To me, hitting a storm is a way for the game to tell me "That's enough Vendetta for now. You don't really feel like getting blown up, huh?" Something tells me this isn't how the game is supposed to be. The char I'm using was only at 0/0/0/2, and I had only a scanner on my bus. I would gladly waste time going around storms; it's a lot easier than having to go around an entire sector just so the bots dont get you.

I think it would be useful to add storm alerts on your map if you have good standing with the nation controlling the system you're looking at. That should allow new players a way to safely navigate through some parts of space, yet uncontrolled systems and enemy systems will still be hazardous. Besides, the three nations already have the technology to monitor for KOS and hated players, why not moniter storms as well?

Let the 'local Authorities' protect newbies when they enter a storm area. If a newbie with level 0/0/0/0 (or perhaps till one of the levels reached 2) enters a storm area then just spawn 1-3 police crafts / Strike force bots of his home nation in this sector who fight the pirates. The player then could choose to a) flee to the storm exit point (Strike force would guard him and fight any attackers), or b) support the strike force/police and fight the pirates, gaining some experience points. One of the police-NPC's should always switch target to the pirate that attacks the player. However, they should not respawn if they get killed.

how about a little blue arrow that points in the direction of a storm exit. Arrow would disappear when the storm exit is in forward view. Hope that doesn't defeat the purpose of the storms.

Biggest problem i had was finding the storm exit while running form the bot, got torched 3 times in the tutorial. Might wanna give us newbies a break and not mix things up like that, IE learning to navigate early on is that, then learn evasive. was a little frustrating.

i agree i think the iron storms stink also im all about dying but 7 times in one day. please take a few of them out or give us the ability to protect ourselvs when we come out of warp in a hord of fighters. how about a nuke button they attack you press the button and all the astroids and enemy craft are gone.

Learn to bob and weave and to orientate yourself to the storm exit in a hurry. Also you can avoid up 75% of the storms by plotting a course around asteriod belts.

skydiver: I really hope you're kidding... A "nuke all" button would essentially remove -all- challenge from the game...

I Like the storms, you get to see new places and meet new people. A storm helped me complete the scan for cabonic ore mission.

Sara is correct.

I rarely die in storms as a noobie, sometimes you just can't help it though when a very strong bot is flying at your average thruster speed. I tend to tap the thruster to keep my speed at 2x max cruising speed. Well some bots cruise at 120+ so you just can't help but end up dead.