First off... awesome, awesome game. I don't play games much, but this one really has me addicted.

I've been reading through the other suggestions, and most of my own thoughts seem to already be addressed, except for one. There seems to be very little difference between the specs of ships. In battle it all comes down to whether one ship rotates or strafes just *slightly* faster than the other. The combat strategies don't really vary between the class of ships. I find myself upgrading to the next level of fighter, just so that I can strafe just a little faster than the next-highest class of bot.

I think it would be cool to have a super-small, super-maneuverable ship with an armor rating of 2000, mass of 2000, top speed of 90, that could really fly circles around the larger ships. It might be limited to one or two pea-shooters of weapons (with damages of around 100-200 each) and be limited to a small battery so it couldn't win an endurance chase. A ship like this might break up the monotony of run, turn, strafe, spin combat.

And that is just one extreme, capitol ships being the other. But I think there's also a whole lot of room in the middle.

Yeah. The Centurion is supposed to be this ship. Except there are no resrictions on batteries or weapons (other than small port weapons), so I guess this isn't totally in line with your suggestion, but:

The Itani Valkyrie (a much higher level ship) is very, very fast and maneuverable. More so than any Centurion variation, and I think that this is really a problem with the Centurion.

Combat strategies do change quite a bit when unguided rockets enter the mix, but none of the bots use them. Yet.

The Cent really suffers in maneuverability. I had a someone in a Valk out-maneuver me once. Was kinda weird. The Cent should be very fast, and very maneuverable because it carries only a single weapon. Probably rivaling the Valkyrie, except in armament and armor.

CLOAKING DEVICE!

If you study the specs, you'll notice that all Buses have less mass than all Cents and always have more cargo capacity. In fact, the EC-98 is only 4000 kg! The only advantage of a Cent is the Cent III which is slightly faster and has slightly more armor than an EC-101, but it still has more mass.

and the IBG cent has 2 weapon slots. And better engines. And because the model is longer and thinner, it spins faster.

i totaly aggree with the first guy, the thing is need more varaition between the ships, and the UIT, Serco, and Itani need more government specific ships, or even divy up the existing classes of ships IE Serco gets Mk3 of one type of ship but not MK3 or Mk4 of another..But over all need more varaition in the ships.

P.S. AWESOME GAME, LOTSA POTENTAL!!