Well, ships can be upgraded through experience. You choose special abilities for the ships as they progress through experience or by training. You also get to customize the ratios of the types of fighters each cap ship produces.

To be honest, in a real time environment, I think that the last thing you want to be doing is sitting there using up your time heavily customizing your ships. The process needs to be quick and simple.

AGH!!!
I absolutely HATE games where you can fully customize your ship, the balance is usually shit and there are rarely any differences between the modifications.
ah well...

Well, I would like to see destruction, mainly something can take out a planet fast and make it all pretty.

Personally i would like to see beaten hulks of capital ships after a fight not just have them completely explode. sure they can disappear after no one can see them to prevent lag but i just want them to float there for a little while to remind me of the battle.

I would like that too, a huge wreck (capital ships only) all beaten up and aimlessly floating in space, at the site of a previous battle. That would be cool... Maybe its already in the game and we just don't know.........

OH, we do know You can see some wreckes in the end of the trailer. And you can recycle it. But it will only be there until they enter the planets atmosfear and burn up

Ooooh my eyes did not see this last time I watched... Was it said somewhere that you can recycle stuff? I never saw any posts regarding it....

I absolutely HATE games where you can fully customize your ship, the balance is usually shit and there are rarely any differences between the modifications.

Interesting. I definitely LOVE such games, but I guess each has his own preferences. I for instance love the strategic element in SotS when you have to redesign all your ship designs because the enemy changed his configuration (researched a new tech he can use against you). Suddenly your ships are far less efective against his and you were better prepared for such change. Meaning that total specialization of research can mean a problem when your enemy finds a countermeasure.

What is even better is that even if you are totally spcialized you will get some beating but it will not at all mean you lost the game. You have time to adapt.

I'd love to see that in Sins as well, but Sins has other good sides that promise to be just as great. Real time that enables multiple battles to go on at the same time, you not being able to micromanage all of them at once... GREAT.

EDIT: What I do not like about Sins is the upgrading system. Experience is not an objetive factor in ship upgrading. I would definitely like to upgrade more experienced ships first, but if I had the money I would have upgraded them all to improve their survival possibility. This is a far too much RPG factor for my taste, but also FAR from being a game destroyer. I really have problems waiting...   

While some do create their own ships in MOO3 and Space Empire IV or V, i always automate the process...So i don't mind if it's possible but i want to it to be automatic as well. In this type of game i want to focus on the big things:

- Diplomacy
- Espionage
- Which fleet where
- Where i will attack next
- What type of fleets
- What should be built on that planet
- What to research
- Being able to control a battle as an admiral (if i want to select what to aim personnaly, i'll go play Nexus).
- and so on.

Upgrades are hard to get right in games and in terms of balancing; if I was me I'd probably scrap them, Homeworld didn't need them.

Will there be life pods for the ships? I didn't see it mentioned, and I could care less if a crew survives as I would just shoot the lifepods but I think it would be a cool animation to see the life pods launch just before a ship explodes.

I want there to be awesome looking symbols for ships when in tactical view.

Reasonably scaled planets. ie planets that look like planets in regards to size (though not so much that your graphics card gets nosebleeds every time it has to render one) and ships that are scaled realistically, if a ship is two kilmetres long, dammit it should look two kilometres long.

And the ability to zoom right the way down until your practically flying on wing with any ship.

Ooh, and the ability to name your faction in skirmishes, yeah you'd play as the TEC or Vasari or Advent but the ability to just change there names, don't ask me why, but it would be nice.

Whatever they do, please no Terror Star!!