I'm new to the game, so maybe I have this wrong. Hey great game by the way! This is my suggestion . An element that I think makes the game interesting, varied, and strategic.

Fully customizable ships adds a depth of strategy. Just look to old classics like mechwarrior and you'll see what i mean. The reason why it worked so well, is that you could take any battleframe and spend hours in the workshop tweaking it out. It was an art, because cutomizing was a >>>>COMPROMISE<<<<<<

What i mean is, if you increse armor, you suffer the penalty of extra weight and lower acceleration/manoevrability. You deck it out with heavy uber weapons and you suffer excessive heat builup and energy sinks, as well as weight penalties. Do you put in the latest hot-rod 10 megaton thrust engines? Sure, you will go very fast but you dont leave much room for weapon systems. Perhaps you might even lose the ability to fit a big battery. Want a battery that lasts 10,000 years at full turbo? Swell. but it will weigh a ton and take up a lot of room. You had better leave those hot-rod engines behind and expect to have a lot of inertia in space.

With every design decision there is a compromise. Increase one thing, and you decrease something else. I dont like a system where you install modules that get better and better with no detriment. You arrive at a point where everything on the ship is uber. YOu have an all uber ship with no disadvantage and customizing a ship is completely 2 dimensional. Every step up the tree renders everything else redundant, until there's only one prized module that's useful. Rather than giving the pilot a choice of several systems with differing properties. There is no fine balancing and tuning a ship in that system. Also, it does not allow you to customize a ship to your liking - its cool to take a frame and tank it out (even though its slow), or lighten it up and install fast engines to have a fairly puny ship but extremely fast and nimble. Or if you want, go for a balanced loadout which is fairly competent in all areas. Ofcourse, different frames will have different potentials. The small light fighters will make excellent hot-rods. The larger birds will have excellent tanking potiential. ect.

Different ship models should also have advantages and disadvantages. From what i have seen so far, top speeds are all extremely similar. So whats the point of flying something small? I would expect smaller frames to go slightly faster. So there is more of a use for the small bird - makes excellent courier, scouter, and a fast hit and run harassing combat unit.

I am aware that different systems already do have advantages and drawbacks so I have yet to see what it is like. However, i have seen none with batteries. And have not seen little with weapon modules. I have a disturbing feeling that it might end up being one of those "elitist pyramids". Where everything gets ridiculously better the further you progress, rendering everything below you redundant. I appreciate that this game is part RPG, where the fun is in progressing higher and being rewarded with more power. But a system where the reward is having access to a wider variety of weapons and frames (not simply just more powerful and better) also works very well.

When a game allows a player to be truly original and deck out the ship in a creative way, you open up a whole new dimension of play. Whole websites dedicated to perfected blends. Pilots bragging about their perfect set up which never let them down - just enough speed to outrun pirates, just enough battery to keep the weapons turning while still leaving some room for nimbleness. Weapons that kick over a decent damage/time while still having high enough rate of fire to land constant hits. Or you may come across a juggernaut who perfected a large frame with enough armor to halt a supernova. He doesnt mind being slow and bulky - he's the stand and deliver type. Who knows - it might even create a breed of speed heads boasting about who's faster? The possibilities are endless. Or, with the other system, it could just end up who's better. My ship > your ship. I have access to systems that are just all round better than yours. End of story. That system usually restricts PvP to only those who possess the elite stuff. "if you dont have a mega raptor with 4 tachyon blasters and nuclear battery, dont even think about fighting". And PvP becomes bland; you only see one type of ship fighting instead of a mixed fleet.

Oh well. One of the things about VO i like is it looks like it has addressed this issue. But if the system is 2 dimensional and players are getting bored with the elitist pyramid, consider full customization with compromises?

I agree with you completely. I've complained about this numerous times. It's just too straightforward, there aren't enough options.

