HI all,

To make the NPC ships compelling for us there are a few criteria that I think need to be followed:

- they have to be worth raiding. Nobody is going to raid a ship with dozens of missile turrets if it only gives steel plate.
- they have to be defended relative to their resource value.
----A small civilian ship consisting of mostly light materials and a small reactor should only have a pair of interior turrets.
----A large military ship should have half a dozen gattling turrets and maybe a handful of missile turrets.
----For minining and trading ships they shouldn't be too heavily defended... but shouldn't be too easy to destroy either.
- they should look the part:
---only military ships should have a lot of heavy armor. Some heavy freighters might have heavy armor at the front or around docking areas but that's about it
----civilian ships and commercial freighters will have more glass and eye candy.
----trading and mining ships are going to be very boring, practical or ugly designs... they are built for a purpose.

The ultimate test questions are:
- does your ship look like its performing a role? (or I can figure out its role)
- would you actually go after this ship to raid? (is it worth it)
- is the loot from the ship too rich? (don't want to have I-win targets that are easy and filled with valuable material
- is the ship too easy or too hard to attack?

I will make some adjustments to models (take or remove defenses if too easy/hard, delete excessive loot) but the more realistic and fun you can make your ships the better.