I am in the 5th hour of my free 8 hours. I can already see that I probably won't sign up. The problem is this: An utter lack of variety in ship configuration at newbie levels.
If I spend a couple of hours killing bots, I should be able to do something different in the way of combat upgrades. It gets.... boring... to do essentially the exact same thing for hours on end. Give me some incremental progress. Let me make my ship a teeny bit faster, several times. Let me get a tiny bit stronger. Just a little would feel like an accomplishment.

Hi
Man, you needed to get a mentor :-) in 5hrs you can already get to 3/3/2/2/- easily, if you're doing the right things, and get access to a variety of ships. Maybe do the trial again? then sign up, even if it's only for 1 month to try it ($10 is very good value for money).
Problem with the difficulty / leveling is that it might appear to subscribed players as a little too easy so there is a balance to be struck.
Thanks for the feedback tho,
hopefully see you ingame
-- Foo Fighter

I'm not sure how you leveled up but in terms of ships you gain access to new ship types at 1/-/-/-/- (the Centurion), -/-/-/1/-(the Revenant), 2/1/-/-/- (the Warthog and the Vulture), -/-/-/2/- (the Atlas).
There are also various ion, phase and plasma blasters for the s-ports available at level 0,1 and 2
I'm not sure if this would address your need for ship configuation variety.

Most of us are sitting here thinking "I wish there were more high level ships". Just pay the 10 bucks (same as going to a movie) and get to know the other stuff.

Mugen

It is impossible.... Well.. Near impossible to raise your levels for heavy weapons as a noob. With the first 3 levels of heavy weap0ns being with some crappy missile that has a really hard time hitting stationary orruns that only does the damage of about 3 plasma blasts as your only heavy weapon... It takes forever. At least have some direct-fire weapon as a level 1 heavy weapon.... Or make the crap launcher a noob launcher and have it actually do damage... All it's used against are bots, and any competent player could dodge it easier than a flare launched from 34km.
END OF INCOHERENT THOUGHT TANGENT/RANT

My tactic to get up heavy weapons was to shoot things down to almost dead, then use a missile to finish them off. It did take a while though.

Find someone willing to help you out, and do boarder patrol with them, your heavy will be up to 4 in like an hour.

Mugen

But still, doing noob things such as botting, it still takes a long time with one grif launcher and nearly dead enemies. Just saying, you get a new light weapon every light level, but the heavies you need to get to 3 just to get something that you can level with at any decent speed. I say 1-2-3 takes longer than 3-4-5...

but most people fight and fly with light weapons until they get into heavy ship tactics.

If you take advance combat practice or beginner, it will up all stats after 5 bot kills, total killing bots with heavy weapons plus over xp gain from the mission. It should go up much faster.

/me continues to rant about the giant hurdle of doom that exists near heavy weapons - to 3, not being a noob. I have done other such things as that, but heavy weapons are so much harder because you have to fire a missile that will barely hit and requires a significant amount of skill (much more than any weapon that fires in a straight line) to hit. I think leveling heavy would be much, much easier if there was some kind of Heavy Plasma cannon for a large port. I don't care if it does like, 3 damage. It's much easier to hit an artemis collector with a plasdev rather than those missiles of doom... (Unless one has figured out the tactic of doom to get the bots to stay relatively stationary)

The fact that one has a hard time hitting the bots with the noob heavy weapon does not help. If the first light weapon was a missile that rarely hit without careful planning, nobody would play. The fact that the missile launcher has ammo and is hard to hit with does not lend itself to leveling at all quickly (in any comparative manner to light weapons). I'd say that if there was an energy heavy after level - at level 1, heavy leveling would be sane. That's just my opinion, but I just feel that the noob reward for leveling heavy weapons is very, very low compared to light. The fact that the revenant is so easy to get, and having a heavy port that is next to useless when they don't have a plasma devestator or the likes, could make some noobs sad, or cause extreme aggravation...

I think my problem is with the weapons available... Not the ease of leveling. I probably feel agitated at the level/reward for heavy. It seems... Empty.
End of rant/irritation

I believe there was an older thread* that touched upon this issue briefly.

For the moment, my suggestion would be to soften up Oruns with a small-port blaster, run away to about 1000m, turn around, then fire a stingray. Once you reach level 3, you can purchase PlasDevs, and leveling you heavy license becomes much easier.

*[ http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/12994 ]