Fairly new here, have a few hours of game time but am contemplating my faction choice. I went with the Serco, but after seeing the 'Active Players' graph it shows that faction as having approx 1/3 as many active players as the other two.

Is that faction weaker or not as interesting?
Will that cause any noticeable problems like not having as many players to join up with?
Or is it just that factions philosophy that causes it to be less popular?

And I am really looking forward to getting into the PvP, what faction do you suggest going?
As far as I can see each faction only has 1 specific ship right? Any other differences between the 3?

I am loving the game so far, I have played Eve, X-3 and quite a few other SpaceSims supprised I haven't come across this one yet =). Thanks in advance.

The only difference is the availability of top ships. Dirty Ore is the CO of the most active serco nationalist guild. You can look for A-Dawg, too. Both are on 100 occasionally and when you seem them chat, pm them. The guild name is ONE and you can look it up under guilds.

For PVP, itani and serco have the better top tier pvp ships. The only difference between the three factions, other than the top ship, is that uit tends to be less safe to start in since it's a group of factions which you have to build up standing with to be safe in that factions space.

Yeah just look for the two people on 100 spouting 4 times as much profanity as any other player in the game.

I don't recommend joint any guild until you know the ropes of the game. Then you can make a better decision later on.

As far as the differences go, yeah the availability of the top military ships is the only one. And the colour of your name in chat :p

Welcome to VO.

Serco is a heavily player-to-player combat emphasised race. Most players in the game are either;

A) ideologically against player to player combat and just want to play space credits; or
B) bad at space combat; or
C) a combination of both.

The fact is that until very recently there was rampant discrimination by the game in a number of areas where Serco got the short stick. That has mostly been eliminated now with the exception of the Deneb border skirmish (which nobody cares about, especially in the Dominion). It's just a matter of established player bases feeding themselves.

Serco is the best race to pick from a roleplay perspective. The Itani are basically unrealistic aliens, the UIT are the Switzerland of the game but they have the most population (so imagine China being 'neutral', yeah right.).

At least with Serco what you roleplay as is what you're supposed to be playing in the game, space war pilot.

Thanks for the replies. Helped me make a decision before I put too much time into a faction. The Prometheus looks like one hell of a strong ship. Decent slots with great mass for the amount of armor it has. But I think I may switch to Itani for more players of that faction and the Valkyrie probably fits my play style a lot better. I like the supreme mobility and speed, with the possibility of having a higher skillcap if your good.

Oh and I started playing on tablet, such a great game to run on Android. Had 60fps and no lag on my Kindle Fire HDX 7, I also use a gamepad connected to it. Not as great as PC controls, but its definitely playable. Good job on making such a great game. I also like the payment methods, well done and fair for mobile users. Makes 10$ a lot less threatening after you realize the game is huge and worth it. I already went to PC and subbed so I can use both.

You sound like every other player that comes to the game. But if everyone goes Itani, who will you fight against? NPC's?

Check out my youtube channel for some high level PvP insight from a Serco perspective.

If I could leave you with two last pieces of insight:

1) The 2-Port light interceptor the Serco Vulture Guardian has a higher skill cap than the Itani Valkryie variants. It forces you to become a 2-port energy purist which is something only the very elite pilots ever master. Mastering high level Prometheus combat is also harder than most people know about (e.g. Advanced flare netting, passing targets and flare interdiction).

2) In VO you don't ever commit to a faction beyond the relationships you make with other players. After you learn the basics, you can train a combat ready character up in 4 hours. There would never have been a Red Eternal Dominion if I didn't convince 20+ players to change from the UIT to Serco. Don't be a pathetic follower, and if you're going to be a pathetic follower; I guess you were always destined to be an Itani anyway.

