Capitol ships are a formidable force, and it would be advantageous to the Serco/Itani war for users to be able to use capitol ships, as opposed to just the AI. It would also be way cooler.

Yes. When? We're not sure. The devs have been working on as time allows, but there are things that need to be in place before they make pilottable cappies available (the interface for pilots and gunners, peculiarities of navigation, docking, purchasing, etc.) so it's probably not the next big thing. I expect that at some point they'll clear the final hurdle and they'll surprise us with it.

Soon™

The real question is, will this Soon(TM) come before or after Gnome 3.0's Soon(TM)?