First of all, yes, the game is so alpha, that discussing game balance is an overkill. Let\'s make it in steps:
1. First of all, SM doesn\'t have servers stable and fluid enough to support enough people to provide any team-work, unless team connection extends beyond the game itself, and in most cases it\'s building stuff, mining stuff or attacking unguarded installations/pirate bases. In terms of PvP, it\'s 99% 1v1 fights, and bigger ships winning those, unless poorly designed.
2. By all things bigger ships get, they losing only turning speed. It\'s makes going for them an ultimate progression, and balance must be skewed in different angles in order to achieve a proper interaction pattern to ships of different sizes. The old shield system must be returned, but outweighted by a general amount of mass people have to invest into efficient movement, armor, shields and energy, so that any ship designer would still had to choose if they want their ship to tank damage, be mobile or pack a punch, and never recieve everything at once.
3. Theres basically no economy in game whatsoever. Like God, it exists, but nobody can see it in action. All resources are easy to get and coming from completely odd sources, while some blocks like wedges are surprisingly rare and cannot be reproduced. Asteroids are wonderfully scarce and hold mostly useless materials, planets are everywhere but horribly made and nobody want to mine them the natural way, ridiculously huge emply space stations and pirate bases are scattered around like trash, each holding enough money and materials to build a titan, and pirates themselves can ocassionaly drop item volume so expensive, that it would refrain you from mining forever. Even PvP doesn\'t worth the risk, only fun, when you\'ve spent only 2-3 hours to gain infinite individual capabilities. When you\'ve got those, would you stick to the small ships? Only by principle.
If short, building a small ship is for one player, building a destroyer is for a group, and building a dreadnaught is for a strong faction. If one player can do everything, he will do the most.
4. Bigger ships need a balance, that will make it weak until piloted by a crew, not a single person. In example, if bigger ships top speed will be limited, that will make them more vulnerable against swift bombers, which would require guy or two manning consoles, which would control side/rear cannons and turret arrays. Heavier armor and old-fashion shields would make in-combat repairs a viable service. This is highly restricted by server player limit, which usually how much it can hold without busting in flames, and game still throws people out in random ocassions, not even speaking about combat situations. Thus, in-game factions currently is a group of completely individual players, each having ship as big as they personally desire.
There are many, many small different issues, that makes game unbalanced in a big way. But it\'s all temporary. Schine needs to work on the core, before he can focus on the shell. Until core is polished, making shell better wouldn\'t really make much difference. I still think he\'s gonna try to look a bit on a balance like it was with shields, but unless game cannot support it\'s own weight there\'s not much sense stacking something above it.
