario and ships take on more roles such as stealth reconnaissance, blockade running, smuggling, long range scouting etc., rebalancing the ship classes will be easier. My idea is strictly short term.

does anyone who can afford a prom or a valk uses vulture or a warthog to fight (except some ppl who hates unbalanced ships)?

Nope, Blaster. And that's the problem. At least IMO.

I hope the devs rebalance everything soon. Granted it's not something that would take overnight, but I'd rather they focus more time on gameplay balance and ironing out exploits than tweaking the graphics. With all the arguing that's going around in the game, it seems like it should be more of a priority. Of course squashing bugs would be the highest.

Maybe it might be a good idea to allow the player to build their own custom ships. Give each ship a certain number of points, and allow the player to decide how much cargo space, weapon ports, hull strength, and agility the ship can have... with each "feature" having a certain number of points per unit. The chasis of the ship would determine the total number of points a ship can have and how much it would cost. This may help go along with the "bulk system" that's planned in the future, where less cargo space and weapons (resulting in more unused points) would result in a more agile ship.

Arolte you took my bloody idea! I DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!!
heheh

The ships image would change depending on the points, if your ship had no weapon slots, had loads of cargo, and was fairly manuverable, it would look like the marauder.
Here is some point ideas:
Point: 1000 credits, you start with 10, max is 20
L port: 3p, 3 max
S port: 1p, 5 max
Cargo hold: 2p, as many as you can get.
Engine adapter: 5p, 2 max
Battery adapter: 5p, 2 max

Variables not influenced via points, but what they buy.

Speed\manuverability: Engines-10*L ports-2*S ports

That seems like it would be difficult to design and hellish to provide suitable graphics for.

It might just be better to stick with the current design and keep adding robustness - for instance give all components masses - as the design gets further along. But its going to be alot easier to grow the design organically like that if at each stage you already have something like balance, sorta like its alot easier to modify existing code to add new features if your existing code is error free.

Besides which code which would allow multiple batteries or engines doesn't exist yet.

I have only played vendetta for 2 weeks. After the first 3 days, I have only really used non special ships for one thing- trasport to get my special. I dont even know how most of the regualr ships handle.

Players will almost always get any advantage they can, meaning most players will fight in Valks or Proms. I prefer the Prom because it is so idiot friendly. I can kill vets 50% of the time just in a choatic slug fest with rockets and auto gats. I agree the gap needs to be reduced.

You're right, Nalar. Something does need to be changed, if not sooner than *later*. Much later...

It would be nice to have those right now, but more pressing matters arose. Now they have a lot of good tools that will make those new ships that much easier to produce and tweak when it's time to do that. You know they have art for new ships already, right?

I'm a little surprised at the few variants of National Ships there are. Just one unique, and a rip off of a fighter each. So... I always thought the Itani, or atleast Akanese needed a specific bomber type. Something small and tricksy, with enough firepower to make it a threat, but slow enough to get eated up in actual combat.

Armor 7800
Weight 3600kg
Thrust 220N
Max Speed 55m/s
Turbo 200 m/s
Drain 50/sec
Spin 7.0
Length 10m
2 Large ports

To counter it, the Serco need something quick, but with enough armor to blow past atleast 2 volleys of swarms, and very wide and boxy like the Vult but not as flat for better good control.

Armor 14000
Weight 6800kg
Thrust 315N
Max Speed 65m/s
Turbo 220m/s
Drain 55
Cargo 8
Spin 10.0
Length 12m
1 Large port

Just trying to think of some creative ideas anyways, without unbalancing *too* badly.

*blinks*

Wow. This is old. Four-and-a-half years old. Arolte old. Yeah.

Thats not to say that I don't agree with what was said (at least in part), but the game build they were discussing is now very much outmoded, and really not applicable to the current model.

Flauros, the other variants of the nation-specific craft used to be used more often, but after being nerfed and buffed repeatedly, most people just gave up on using anything but the most advanced variants.