Lol, well put Red. If it's that easy to get characters combat ready then it's not really that big of a deal then, thought it would take a lot longer. Last Space games I played was EvE and X-3/4 and spending 40 hours to get decent is average. I'll check out your vids, and might stick with Serco then. You know, since you put it so kindly. /sarcasm

I am looking forward to the open nowhere is safe PvP, and that having a small/fast ship isn't a bad thing.

I find it amusing TRS is trying to recruit serco from the forums, but not in game.

Being a serco is not about being friendly. It's about being self-sufficient, straight-up, strong and an individual. All things Itani's and UIT's are bad at. If there's one thing that counts here it's your personality. Good luck and welcome to VO.

vaffanculo greenwall.

Throughout VO history the balance of power between Red and Blue has been shifting many times.
At the moment Itani have the numbers and the upper hand but that can change at any time and I sincerely hope it will because VO is definitely more fun when we have skilled pilots on both sides who can put up a good fight.

Lol. TRS thinks that he was at one point better than everyone else. Being a pure energy fighter doesn't take any more skill than it does to fly any other ship.

Go murder every pilot in the game with the UDV with dual megas like I did then come talk to me. Lulz.

Um Bojan it's only shifted towards the Serco once, and that was the catalyst for SKV. When we ran RED there were always, always more Itani'n'friends than Serco players active. Heck I don't even know for sure that during SCAR's days there was ever a higher serco active pop than Itani, I seriously doubt it.

The balance won't shift unless the game changes. This thread is a perfect example of why people choose itani first because they look at the graph or they read something about them that's not reflective of the reality of the situation. Most Itani are just like Kierky; petty vindictive little shits with the exception of most SKV'ers who for the most part have demonstrated maturity over the years.

Don't you have to have Serco in the game to recruit Serco, Greenwall? Really sad...not funny.

Also a good bit of that thin red line in the Active Player Chart is pirates, not interested in the fight for Serco.

Serco is an excellent choice. The most fun I had in this game was battling against the Itani players and their allies. It was a target rich environment.

Okalish Messolith

It's funny cause it's pointless. Spending any effort to recruit one serco newb on the forums is going to have zero impact in game. Said player will probably quit after a couple weeks, a month tops. And then this thread will be lost in the black hole at the bottom of the forums.

I think you're all missing the greater point: you can be both.

As TRS pointed out, it doesn't take very long to train a new character to combat-worthiness. So, it's not really a commitment to a single faction at all. When you're done training your character, whatever faction it is in, make an alt in the other faction. That way, you can experience all sides of the game and just do whatever you feel like doing. Be a secro and fly SCPs if you're in the pwning mood, and be an itani and fight away pirates from noobs if you're in the hero-wannabe mood. This is what the devs intended, otherwise they wouldn't let us make and use alts so liberally.

My advice to the OP.....

You have 6 character slots. Use your first three to have a character in each nation. Play all three equally for a while. Make friends with each character. Decide later which race is for you, or don't decide at all.

Yeah bojan, don't be such a ninny!

@TheRedSpy

I have been absent from VO for the past 5 years so I have no insight on power shifts during those years however... this was probably before your time but when I started playing Reds had the best pilots and were pounding Itani a lot.
SoR was exceptionally strong red guild with great players and I must say my first pvp mentors were Spellcast, yoda & Mortis (all red). Only Itani guild at that time (IDF) was no match for reds and we were lucky if we managed to win 1 out of 10 ctcs. Only times we actually had an upper hand was when we enlisted BLAK to help us.

I recognize a lor of names in RED (from the old times) and I bet there was a power shift when RED was at its peak too.

Get in game you ninnyofborg :P

The balance of power has always waffled back and forth between Serco and Itani. At the moment it is considerably Itani. Then again, these trends come in waves... almost a decade ago, SCAR shifted the power towards the Serco. Not only were we the largest active Serco guild at the time, but the largest guild out of the entire player base at one point.

It's all a game of politics. Choose the talking head you like the best. Once again, you have six character slots - that's a lot of room for variation and experimentation; have fun.