I think this is a great idea. The only problem I find is why one would pick a heavier ship over a lighter. I'm sure a good number of players would take a normal vulture (fast ship) with one good gun over a Ragnarok mkIII (slow but powerful) completely decked out with the best possible weapons. I personally would probably pick this, although I would absolutely love the fact that I COULD pick a different ship.

Simply, I'm all for it.

Agreed, the crystalisation down into a single ship / config, or a pair of configs is a really annoying issue that we have dealt with in the past. For a long time, the only ship that was flewn in the universe was the valkyre and the marauder.

It was simply no reason to get another ship, so why do it?

And the only weapons you saw on a valkyre was the 3x sunflare combination, pretty much like today, when all you stumble over are baboons in valks who's only skill is to press the reverse key and hold fire down.

Unfortunately, this sort of gaming leads to problematic tradeoffs and crystalisation. However, parts of that can probably be alleviated by making such customization require -time- and active effort.

Say, for every valk you checked out of dock that was modified from the stock, you had to actually spend three hours ingame doing some mission ramp or the other?

You could still get your default one, but changing one would be a task of:

"Go with your valk to Edras H3, contact the mechanic there, he'll give you further instructions"

"You'll need 4x power capacitators. Fetch them from Odia J-9"

"We want 12 pieces of purified xithicide ore to pay for this."

....
and so on. The mission is cancelled if you change ships. Cancelled if you die. Cancelled if you take another mission, however it stays on between log on / off.

All this effort, for that little extra edge. That should still have a tradeoff.

"oh, your ship is now slightly faster, but we removed 30% of the armor and you have no cargospace left."

Where the tradeoff is sort-of randomized, and something you find out -after- you have completed.

@TCoops
Great idea, wish I had said it first, of wait, I did say it a few days ago =). I'm in total support of more and more customizable ships. Variety is good, spice of life even. Being able to tailor a ship to your play style is great.

@Spider
Your check-out idea with penalties is not a good idea IMO, having to spend "HOURS" just to undock a ship is not my idea of fun. Although, having to go on missions to get my shipped decked out with some nice, specail gear, like a quest/mission would be cool and worth spending some time doing.

@Devs
You have had the ability to costomize ships in there before, bring it back, give us more variety is ship designs, more weapons, more npc's, more more more!!!! Keep it coming, your doing a great job!!

You failed my point.

The ships are just as avaiable as they are now, however if you want to -specialize- them, it will take you hours of actual effort to make it so.

Fex. bringing in the Axia RA-18 squads ( old Furie squads ) with a special needed cargo would definitely give some.. effort, in getting that 10m/s extra hotrod for your ship.

The reason I want it to be a few hours worth of gametime is to avoid the "click click click" and give a real sense of value of investment to the specialized ships. Theese ships could very well be enamed with decals of the artists working on them, given a personal name, and perhaps a story of the feats required to change it.

However, this would Not result in a lesser variety of ships, you can still by the standard and upgraded versions. Without the names, art, or modifications, they are just store-bought prebuilt units without feeling and personality.

The slight customization that was in were engines, which was replaced and folded into the mkII and mkIII ships, which has actually increased the variety in the universe. there is no real loss of customization, so please stop harassing them about it.

I like Spider's idea, but I don't think the effect should be random. I think they should give you a list of things you can do with varying "missions" that you need to complete. For a small change (+1 cargo, -5 turbo top speed), one would need to complete roughly an hour of runnign around. For larger changes (+1 large weapon ports, -15 cargo) one would need to travel around for two to three hours. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be extremely pissed if I ran around for 3+ hours and ended up with the complete oposite effect of what I had hoped for.

There has been 15 threads all on this topic. Hopefully it gets some attention.

I partially agree with Spider...

Stock version you should be able to fly off right now. If you want to personalize it or customize it it should take time. There cannot be only one way though, when crafting is in perhaps you can learn to craft armor that is heavier etc or do missions to gain these things.

End up with a Valk with Axia engines, Serco armor and Valent weapons would take a significant time investment.