Ship Cores and Clasifications
I have noticed that everyone feels they have to compensate with a larger ship design to make up for something lacking in their life I guess. I find this rather annoying and think smaller ships or at least different ship cores are needed. I am former USNavy service member and I believe in many different ships sizes.
Here is my idea with out much change:
1) By inspiration found at http://starmade.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_Classification , but at a more reduced numbers.
a) Shuttles (Mass of 1-343 Blocks) Costs 1000 Credits
Cargo/Escape pods
b) Fighters (Mass of 250-2500 Blocks) Costs 2000 Credits
Interceptors/Bombers/Strike
c) Escorts (Mass of 2500-25,000 Blocks) Costs 4000 Credit
Corvettes/Frigates/Repair ships
d) Battleships (Mass of 25,000-250,000) Costs 8000 Credits
Cruisers/Destroyers/Battleships
e) Carrier (Mass of 250,000-500,000 Blocks) Costs 12000 Credits
Carriers/Miners
f) Titan (Mass of 500,000 Blocks or more) Costs 25000 Credits
Titans/Planet Killers
Now with different cores you can use the same core textures and create restrictions to number of blocks and allow for a more diverse game play. This would also allow for more experienced players on a single server to spend money building larger fleets. Furthermore it give a slight RPG feel to the major PVP servers being that most have nothing left to buy or build.
One con in this is all the ship that have been made so far out there and another would be new players to a server having smaller ships. But thats something overtime anyone would solve.
Finally this would also challenge ship designers like myself to have a limit that we must overcome and create ships that would outpreform others not by mass but by design. Further limitaions may be create Military and Civilian Cores that are limited to blocks allowed. for example a military ship isnt allowed salvage cannons and a civilian ship can only have a weapon turret of a certain block size.