I haven't played a lot of RPG's, but it seems to me that while character progression will offer a decent amount of options, ship and weapon choices might not be so varied. I think it would be very cool if I could improve certain parts of my weapons or ships in addition to the ways I can improve my character.

A cool way of doing this would be to establish workshops which can use certain raw materials to improve components. For instance, after destroying an alien ship in some remote sector I bring the remains into the workshop. The technicians there use the alien technology to build me an engine which produces 5N more thrust.

The same types of things could be done with ships and weapons, allowing for essentially an infinite number of possiblities. I don't know all the data structures the devs are using, but I imagine the hardest part of developing this addition would simply be the user interface. They would just need to add a field to each piece of cargo which specifies what types of improvements it can yield, if any.

/me loves that idea :)

Imagine three nations can imbue specific ship parts to gaim more flexible and advanced crafts:
sercos: can improve weapons systems
itani: can iprove ships agility
NT: can improve engines and batteries

The variety of improvements can be diffrent, depends on nation status and current combat/trading lvl (itani can favorize combat & lightweap while sercos combat & hvyweap, NT on the other hand rading).

I can thing for about 20 upgrades ATM:
- increased rail valeocity (up to 600)
- increased plasam canon damange (~ 2500)
- increased fleshete canon firerate + decrease energy consumption
- increased ship agility (lvl 1, 2, 3, cnetaur with lvl3 would have medium agility)
- increased battery recharge rate (+2 +4 +6)
- increased engines turbo speed (+5, +10 + 20)
...
etc .etc

There could be a whole quest for that :)

Of course when you are killed everything is lost.. :/

I believe Guild mentioned that certain "special" missions (which are not in-game yet, so don't try to find them and yell at me when you can't) would yield special weapons/addons that only doing that specific mission (or story-line) would provide.

-Cam-

Yea. but i mean that you could for example choose one of the way your engine could be upgraded:
- Increased turbo speed (nt)
- Decreased energy consumption (itani)
- Increased speed & torque (serco)
you can choose only ONE.. so you can customize your craft at your will :)

Devs: do you think there'll ever be player builders AKA crafters?

I spent some time trying to create a system to balance weapons according to cost, and I just don't think it works very well. There are too many variables and its too hard to exactly predict what the effect of a weapon will be until you put it into the game.

If you let players customize weapons, you run the serious risk of actually decreasing the number of options instead of increasing them. Almost certainly, someone will be able to find a way to 'power game' the system and create an uber-weapon without breaking the rules. Pretty soon everyone will be using this uber-weapon too the exclusion of all else.

I do think that there is a nearly infinite number of possibilities for customizing your ship, but I think we should reach that point by providing a huge number of components rather than allowing them to be customized.

For instance, I can envision eventually offering like 130 different engines alone each distinguishable by slight variations in:

1) Cost
2) Thrust
3) Turbo Efficiency
4) Cruising Speed
5) Maximum Speed
6) Warp Capability (some wormholes are easier to use than other)
7) Reliability (more or less likely to take critical hits when the rear portion of your ship is red or yellow)

Even if we don't see 6 & 7, there is still room for 5-10 more engines in the game.

Eventually you can start adding RP content to the gizmos, for instance instead of an efficient engine, you can have a "General Dynamics XP-134A 'Dynoglide'" and its competitor the "Ascix Systems RX-1G 'Marathoner'".

i kept thinking about this...

A true role playing weapon system would include limitless number of weapon variations with possibility of adding bonuses to certain stats by placing special artifacts into limited slots.

Let's say you have a computer rack on your ship. It has space for 4 things in atlas (it's an example). My configuration could be "Power charge for energy weapons (damage +40)", "Missile navigation (+50% flight time)", "Warp capacitor (warp at 1/2 bat)", "Cargo identifier (40% accurate)". Those artifacts could sometimes be found on destroyed bots, given for missions, traded with other players. It would add a whole new dimension to this game and won't destroy power balance as it exists now.

I think Celebrim's idea is great, there should be more personalised names for everything with greater variety in stats. Efficient engine / fast charge battery are nice, but c'mon, who makes them? Where are the anti-monopoly laws? Why we only have one laser with Phased technology? Why all Plasma guns have same size and colour and speed? And so on.