I think stealth is a better idea - whould a trader rather not be seen, or be seen and make people think he's capable of more than he really is? I personally would rather slip by unseen than hope i can scare someone off by making them think i'm in a better ship than i really am.

Also, once the more dynamic radar system comes into play, making yourself look like an astroid would make you impossible to find - if everyone's impossible to find the game is not as fun. The need to make yourself look like something else wouldn't really be important once the radar system is more advaced anyways (and i'm talking about the advances put forward in the size advantage post...)

Well, I think instead of steealth, ships should be able to project an image of a ship around them, the ship being projected must be bigger than the ship makeing the projection. (a Prometheus can't make itself look like a Valkyrie).

When I think of Camo, it makes me think more of an outfit. It could be put in the widely accessible equipment ports, and It would let a non-moving object be nearly invisible to radar's and such.

Maybe an asteroid type of camo so you could hide against an asteroid background.

I prefer SL's suggestion. Let a ship turn into another ship. Or... an object. Here's some transformations that would work (the larger the result, the better camo module required):

Centurion + Small Camo Module -> Valkyrie
Ragnarok + Small Camo Module -> Small Roid
Warthog + Medium Camo Module -> Ragnarok
Ragnarok + Medium Camo Module -> Medium Roid
Prom + Large Camo Module -> Centaur
Ragnarok + Large Camo Module -> Large Roid/Ceres station


A Light ship can carry a small camo module, a medium ship can carry a small or meidum camo module, and a heavy can carry any
size camo module. Only a heavy can turn into a roid.

heh i can imagine this, 10 different camo stations moving around s9.

Maybe we could have equipement slots and a powerplant.

so a small camo generator would take 1 small slot and use 100 energy, a medium would take 2 small slots or 1 med(depending how it is implemented) and use 250 energy.

Other equipment could be made such as radar enhancements, sector jump engines, emp, etc.

Then whatever your generator produces over what you use recharges the battery.

ie.
Light Generator produces 125 energy/sec
small camo unit uses 100 energy/sec
so your battery would charge at 25 energy/sec

It would be possible to use all your energy up in equipment so your battery would not recharge unless you dock. But you would have all sorts of cool toys to fool enemies with.

Maybe each generic ship would have equipment slots complementary to that of its weapons slot?
Valk has 3s slots, so it would have 3 small equipment slots, one forced to be a generator, the others free to be what not.
So a valk could have a small camo unit, a small generator, and something else.
Maybe the generators could only run xyz time and shut off automatically to cooldown/recharge/whatever.

My original idea was escorts to look like a trader.

A projection looks like something, but does not change the physical features of the ship. (radar, hit zones, etc.)