In another thread, ctishman brought up a valid point about the stations. That
is (to paraphrase) that all the stations look alike, as if they were all fabricated
in the same place at the same time. He has a point, but he caused me to remember an observation of my own. All the stations, judging by color and
texture, look like they are made of concrete. You know, cement. Isn't that a
rather unlikely material to find in space? Yeah, yeah...I know. It's actually
NanoCrete (TM) a special material that is airtight, waterproof, meteoroid proof,
radiation proof and can withstand nukes up to 100 megatons and only weighs
2 grams per cubic kilometer. How could I have forgotten?

I never thought of that. That is kinda true. It would make sense for the UIT stations to be made of that. But the Serco ones I see as being made of some intimidating, powerful looking steel textures on the exterior. While the Itani might have graceful, ceramic/glass looking textures. More curves on the Itani ones might be nice too.

More curves = more polygons = less fps...

Keep'em blocky, texture the curves?

I have heard that the devs are going to be very specifically hand crafting alot of the home sectors.....some day

the current universe was basically randomly generated to facilitate the beta.....so I heard

you know it isn't like they haven't thought about any of this stuff before and are going "Oh crap he's right! *smacks head*"
if you were here ages ago you would understand how far this has come.

example: almost 2 years ago (i started in january 3.1.2) there were 9 sectors, fixed price wigets, no fancy backgrounds, CTF , no story, 3 ships per nation and a bus, 3 station types, 2 kinds of energy weapons laser and ion, a couple missile weapons and some mines

now: multi system universe each with 256 sectors, 11 player ship hulls (i think), gobs of variants for each hull, fancy backgrounds, many many many different weapons to mess around with, missions!, experience levels! licenses! many many many kinds of bots to play with from newb to please kill me, modular stations (the things you guys don't like at the moment but trust me, they are better that the metroid and standard station of the olden days) the interface is way better, sure you guys think it sucks but before it was like a dos prompt! (ok i'm lieing but it was way less than it is now) the new CTC mission sure the convoys cant navigate at all but i bet in a week or so that will be mostly fixed. group missions, basic guild framework, massive massive story, ion storms (:P~), dynamic economy! and a retail box!

also keep in mind that only 4 guys develop this game not 50.

so in time the universe will be alot more tailored to the story line and nations. did i mention of the 4 guys only 1 does the art? :)

I know "CrazySpence." I've been playing 2 and a half years...

Perhaps there could be a sector with a derelict station with all the lights out and the wheels stopped. There wouldn't be anything to buy or sell at the station and you couldn't repair, but docking there would trigger a mission tree to try and figure out what happened to the station.

Yes Phaserlight. Or perhaps it triggers a series of missions that would result in
rebuilding the station....bringing it back to life! Or BOTH !!!

Phaserlight: Great idea for a new "suggestions" topic! Go for it and expand on it!

Yeah yeah, the stations are over a year old now, and the graphics are a bit lacking. I would have liked to have diversified them more between the nations, made better textures, and added more detail, but time and hardware constraints both limited what I could do.

I'm actually going to be doing one last revamp of the station designs tonight, so hopefully in about a week you'll at least see more variants using the same old prefab pieces.

Oh, and it's NanoCrete, not concrete. Get with the program!

<More curves = more polygons = less fps...>

-DAMN YOU AND YOUR LOGIC!!!

I second the idea of derilict spacestaions in unmarked sectors. It would give "explorers" something to reward their efforts.