Random stuff: questions, comments, caramel lattes

[Iron Giant]

Well, I realize I'm late to this particular party, but since it seems like things have wound down, please put up with my questions/rambling.

I think I found a cheat, since this is single player only I'll mention it: buy weapons (or any devices for that matter), put them in your hold, go to the commodity storage and put them on your ship and you can then violate the maximum tonnage rules on the ship. That is to say, the space dock won't let you leave with component totals that are greater than the hull size, but the storage area will.

Fighters appear to be worthless in the grand context. In SEIV, fighters (like most weapons) had a niche. Fighters could be built in great numbers and then you would not have to pay maintenance on them, great for cranking them out at planets that didn't have a ship yard to use up spare materials that you were producing so they would not be wasted, but then you didn't have to pay maintenance on them and they could defend the system.

A level 15 fighter costs approx. 30,000 credits, whereas a much more effective capital ship level 15 weapon might only cost 15,000 and be 5 times as effective:

Fighters can be destroyed and need to be replaced even if the battle is won, whereas a weapon on the ship can be repaired if damaged, sometimes for free by your crew, and certainly for a lot less credits than replacing a fighter.

A weapon mounted on your ship gives you some control over when it fires and which shield facing it hits on the enemy, the fighter hits whatever shield facing it feels like and fires when it wants to.

Fighters can be rammed, ram into each other, ram into your ship. A battle with 10 fighters flying around will usually cost you one due to this issue (30k worth of pain!!). A decent solution would be to remove ramming between friendlies.....

Planets are kind of small. 4x bigger would be nice. 10x bigger would be awesome...

Carriers and battleships take up quite a bit of space on the screen, can I zoom out?

Will there be more hull sizes in SEV or is this it? The range seems kind of stunted compared to SEIV (300 tons to 1500 tons compared to Starfury 300 tonnes to 1200 tons or so).

I've finished the first campain and started the second and I have yet to see a "heavy" size bolt or beam. Where do I get them?

What is the max level of the equipment? I'm around level 15 now.

How difficult is it for someone with no programming knowledge to learn how to make 3d models for this game? Is there a book/program to get that could start me out? Would models created here work in SEV?

Can I write my own chatter between ships? Is it kept in a text file somewhere?

Would anyone like a large iced caramel latte from DD's?