I'm not sure if this has been suggested before but anyways here goes nothing.

i was thinking maybe since there are 3 factions, the UIT,Serco,and Itani.Since each faction has speacial features like the serco are militaristic and the UIT are basically traders and Itani are ritualistic. Say the serco skycammand prometheus (SSP) is unique in its way its more of an assualt bomber than fighter.

Heres what i think of the different classes of ships their are

Freighters
Fighters
Bombers

Each faction would have its OWN different modified version of the different chassis. say the serco's freighters have improved manuevarbilty or armour. Or the itanis fighters have an extra boost to their energy output by the powercell to extend its use. The UIT's freighters can have an extra hull space.

Its an never ending (IF). But what i mena is that each nation has its own speacial spacecraft of those 3 classes (chassis types). I hope you take this into consideration.

I think that's been the basic idea all along, but they were without an artist (and had greater priorities) for awhile there. Now that they have Luis things are moving along better.

As you have seen with the Serco Prometheus, there was some movement to have faction-specific ships that had faction-related stats AND a distinctive look (the Itani Valkyrie and the UIT Marauder being the other two nation-specific ships)

So far it there haven't been any new ships from the 3 main factions, but there have been some distinctive ships from the sub-factions. The 3 hives (coming soon) are also getting distinctive ships with the idea that they will be scavenging (and mining) in their respective territories.

soon? ot soon(tm)

Sooner than Soon™, but not as soon as "soon".

Now that I've typed it four times in the same sentence, I've realized what a ridiculous word to say it is.

I agree for sure there should be different emphases in nation specific technology. It should be a big enough difference to be noticeable in a fight, but not an overpowering difference. This reall just goes along with different options for addons, more energy weapons with different properties (including beam weapons), more missiles (remote-guided missiles would be cool), mines, rockets, mass drivers, armor, engines, etc. As far as it working out between three nations, it should be rock paper scissors. Serco have a significant technology in one area, Itani in another (nose-picking, for example; they have abnormally large nose nuggets), and UIT another. Perhaps Serco could have more efficient engines (more thrust, higher top speed) and higher-yield dumbfire rockets, Itani could have (seriously this time) more efficient energy weapons and higher capacity batteries, and UIT could have stronger/lighter weight armor and more efficient mining beams. These are just examples, but it would definately make the game interesting, as each faction would develop unique tactics.

Thanks for agreeing with me, not sure how it'd work out.

NO for same chassis, different specs!

The starting idea was that nations/factions developed separately and so did their technology, at least according to backstory.
In reality, devs didnt manage to create a completely different technology for nations/factions so imho existing situation is a compromise.

Basic differences that should be in existence:

ITANI
ships: light, very high speed, very high manouverability
armor: basic armor + energy shields
power: fast replenishing powercells
weapons: advanced hightech light energy weapons

SERCO
ships: medium to heavy, sturdy and bulky but with lot of wep slots
armor: heavy on armor, no energy shields
power: heavy long lasting powercells but slow replenishing
weapons: standard energy weps, dumbfire rockets and guided missiles

UIT
ships: medium, heavy, transport oriented
armor: standard armor
power: medium yield powercells optimal for infiniturbo
weapons: UIT/faction modified variants of standard tech weps

While I'd welcome general differences in attributes depending on nations, tweaking it is a hellishly difficult thing (ongoing and past debates prove my point. I dare say the person disagreeing with me in that specific point is absolutely wrong) and should be approached with care.

So, basically, everyone that doesnt agree with your opinion is an idiot Toshiro?

No, He says that only a person that says that tweaking i.e. balancing ships is easy is an idiot.

I don't like shying away from a suggestion because "tweaking is difficult." No, toshiro is no idiot, I actually enjoy reading his posts more than most, there is a lot of thought that goes into most of them. All the best suggestions will be difficult to implement. Hell, making a game is tough, period. Eventually this rock paper scissors type balance will be quite feasible, and I would love to see it.

Well he didn't say it shouldn't be done, he said it should be done carefully

I didnt say Toshiro is an idiot. Please read my previous post carefully Prof. Chaos.

Try and be nice here, only wanted YOUR oppinion on my idea not who you think is an idiot...

I didn't call anyone an idiot. I just said that it's wrong to believe that it will be an easy task to change the current state of the game, balance-wise. This should be self-evident, and I'll reiterate, people who disagree with this are most likely wrong. Perhaps I worded it a bit strongly, but over-emphasising things is so rad these days ;)

However, I would welcome new ship variants, as I said before.

Race abilities:

Serco: cloaking - can not shoot when active
Itani: shields - can not shoot when active
UIT: temporary ion storm dispersal or show storms on map

lol.

Antz think about this way.

if the serco had cloaking it would give them such an upper hand over every faction they could just walk in and never be spotted.

if the itani had sheilds theyd just be the same.... defending its what theyve been doing,

and UIT ion storm dispersal or show storms on maps should be available to ALL factions

I disagree.

(Active) Cloaking could be countered by making it require energy to keep it up.
Turbo could be disabled when being cloaked.
This in addition to not being able to shoot, naturally.

Shields could be countered in much the same way, but SuperMegaMynt made a good post about how to deal with shields in another thread close to this one.

The ion storm weather forecast device could have a chance of giving false information. To make it work, have it be a significant one, i.e. 1/3 (.39, something that works. Will require extensive testing) of all indications are wrong, in one way or another (location of storm, duration, existence or non-existence (showing storms where there aren't).

The problem with these things isn't that they don't work. the problem is that they're not easily and quickly implemented.

mikyle: See, everyone wins! Serco can sneak up to or away from people by cloaking, as in the backstory. Itani get their shields as in the backstory. UIT become the best navigators in the universe, as they should be.

Implementing a storm disruptor or showing storms on the map would defeat the whole point of having storms in the first place if given to everyone though. I feel all three of those would need to be implemented at the same time and given to the race characters without taking up any slots or anything. You could perhaps make a mission tree for them though, so a serco character has to rise through serco millitary to get their shields (a top secret technology), itani pilot has to complete a specialist focus mission tree to get their shield, and uit have to complete some exploration mission tree to get their disruptor/map display.

toshiro is right though, cloaking/uncloaking would take some time to implement, as would shields. Especially if you include the time taken to make the missions. Developers already have lots and lots to do, and I would rather see player-owned stations, player-controlled capital ships, and big huge cannon things defending Itani space first, but this is just another idea... Could this be a 3-month job for an intern? :-)

Sorry, I took this thread completely off topic now.