Basically, depending on your ship, your ship will gain small bonuses over time for doing various things. For example, a player would get bonuses to his Dread for having his slaves kill things or by doing a certain amount of Radiation/Mining damage, while a Singularity Sphere can gain bonuses for the number of T20 bases laid.

These bonuses would be small, and probably take about 30 to 40 hours to complete. Perhaps something like +5% resists and +10% shields for a Dread and so on.

erm NO... actually if anything they should wear out and need maintenance.

It's a bonus for using the ship for a long amount of time. Maintenance could go in as well as it doesn't conflict with this idea at all, even if it is a shitty one. >_>

The suggestion is a good one. The trouble is that at high levels, when people start getting really high tech and expensive ships, they remain in them for a very long time. A decent way to compensate for this is to have higher tech ships take more time to become experienced with. It even makes sense, since higher tech equipment is more complicated and therefore harder to get used to.(Not always, I know, but it's simple and it works).

So like 4 hours for tech 0, like 40 for tech 5, like 200 for tech 10 and like 1000 for tech 20-21.

By the way; You're an idiot, Bonecrusher. Please go die in a hole.

Basically, veteran status. Utu had a great idea along these lines as well.

Lol.

But yeah, what Cyggles said, both the Bonecrusher part and his idea.

This gradual ship upgrade will give only a small upgrade that is not incredibly noticeable. Not only that but they will be achieved through various challenges unique to each ship.

sounds cool, BUT this discourages upgrading your ship.

hmm.... weighing the benefits of rhino vs. the pax i've been in for 4 months would be interesting (though resists would still win) challenges sound cool

The bonuses would be unique per ship as well. Like a DS could get extra damage and rof while an astride gets resists and regen.

I think you're looking at this incorrectly lads.
Ships should get wear and tear. BUT:

Say you reclassed from Gunner to Engineer. You MUST choose your main ship for PvAI and for PvP. Over time, you get a % increase to your class skills. I'm talking small numbers clearly, but let it go to class skills not to ships. For another bit, make PvAI increase the % 2x faster then PvP.

We already have a debuff for switching classes, it's called losing up to 1 billion credits.

Having wear and tear on ships would make the game even more tedious than it is. All that making ships require maintenance would do is piss people off. We already have to repair on death.

Repair is what it is,. 1b is over fair..

I could see organic ships possibly doing this but otherwise no.