Snoweh

If by free camera mode, you mean unhook the camera and move it around like a spaceship. No, not really, at least not in build mode. However, you can change what block the camera faces in build mode, by selecting a block and pressing 'f' for focus. There's a button on the control panel as well. I find myself using this a lot like a free camera, and jump focuses constantly while building. If you want to shift the camera for a screenshot outside of build mode, you can exit to your drone, then zoom into it, and shift the camera to the left or right, using the alt key, to hide it. Then hit f8 to hide the HUD. Though I realize this wasn't really your question.

I've been meaning to try out push turrets. It depends on how powerful they are. on insane difficulty, they might be useful for breaking up big groups of pirates, so you can fight them piecemeal

oh, you're right. I guess when I read 'classic sciFi class' what popped into my head was just naming it whatever sounds cool. But you're right I apologize Mobiyus. I misunderstood you. Maybe that's what I was confused about? From the steam forum: If I had to guess, it has more to do with number of turrets, or omnicron, than mass. I also havent tried this myself, (don't have the funds QQ) so can't be 100% sure.

hehe Well, since a mod said so, I'll keep it in mind ^^

Nice! Allow me to offer my congratulations as well.

Dang! My largest ship is only a 6 slot lol. Yeah, I can agree, people shouldn't be discouraged from building and flying massive capital ships. And immediate influence loss at the slightest mishap is a pretty big disincentive. Still, at least a ship that big could probably take them out like they're flies, when they turn against you ^^

-edit- I reread part of your post. I see what you're saying now. 'You'll never know a ships length width and height in a single word' except you can, more or less. You can know it's volume. Which is a lot more relevant than weather it's a stick or a cube. saying that it's a 3 slot lets you know it' between 128k cm3 and 320k cm3. So 'class 3' or whatever you want to call it provides a lot of useful information about a ship. Namely, it's non-relative size, compared to yours. You can slap on some sort of suffix if you like 'class 3 escort' and it can tell you plenty about it. Then you can even add on it's material type, and you get a really good picture of what sort of ship it is.

No worries ^^ I mean, there is the possibility that it's a bug. And a bug keeping people from getting a portion of their loot would suck. It's just that I've never noticed something like that, so it's better too cover all the bases before reporting it ^^

Sounds like it mainly had to do with how big your ship was. I mean, even a tiny ship will knock off a few hundred points. So perhaps the code scales partially with size? Or maybe it's that stations are very sensitive to damage, or resistant to it. So you did a what it considers a large amount of damage and reacted in turn. Still agree that it sucks tho. About how big was your ship? How many slots? You got me curious ^^ As to your question, sadly im not sure how it would be done. I've never cracked open the XML files and taken a look myself. I'm guessing it would be as simple as opening up your galaxy file, searching for your faction, and editing the rep. I could be wrong tho.

As Tiberium said, Those messages are a warning that alien ships are on the approach. So you can use them to plan things out and be on your toes (conversely, pirates just show up whenever they want, how rude). The rifts however, as far as I know, don't actually grow, it just seems like that, because they're only revealed once they enter your jump distance, or was it your scanner distance? Then again, I remember a post somewhere, where someone thought that they were smart, and actually tried to trap you. I'm a bit skeptical about that though. In any case, they've never moved for me. So no, as far as I know, there's no mitigating them, and they don't fade. However they don't grow as far as I can tell either, and you can sometimes find warpgates and wormholes that jump right over them. So it's not all bad.

I wouldn't worry about it, I would say 90% of the forum atm has less than 50 posts ;) Seeing as it's steam release was so recent. I have to agree with you there. I'd go as far as to say, that probably nothing will be agree'd on here. But that's alright, people are bringing up good points and ideas. So even if a new class system isn't birthed out of it, it'll make existing ones better. People will start using the ideas in their own classification system, and then one of them might catch on with multiple people, and then we might eventually have a popular naming system ^^ Or, who knows, we might eventually have a consensus in this thread? Stranger things have happened! Hmmm, its not a bad system, But it doesn't tell us much about the scale of the ship. After all, one man's 6 slot is a destroyer, while another man's six slot is a battleship. I think that was the original reason why this thread was made, was because people's ship scales are all over the place. Though, it's not as if scale HAS to be involved, but I really think it should be. Though you basically said as much in the next line ;) I think one question we should answer, is if intent of the ship really matters. It's easy enough to give a ship a number or a name based on it's slot size, but a designation for the intent of the ship is a little more nebulus. Seeing as how ships can also easily be converted between any of the three civilian jobs (Mining, asalvaging, and a bit harder, hauling). And a military ship is likely going to be able to handle any job reasonable to it's size class, It might be smart to just leave out the actual ship type, and tell us what it's made out of, what size it is, and whether it's civilian or military. That lacks a little flavor though.

Although, it should be pointed out, that this was probably done to reduce lag. If you have a massive battle, and then another big fleet loads in, then thes erver has that fleet, plus the wreckage to worry about, and may start to get overloaded. Ideally, there would be a server config (for both single and multiplayer) that would allow you to change the despawn settings to fit your system. The dev probably just doesn't have enough time to implement it yet is all, and did this to help keep everything running smoothly, until they have time to get to a better solution. Though I don't want to speak for them, since I havent been following development closely. Still, they must be juggling work on a LOT of features right now. Especially with how many suggestions keep flowing in.

Ahhh, see, I was planning on making a small fleet of my own. Things were getting pretty dicey for just one ship. I'm also using tritium/xantium. Problem being that I don't want the ships just getting chewed up and spat out within a minute or so, poor return on investment and all that. Still, Can't really afford it, unless they're all around the size of heimdahl. Also, all red and purple? not bad. I only learned a bit ago how to use the research station, so my ship still has mostly yellows, with a couple reds and a purple. If I make a fleet, they're likely to have mostly yellows, outside the lead ship. I may load up the Ylva later, and see how she performs ^^ though it may be a two ship fleet, since I'm a bit low on cash right now. Still, I think it might work. And it'll let me play with a small fleet until I get my new one designed, I'm having a bit of a mental block right now. But I'm planning on a fleet withone 6 slot Cruiser armoured (CA) two five slot Cruiser Light's (CL) and three four slot Destroyers (DD). So the Ylva should be a pretty good test of how well a four slot can survive. I'm looking forward to it ^^

There are a few other things they could be. I've mistaken color packages for ores multiple times, they have a tendency to have a similar color. Another is credits, which also happen to look like ingots. Sure they weren't either of those?

You couldn't get them to work? Huh, that would be an awful shame. I was thinking about making a support ship for my fleet, and running it myself. I guess I'll have to confirm whether the repair laser works or not, before I start on designs.