Now, the idea of capships is really exiting and all, but I must ask you all, HOW are we going to dock with a station in one of those massive things?!

That's one of the many problems that they're working on in terms of player controlled capships.

I guess we would just have to hide them somewhere.

For teh last time, they are going to dock WITH the station, not INSIDE it!!!

A docking module will be added to stations capable of it, which may be all of them, or just the ones that make more sense (Capitols, Research, Barracks).

Moved to General

/me thinks there should be a "Shipyard" station-type, with dry-docks. The Cap Ships wouldn't dock with them the way our current ships do (disappearing when we dock), but instead would park in the dry-dock, and would remain there rapidly repairing, and when fully repaired would exit the dry-dock. Other than repairing in these dry-docks, Cap ships wouldn't dock anywhere.

beolach,

so how are we going to dock out capship to take along 10000000000000000000000000000 lucury goods and deliver to odia :D

Shuttle them to & from the Cap Ship w/ smaller ships. Yeah, it'll take a while to load & unload, but that's part of the investment you're going to have to make if you want the advatage of trading in a cap ship. And seeing as you'll be able to hire NPC's to help with the loading & unloading, it wouldn't even take all that long.

When I am not using it, I will put a lampshade over my capship, making it imposible to detect.

Tradeskill!

Add an S-removing chemical and a C-adding chemical together to make Modification Juice.
Then add that to Samoflage and you get... CAMOFLAGE!
Spray that on the capship and noone can see it!

I think you need an N-remover as well, dontcha?
"samoflaNge"?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Samoflange

Hmmm... tasty capships...

IT would most likely dock along side the station and attach itself in some fashion. However all those big ships could be very hard on the frame rate.

@ Chikira,

You act like there will be more than half a dozen in the whole universe. WHEN they release capships to the public, they will be highly inaccesible. You will need large sums of money, time, and skill to obtain one of these bad boys. They wont just be given to every joe schmo.

The money, time, skill thing may be true, but players are already acquiring that right now, as we type. Unless they are a trillion or more and have requirements higher than like 20/20/20/20/20, I suspect some players that play on a regular basis may be able to buy them outright when they are first added.

I suspect they will dock with a station, somehow.

If they stay visible, how do you stop players from blowing them up or npc's from ramming into them while you wrangle with the mission computer or wait for the cargo to be transferred back and forth or whatever?

Lots of things to consider, but they sound really fun!

A capship with only one crewman is supposed to go down as easily as a newbie in a govbus (okay, not quite that easily since capships are tough, but still). Plus, the station defenses should be more than enough to handle any and all attackers trying to destroy a capship. Plus, I also assume a capship will undergo repairs while docked, just not instantaneous 100% hull repair every time it's damaged (though if you're inflict little damage per attack run it could look to be that way).

That means that if you buy your 20 million capship, and then go to greyspace wihout any mates and dock and go AFK for half an hour, don't be surprised if the pie rats come and blast it to bits by the time you get back.

" ...Finally numbering over four thousand individual spacecraft, the vast cloud would truly have made an impressive sight. Among them, a pair of Divinian heavy transports, each over six thousand meters in length, which had left their positions orbiting Eo's moon to join the rescue effort..." (from chapter IX of the backstory)

Cant wait to see one of these babies make it ingame.

"/me thinks there should be a "Shipyard" station-type, with dry-docks. The Cap Ships wouldn't dock with them the way our current ships do (disappearing when we dock), but instead would park in the dry-dock, and would remain there rapidly repairing, and when fully repaired would exit the dry-dock. Other than repairing in these dry-docks, Cap ships wouldn't dock anywhere."

this sounds good... I'd like to have perhaps special stations designed exclusively for capitol ship docking, rearming and repair... perhaps they'd have multiple docking bays for smaller craft to dock and depart carrying goods to load/unload the capitol ship or take on passengers.

as for trading in a cap ship, I think it should be discouraged, by reducing the hold to something not significantly larger than a moth...

do cap ships even really have a role though? I mean if the armaments and abilities are anything like the HAC, they'll be nothing but big targets which you can't even dock/undock from in flight... that doesn't sound like much fun (or a good investment) to me.

ahhh devs care to answer some questions about all this. I'd really like a price point and level requirements. Just a rough guesstamte!

In response to Jex:

I disagree that a cap ship should go down easilly if it's manned with only one player. Why would you want a human in a turret when you can have an AI? The AI is far more accurate than a human gunner. I outlined a whole bunch of control ideas for cap ships here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/12103

I think Cap ship turrets should be interchangable with human players and AI just as all the escort and pirate missions etc are going to be. Perhaps you should have to hire a crew? Hourly expenses for operating a cap ship would be cool.