I am not sure if this has been suggested before however. What about different factions having different ship speeds. And the different ship classes of that faction having different ship speeds.
E.g. Liberty/Civillian lighter ships would be fastest in game where as BW/Rhineland ships would be slower as they have more armour and firepower meaning there is less power for the engines.
Or one thing i have seen before is an engine that speed increases or decreases depending on what ship you have e.g.
patriot - low mass, light shields and weapons means that this can achieve high speed.
However,
Liberator - Heavier than the patriot due to larger powerplant and cargo hold. It also equips better Weapons and shields (which would wiegh more) so that it has a speed when fully equipped slower than patriot.
I feel this would stop the fascination of VHF's and people would use different ships depending on thier flying style. It would also make 1.0 ships useful again.
so then the liberty light fighter can easy kill rheinland bomber for example,better agility and higher speed? or pirate faster as trade ships and noone from traders has no chance to escape? or police ships faster as pirates os when you as pirate see police on scaner oyu know you haven o chance to escape? then will all use the fastest ship,because speed is realy important thing in everything. escapes,fights,everything. i think now is it good as it is,teh same speed for all ships
I've pondered what it would be like if ships had faster top speeds depending on their size. Light fighters being the fastest, and the big capships as the slowest. It actually sounds great but I think it's just too big a change.
there would have to be balance, with speed come less manueverability....like a dragster. all that momentum from going so fast would make it harder to turn. along the same lines of thinking, the slower they are the faster they turn.
EDIT: and that's only thinking about fighter's. i'm not sure about cap ships and freightors/transports
There is a way to program a ship on its mass e.g. the heavier it is the slower it is this also changes the flight charicteristics making it difficult to turn at top speed (cruise you have to fly basically in a straight line)
Don't think having different top speeds is a good idea. Too unbalancing.
Having different times to get to cruise might be a way forward though. Smaller ships should take less time to kick into cruise as they have less mass, and therefore less inertia.