The basic armor is sold at some traders (and some garages I think but not sure from top of my head). There is already a thing that's sort of like your compressed-air idea, it's called a repulsor. When you click it, it will blow all other mobs around you away from you and they will be stunned for a very short period (like half a second from the top of my head). I think you can sometimes find these at traders too but I'm still working on special-sites that sell the more exotic equipment. This has priority and you will be seeing more and more of it in the coming months. Most of these items are there but they're simply not obtainable at the moment. Taxis all have the same top speed. At the moment once you've 'discovered' a ship-type (depending on the ship) you can just change your ships look to that type by going into the main-menu and clicking on the ship image. This might change in the future. There are going to be engines that you can buy that do give slightly higher speed. There's also boosters and things that increase the turn-rate of your ship. These you can buy, when you click them 1 is consumed and for a certain time you fly at higher speed and/or with higher turn rate.
Viewing post in Little bit of feedback so far..
Okay, thanks for the info. Do you think it would be possible to have a quick keys hotbar at the bottom of the slots? that are pre-set numbered (1,2,3,4 etc) like in most RPG games where you want to quickly cast something or drink or equip something. I think your game could do with that so we can use a consumable like with that repulsor or engaging a tempory speed booster etc. I was thinking about something like this when playing but forgot about it until now. We could just drag down the icon we want to hotkey slot.
I want to stay away from keyboard controls as much as possible. The whole game is designed around being able to play it with just the mouse and a drink in the other hand :-) Also it's designed to not require quick using of items. When you're in a situation where you want to use something always just click the left mouse button. Wherever you do this, this will pause the game. You can now in your own time pick the item you want to use and click that. Some items (e.g. the booster) don't automatically resume the game after you activate them giving you a chance to put your mouse back where you want it and then resume the game. I a way my idea is to let that part feel more like a turn based game. All ship weapons work like this too (they're not twitch/reflex based) once you for example have a beam weapon: You first pause the game by left clicking then click the beam-item you want to use (or immediately click the beam-weapon item which will also pause the game), then you will see a firing arc and those things you can pick as targets you will be able to pick at your own leisure. Once you pick a target the beam fires and the game automatically resumes. Most thing work like this. Some weapons have annoying small firing arcs so they do require a bit of timing when to pause to line them up but this is intentional; these usually have better versions with better firing arcs.
Here's a link to the part in the 2nd tutorial where you might be able to follow what I mean (I remember you're hard of hearing right?) but just seeing it might illustrate what I'm trying to explain better:
I'm planning to make the item bar a bit better by providing a filter icon (e.g. see only bookmarks) as the first item but I'm not 100% yet on the details. You can at the moment pin items to the beginning. If you look closely you might see that the first 6 or so items have a little yellow dot in the top left (or is it right?) corner. If you right-click an item it will be pinned to the first unpinned position (so if 6 items are pinned then any other item you pin by right-clicking it will become the 7th item. The next you pin will become the 8th etc. You probably noticed that new items are always added after the last pinned item. This enables you to make a choice as to what you want to remain "most aware" of and anything new will always be visible on the first page (after the last pinned item) as long as you don't pin a whole page full of items.
Items that have negative effects always flash or blink. Although there may be some exceptions at the moment (it's still on the list to make this more consistent).