I found a cheap way to change your ship model in the demo. I'm still working on a way to actually be able to BUY the higher level ships (since we can't get a higher level) but at least now you have some different eye candy. Anyway, in your DATA/SHIPS directory, each ship is found under their specific House/Faction in their own directory. Go into whatever ship directory you wish to use and find the base file that ends in .cmp. For example, Liberty Elite (DATA/LIBERTY/LI_ELETE/li_elte.cmp) and copy that file into the directory of the ship you currently own, or ship's model you wish to modify. Backup that ships *.cmp file, and then rename the replacement ships *.cmp.

So far the game hasn't crashed, there a few qwerks. The turrent archs/viewports a little funky. I imagine they would be way off if you started fooling around with cruisers and other big boys. I've found some possiple locations to change these values but haven't quite worked it out yet. Also, this is only a model replacement. The ship behaves in the same mannor as it is defined, so if you replaced the Rhino with a Liberty Elite, it would still move really sluggish. The only bug I can think of is if you replace a ship with another ship that has less turrents/gun mounts/exc... and you load it up. It might crash the game as the model will not have a place to put them, I don't know, use at your own risk.

Well, there it is, good luck and have fun until the 4th comes!!!