The current way we have it, each pilot somehow already knows who is who and why right off the top of the bat. It works, but seems a bit odd to me. I would like to suggest a much more active and RP based form of ship identification.

- All ships are seen as "Unidentified Ship" on radar, screen list, and target lock.

- Players could call out "Identify yourself", in which the Unidentified ship could choose to broadcast his ship identification. That would release his ship type and pilot name to everyone in the sector.

- Once someone leaves the sector, even if they come back, that pilot will no longer be identified. This works the same way with friendly craft. You won't know if they are friendly/same Nation or not until they identify themselves via a button on the keyboard or you notice the ship color. However, those placed in groups will have a continual signal being broadcasted to the rest of the group for nonstop identification.

- This encourages the silent, evil types to refuse to respond and maintain radio silence, while also encouraging that extra level of "I'm actually controlling inner aspects of my ship" to the player.

I eventually also hope we are allowed to apply similar colors to other nations, in hopes of "a serco that looked on the surface like an itani", in which choosing to not identify yourself could begin to be considered an automatic hostile action.

I completely agree.
If you've got the time you should read http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=3273&page=1 and feel free to add/revise/rip apart/suggest/etc. since I think a lot of what me and Celebrim discussed there is along the same lines of thought as this post, as well as the "cloaked strike craft" one.