Excellent observations Goumindong. Yeah, there's really only "one" AI and the manueverability/speed pretty much determines how each ship flies. They all behave more or less the same. I don't hope for something as customisable as Dragon Age's combat tactics (that would be awesome gravy though), but you figure a pilot who's got a repair module equipped would at least have enough brains to use it on a damaged teammate right?

The LRM missiles do seem to be designed for pre-engagement: their range pretty much means you're invited to blow things up before they even see you. I'm... not too comfortable with this (it feels cheap :p ) but some players enjoy this. Ditto torpedoes. The other missiles - well, a "regenerating" load is an interesting idea. For my mod I simply upped the pod count and toned down the damage a lot. Mothership missile launchers are also a good idea, although it may be wise to differentiate which missiles can be used by what.

I mentioned something else in another thread I think: degradable modules. Right now a nearly-destroyed ship flies just as good as a brand-new ship. Ha. What if certain hits could cause modules to take damage? The idea is the more damage a module takes, the less efficiently it operates. Each module would have a min/max rating for what it does. For example a shield module which gives 200hp. Max would be 200hp, let's say min is 50hp. When it is intact (100% ok) it produces 200hp. The more damage% it takes, the lower the value goes, until at 1% ok it produces only 50hp. When a module reaches 0% it's considered destroyed (dock at a station to get it repaired).

This way we can boost weapons indirectly as well: e.g. lasers would only produce "normal" damage and only have a very low chance of inflicting damage on modules. Kinetic guns would have a better chance of damaging modules. This would make up somewhat for their crap "normal" damage. Heck, there could be "hacking" type modules for use by system specialists which would temporarily disable a ship's modules (set them at 0% for a certain duration). And modules which prevent this kind of hacking. Repair modules would certainly be much more useful.

There's a lot which SW3 can change fairly easily - we're not talking about massive game engine changes either. I'm kinda disappointed the next installment seems to be mostly about better graphics but we'll see when it comes out. One can hope...