I am a veteran backer, so getting the LTI for an upgrade would be nice, but I'm hesitant to actually upgrade to the "combat" variant of the 300i if it's possible to simply upgrade my stock 300i with the appropriate equipment later. In-game I will likely be doing a fair amount of combat, but would also like to pursue some limited exploring and general roaming about/limited trading.

I guess my question then becomes one of: are they still planning to allow us to upgrade/swap out specific hardware on our ships (as opposed to only changing "mods" in augmentation slots)? Looking at the 315p for example: the only major changes I see are an upgraded engine and sensors/tractor beam. Seems silly to me to spend money on that ship if I can simply alter my stock 300i to have the same/similar sensors a few days into playing the game, while also upgrading my weapons/engine to accomodate a better fighting platform (just personal opinion here, I understand some folks wanting to get better equip straight out of the gate). With the possible exception of how the "frame" of the ship is built, if we can change around the specific hardware then I feel fine with the stock 300i, as the only thing I'm losing is a little time by not having it already upgraded.

Now if you cannot alter your hardware, or if the frames themselves are substantially different between variants, that would alter this whole equation...