Right now, there are some ships that simply aren't possible to catch in most situations. Anyone who has seen anti-racers trying to kill people in the Deneb Run knows what I mean: the only way to effectively stop a racer in to camp a wormhole and hope the racer doesn't change course enough to avoid your swarms or rockets.

This also means a decent pilot can hit and run with impunity. The only defense against such attacks is to try for a one-hit kill with railguns, and even that is a long-shot.

I think fast ships need to be more clearly broken up in to distance runners and sprinters. Distance runners would have infiniboost, accelerate rather slowly and have a top speed no higher than 210m/s. Sprinters would accelerate very quickly and have higher top speeds and moderate drain. Sprinters should have very high turbo thrust.

I'm sure it would take a lot of experimentation to balance out the ships, and I'm not sure about specifics. Here's a general, non-comprehensive list of the sort of changes that I think should be made to ships:

More drain
Orion Hornet Convoy Guardian
Corvus Greyhound

Lower top speed
Warthog Mk. II
Hornet Mk. II

Less drain
Corvus Vulturius
Orion Centurion Rev. C
Biocom Vulture XT

More turbo thrust
Corvus Vulturius
Valkyrie X1
Orion Hornet Convoy Guardian

I would be inclined to disagree with this for the moment.

Right now with the introduction of the Corvus Greyhound, every ship except another Hound is easily caught (it just might take time).

Because of the broad scope of the changes you're proposing, I think this would act as a major destabilizer for a while, in a time where the Dev's are looking at large roll outs that will take time to get fully functioning.

I think this could be a good shelf project until the game is more online and Dev's start looking into getting into major tweaks.

The theory that game balance can only be achieved by having ships that are all inherently "balanced" is boring. It takes away from the ability to make the game more interesting by utilizing other game play mechanics such as faction to bring "balance" into the game (for instance, if there is no reward for choosing sides, and you can have access to perfectly "balanced" equipment by sitting on the fence, then why would you choose sides?).

yes yes less drain on the corvult!!!

Right now, there is a lack of balance such that anyone can fly through an area in a fast ship, fire off a few rockets or missiles and have virtually no chance of being caught or taking more than minor damage. I would like to see a situation in which hit-and-run tactics are easier to counter, and I think pushing the fast ships toward one extreme or the other would achieve that goal.

I don't think that any 1 player should be able to piss off 20 players, and then not to have to worry about consequences. That's basically the way it is now. Anyone can do anything to however many players as they want, get in a hog2 or one of these new greyhounds, run around for hours without ever taking damage, dock somewhere, say "lolz" on 100, and then log.

Definitely don't lower drain on the corvult.

And really the only "overpowered" running ship is the Atlas X. That is the only thing one that really needs changing

The only problem with that argument is that it applies only to B8. In any other RP element of gameplay, that argument fails because said person is not actually fulfilling any objectives. The day that Vo becomes interesting enough that pirates pirate, Vipers actually patrol, and the majority of militaristic nationalists partake in the war, then that becomes much less of an issue than it is today.

I don't think that we should be trying to argue for the balancing of the game in the context of B8 being the be all and end all of gameplay.

Vipers do patrol, but the majority of our effectiveness lies in escorting traders. When an escort goes well, the trader won't even see a pirate. When, due to error or random chance, a trader, Viper and pirate are in the same sector, hit and run becomes a useful tactic for the pirate. He doesn't want to escape the sector; he wants to kill the trader. Even if this doesn't meet the tactical goal of stealing the cargo, it does achieve a strategic goal of encouraging traders to pay a bribe instead of requesting an escort.

It is much easier to hit a loaded trade ship from a speeding Greyhound than it is to hit a speeding Greyhound under any circumstances.

I agree that the universe shouldn't center around B8. That said, problems are often exposed there due to the heavy activity in the area.

That argument can be made of most layouts. It's easy to evade an attacker and attack a laden trade ship. It just is. I don't think that it should be necessarily easy for the escorter to protect the trader. That's what advanced scouting is for. If, like you said, and error is made in communication or whatever, then I think it's fair that the pirate will have a better chance of achieving his or her objective than the trader (this is assuming a scenario involving one trader, one pirate, and one escort).

And I don't agree that B8 is an accurate petri dish for the preferred gameplay mechanics of VO. No other situation is anywhere near as consensual as the care bear fest that takes place in B8.

I'm still saying that many of these imbalances are better dealt with by restricting their use to those who would choose to sacrifice other elements of their character's roleplay via faction restrictions and whatnot.