Adding to the comment about enclosed engines below:

It's currently the basic number 1 solution to making really tough ships, to encase them in the strongest per-block hull that you have and stack massive internal engines. So the engine exhaust damage is an obvious solution and I wholeheartedly support this (and the "only the stack top deals damage" -thing).

But... in addition it would not take too much effort to include engines that are "supposed" to be internal... you know like gravitational pull engines, to certain factions. That would help further make different factions feel more diverse. All it would take, would be to give the engine component a new shape that supports more the internal placement method.

You could counter any imbalance that might create by further modifying what other cool stuff that faction has, etc.

Vincent: sure, just tell him what technique to use to synchronize current data set and I am sure he will add multiplayer in no team... hey, wait.. you have no clue, of course, shut next time maybe? Ofc it is easy to come up with "add multiplayer, add this and that bullshit, make everything 3d, add bigger ships" but there are brutal technical limitations and also time factor when it comes to implementation, wake up, open eyes, stop acting as if you know something, you don´t.

Regarding BollandP's comment on encased engines, I tend to agree, and have a basic solution: Engine exaust causes damage.

If someone builds engines inside their ship, they need to deal with the fact that those engines will damage anything in a cone going out from engine, extending at the same angle as the sides and proportional to the thrust of that engine.

The obvious complication is stacked engines, where any engine on top of another engine's exhaust would quickly ablate. To get around this you just "pass through" the exhaust to the top of the stack, so only the last engine in a chain does damage. This adds interesting design elements as stacks must have an opening and builders must worry about secondary damage if ever the top of the stack was destroyed, venting exhaust inside the hull. It would also be an effective counter to ramming ships.

This request will make your game into a new "Minecraft" worth millions of dollars: PLEASE ADD MULTIPLAYER! Don't forget to mention me when you get rich :)

pls make more playable factions

No problems so far and it even runs a little bit better.

Some ideas:
It would be nice if the thrusters could NOT be boxed in due to action-reaction forces. Sure, you can imagine weapons on top and below shooting over the hull, but thrusters inside are just insane. Something that provides reactive propulsion should be on the outside and exposed to work. Some defensive cage around them doesn't bother me, but thrusters in the core of the ship make no sense.
It would get rid of the all-engines-unreachable cheese, and take down the hundred hidden engine drones.

One thing I would appreciate very much is having multiple AI profiles to chose from when designing a ship. I don't wanna leave my missile boat totally defenseless against missiles. When I give it point defense, it just charges in headlong and dies to short range weapons :(

Was not crashing before this patch but now my system crashes when i enter ship designer mode. please let me know how i can fix this. running ati radeon 6700hd windows 7ultimate 8gb ram and core i72600k @ 3.7 GHZ

Will you turn the game in a massive X3 universe like ? it could be awsome !!! (faction relations, trading / farming / economy / bounty / pirates / mercenaries / black market /
....

Mouse wheel scrolling for blocks on right side in ship designer no longer scrolls when hovered over block inventory. it merely zooms in and out now.

I keep getting random crashes when I am changing active windows, and randomly.