Like the title says.
new faction & FF redux could be a good time to introduce this.

1. Nation ships
No more universally available generic ships.
Divide existing ship models between nations with respect to the backstory
Universally available TPG models can only be bought at TPG faction stations etc.

2. Nation weapons
No more universally available generic weapons
Give nations rough equivalents of existing weapons like neuts, aaps, rockets etc.
Stats can be the same or just slightly different. make different color energy blasts, anything to make them distinguishable.

3. Nation stations
No more identical stations for every faction.
Use old station designs from alpha but make station designs faction specific.

1. I'm for Itani and Serco being limited to their own nation's favoured ship. UIT ships, though should be available to all, as long as the customer can pay - perhaps add a premium to the Marauder's price tag if bought by non-UIT. TPG ships are already only available at TPG stations. Alternatively, if a strong enough national bias could be established via player choice, I would opt for a slight advantage for players piloting their own national ship.

2. Not in favour of this. Not enough differentiation to make it worthwhile. Also, color of energy packets is one of the few clues players have to what their opponent is using which can be valuable tactical information (range, auto-aim, etc.). Perhaps varying availability of some of the new variable-effect weapons instead.

3. Nation stations are different but the differences aren't overt - color and build-style, mostly. Color schemes could be accentuated as a short-term solution?

1. There is already the Prom, SGV, Itani CBG, and the Valk, so the Secro and Itani have their Nation Ships. As for the other ships, most of them would probably fall under the UIT/TPG since the backstory doesn't mention much about the ships that are in the game, other than the Centurion and Prom.

2. Some (maybe 2 or 3) nation-specific weapons would be fun, but the current array of weaponry is pretty all-emcompassing with a few possibilities left out (large-scale missiles, laser/beam weapons). Neither of these would really make sense on either side, since I assume they both would have similar tech at this point

3. It would help if a station was more to scale (ever park a moth in a small station? Its a significant portion of the stations volume, sometimes pushing 1/10th the size), but that isn't happening yet.

Maybe the best change would be a dome ontop of Itani stations with a view of the inside garden, and spikes on the Secro stations would be a quick-ish fix.

Oh man, I love this thread!
It keeps dying, but whoa, there is is again, time and time again!

Gogo gadget jesus thread! Woo!

I like the general idea of a more varied ship selection that is tied to nation allegiance, bojan. You have my support on that one.

But I do believe that there should be a thing such as "generic" equipment, more specifically the stuff sold by TPG. And unless TGP is currently on any Itani or Serco blacklists, it is very feasible that they would find a commercial outlet or distribution model that allows them to provide their products in Serco and Itani space.

Genka, you are the worlds jolliest necromancer.

I had some ideas on this topic, borrowing heavily from deep aquatic species.