I was looking at what makes each warlord faction different the other day, and I had a few thoughts. Firstly, I think the IR is the firepower/ anti-ship faction. It has the tector, Alleigance, and its heavy frigates like the carrack, vindicator, and strike cruiser are very anti-ship. (by era 5 it has better fighters and is more well-rounded, but this allows heavy frigates to survive fighter attacks more, so the focus seems right).
PA has the praetor and the enforcer. Maybe its about jack-of-all-trades ships? Those are only 2 ship types though. Not sure.
Zsinj has the Cr90 and Nebulon B. So there is a focus on fast light ships. Tie raptors are good as well- combined with regular ISDs etc, is that enough flavouring? Mabe VSDs could be made a little cheaper, perhaps?
Maldrood confuses me alittle. I'd say carriers due to the presence of the Secutor and Neutron Star, but other factions have them, or other large carriers.
Eriadu seems to be the easiest- with the torpedo sphere, it could be the 'long range' range. If a broadside cruiser were added in (or replacing an existing capital ship), and maybe its tie bombers given weaker/ long range missiles, maybe that flavour could be enforced more whilst retaining all the standard other ships?
I don't want to be making ship requests left right and centre though, this is just a preliminary set of thoughts. The factions probably have all sorts of strengths and weaknesses that I have missed. There is a phenomenal amount of work that has gone into this.
Is flavouring needed a little more? Are the devs settled on what they want? What do people think?