Go play EVE. Seriously. All the other mods don't have games (or any good games. Look at ST and BFG).

Thrawn: I am alaron2 Caldari Caracal

There is nothing stopping anyone from making an eve mod, but know this.

There are only 15 ship slots per faction. 6 frigate, 4 cruiser, and 5 capitol ship slots. Eve has far more ships than slots available to you so you will have to omit some ship designs.

Then you have ships fittings to consider (and all the infighting that will cause, because no one outfits ships in eve the way they are "intended"). You cant duplicate Eve's complex weapon arrangements, ranges, and damage types in Sins. You cant duplicate ECM/ECCM, hardeners, shield mods, etc, etc, etc. You can "try" though.

Yes even with the update Mimmie ships are still trash cans held together by duct tape, and super glue

Bob it can but the player wont be able to see the additional ships.

i wouldn't go and make an eve mod, Eve will certainly contact you about copying there ships, even if you make your own models of them, and ask you nicely at first to remove them. I know alot of modders who got into several altercations with eve. Its just not worth the headaches.

Don't be quite so sure, a group of eve players have made great progress on a eve mod for homeworld 2 (There's details and I think a about it and i think a beta download over on the Relic forums somewhere) without any arguments from CCP. I think CCP's looking at it as an opportunity to attract more players to eve online by letting people make mods about it. (After all people who've never heard of eve but like the mod are probably going to at least check out what eve onine is all about and maybe subscribe for a while.)

I know Eve previously cancelled a eve mod that was in work for bridge commander, HW2, Nexus: the Jupiter incident, Starfleet Command 3, and Empire at war. I've made friends while modding all of these games and eventually we always saw someone start to mod Eve then post they had to stop due to Eve interference. Either way your taking a risk with copywrited models, which does claim on there site they will never give such premissions for any content there MMO currently uses or owns. I'm just passing on some info, not trying to be the bad guy here.

It is not illegal to look at someone elses work and make your own based off of it. Take music for instance. Many musicians now days take a beat they like or know from somewhere and mix it up. If every musician got pegged down for 'stealing' beats it would be a legal nightmare.

As long as you do not directly rip or take any resources that went into building the copyrighted material, your work is yours no matter how simmilar it may look.

Aparrently, you skipped the last sentence of my previous post.

As I stated earlier, the only reason that I could not see an Eve Mod being made would be for that very reason. That's why whoever does decide to step up and make this mod would have to speak with CCP first to either get their blessing, or get shot down before they waste theirs and their teams time with something that they can't do. *grinz evily and whispers* Then they just make it for themselves and not release it.

The key thing is this: Negotiate with CCP to see if they would allow a team to create a Mod based on their game using models that they create from scratch based upon their original designs. How will they get that? By looking at screenshots. It's the safest way for both CCP and for us (and not just at a legal stand point. Have you seen the high rez look of all the ships since Trinity came out? Fleet battles with it on is a system killer. Can you imagine playing Sins with ships like that? It'd be pretty, but killer to the frame rate... Then again, if we really wanted to get the true Eve feel into it...   )

Oh god, the gooncannon lives on in sins.

Considering the limitations on ship slots. As I recall a lot of the ships used the same basic ship designs. Take for instance the Minmater Rifter -> wolf/jaguar. Would it be possible to set it up so you build a Rifter, give it a couple points on creation, then when you build one, you choose its "specialty". Give it more armor, more damage, or whatever. Yes you would still be limited, but giving a frigate some of the varience you could in Eve might be an idea to look into if it hasn't already.