Today I had my first experience with VO. I like it. However I did realize one thing which I found to be somewhat bothering to me. I particularly find mining and trading to be a fun task... however, the way in which the ship licenses are balanced requires a miner to have invested substantial time in combat and small arms licenses before I can upgrade my ship to a higher cargo capacity, or even equip a better mining laser. As such, my suggestion, or request, is this:

I would like to see VO develop a class of merchant and mining ships which have little to no armorment. The protection of these ships would be the responsibilty of team members, or bots which could be hired as escorts. This could potientally enable trading missions which would take entire teams to complete. A good example would be the collection of a rare ore, and transporting safely into hostile territory. =)

This is just my two cents, but I think it could really change the ballance of trading and mining in the game in a very positive way. =)

Indeed.
-:sigma.SB

Good idea!

As an alternative approach, how about looking at more specifically designed ports, such as ports that allow weapons, and those that dont? The variety of ship classes is already pretty good. Variations on these classes that don't have 'weaponized' ports, as opposed to variations that do, might suffice. This would also allow for different minimum license combinations to aquire the different class variations. As an example, if the player wants to focus more on trading and mining, then a Centaur variation that does not have 'weaponized' ports would not require the same license levels in Combat/Weapons as those Centaur variations already available.

Yeah, eventually. Right now though, it's quite difficult be a pure miner, so most of the ships are multi-use and able to be fitted for many different things.