1) right now there is about 68 player controllable ships ingame. when will the new ships be in the game (the tech 2 ones) and how many of them will there be in total (the new ones). i recall in an early dev chat that it was stated that there would be about 100 player controlled ships. does this still hold true and when (when is the most important)?

There are about 70 unique ship models in the content files that are on the CD made in May. On the CD there are also 70 major variations to the unique ones and about 140 minor variations, making the total ~300. We have patched in new ship models since release, and the patches for them are not big, <1meg, so there is still a lot of stuff to play with. These models will be activated, as ships in the game, as tech levels progress. Some will be a part of the T2 patch that is scheduled within the next 2-3 weeks, although we will do a bug fix and optimizations patch before that, hopefully this week.