Well I had my go at the Capital ships today and guess what, you guys still have a few problems.

1. While in a turret the detail on the side of the ship looks abosolutely terrible
2. Also the ship NEEDS to be able to travle faster, or it should have its own wormhole system, due to the fact it took an hour and a half just to get to Sedina B-8

Overall the Idea is great, now you just need to polish it

Yeah, having it spawn and then go sauntering on its way was a good idea, but the sauntering takes forever. This may be a bit involved, but how about the cap ship goes really slow for a minute upon entering a sector then engages its turbo with the sector chat message:

"[XYZ]XYZ: We are engaging our main engines in 10 seconds. Move clear."

Then it would turbo to 3000 and warp. Similiarly, upon entering a WH sector, it would pause for a minute or two to let people dock or undock, then turbo to the WH and go through.

It would decrease its transit time to something a little more fun and look cool when it boosted (woe betide the poor NPC trader that ignores it's orders to get clear!)

I'd like it if you could auto-change between empty turrets to track a moving target... I'm sure it'd be veeery complicated, but COOOOL!

the UIT ship doesn't take that long, i think the itani one is probably the worst wate just because it has so far to go, maybee it should spawn closer to B-8.

I just had this really good sounding idea (uh .. too me atleast -.-)

In the ship menu there could be a list containing every other nations player in the sector. Names on that list can be highlighted to set them as enemy.
Highlighted players would lose docking rights and are targetted by AI controlled turrets.
This way enemys could be kicked out of the capship, too.

To expand on this:
An external/destroyable part on the ships hull that functions as the control center could be added. (could use the current turret model for now ... just with much more armor) If it's destroyed the ship would rely on player controlled turrets and could be boarded even by enemy players.

mockups pending ...

EDIT: oh yeah ... and an option to automatically tag everyone who enters the sector as either friend or enemy

The capships should have a 3000 meters no jump area around them like roid fields and stations.

Then on the same subject, how about a blokade ship which has a 'mass expander' or whatever you want to call this, and requiers a 6000 meters area that needs to be cleared before you can jump.

just need a jump dampaning field generator or something that can be equiped onto any double large port ship. Would be quite fun for camping worm holes with.

Also the cap ships turrets are fun, easy to kill but deadly if not taken seriously, but what I saw this weekend that was missing was a frigate to frigate cannon or beam weapon that could attack another frigate. There were a few times where the serco and uit frigates were within 1000m of each other. Would have been the perfect time to use such a weapon. OR, give the frigate long range missles that can be launched from the turrets as a secondary fire.

Also regarding turrets. Coudl they be given a 100m lightning Mine effect, that would eliminate the turrets weakness to flying in close and under the cone of fire of them. They are too vulnerable to close attacks by small fast ships. I was able to disable the serco frigate in under 3 minutes with minimal damage.

Turrets should also be able to be repaired if targeted and shot with nanites. And it felt as if the frigate it's sell was negatively effected by nanites in general. Twice I tried healing one and it blew up in my face. Was no where need critical damage levels when the healing started so perhaps a bug? Not sure on that one.

I'm sure there will be more as time passes. =)

In order to better defend the cap ships, it would be nice to make the turrets easier to use. I imagine they'll fix the fact that you can't fire in the direction you're heading in soon, so I'm focusing on ease of use.

It would be nice to have an indication of which turret you are in. A little ship map would be great for this, particularly if the map could show where damage is being taken and which turrets are dead - maybe even which turrets face a target. It would also be nice to have the ability to jump from one turret to the next, up and down the line, just by hitting a key.

I dont know how you like this, and if it is implementable on this 3D engine without too much of a hassle, but for controlling capships, a tactical 3rd person view in the style of homeworld would come in handy.

This way, the commander of the fleet has a full tactical overview of the battlefield and could possition his capships, whyle other pilots fight, defend and listen to the commanders directions.

Anyway, I'm just freewheeling here, but whatdoyathank??

Bigger guns.

Make a couple larger forward-facing turrets with limited firing arcs. Stick huge fast strong powerful guns on them, and make them a pain in the ass to turn and aim.

There's the anti-big-ship weapon thing down. :P