I heard on an interview that there will be a capital ship addon in the final release. My question is: What is the size of the capital ships going to be? (If there will be any) How will they fit in the stations if they dock? Or do they have supplies for there fighters when they need them? Or missions will be shown while on board ship? I am just really concerned.

The capital ship was in one sector before, it's pretty big, I'll post SS a bit later if I need to.

The old "frigate" was more of a testbed. The post-release addon that includes Cap Ships, Mining and Exploration will basically include a range of "multiperson" ship scales. From smaller freighters or escort ships up to full sized Capital scale. But, keep in mind, this is a *post-release* addon. It'll probably be at least 6 months before we'll have something like this together, depending on what finances we have to bring in more artists and the like.

Ooh! Will we be allowed to beta-test it?

Capital ships do not dock...their supply and repair ships do.

why not let them dock? they could attach to stations on a semi-permanent basis, much like the freighters and ships we have to-day. just make a giant tube that serves as mooring.

What would happen when the owner of a capital ship docks and then logs off?

Good question Phaserlight =)
Like, it's not really the same as a normal ship so can't be stored in the station or whatever. Maybe we'll have to hide them somewhere, like in deep deep space where no-one can find it. :P

I dunno stick, you can find a fighter 20k away out in deep space if you know the general direction to look and use the FOV command. A capital ship would be pretty hard to hide.

But you do have hundreds of sectors to hide it in =)

Or maybe you could equip your Cap. Ship with weapons for a bit of self-defence if someone does find it :P

OR EVEN camouflage: from a distance it looks like the background, but close up you can tell it's not.

The only way to effectively hide a Cap ship is to find a large hollow roid 20k away from the center of the sector and park it in there.

Otherwise, you can just turn off the BG, turn on rglow (if the cap ships use it) and just keep looking...

prolly somewhere in hyperspace where it can not be tracked and will automatically waken up once its "master" aka captain awakens again out of his cryogenical stasis.

My hope is that we will get some HUGE stations along with the cap ship expansion pack that will be able to dock cap ships. So the solution would be that cap ships can't dock at most stations, only really really big stations that have cap ship docking ports.

and then youll have to travel 10 hours just so you can dock your cap ship at the nearest cap dockyard...

Since I couldnt expect an outpost to be able to have those big dockyards...

well yeah, but what would you want to dock at an outpost for? unless also cargo ships were introduced that are necessary to fuel the supply lines.

euhm if I need to stop the game, if I need to go and eat, if I need to go and help my dad, or have to go to work...

just in case some rl problem calls me away from playingtime... Having to dock at the nearest place will e hard to do, dont you agree ...

im thinking that people will have to be in a group or guild to get a capital ship and either anyone can make it show up if ur part of the group/guild but if it will still be there when everyone is logged off maybe guilds can get their own sector in unexplored space

I hope Phaserlight is correct. I'd like to see some of the homeworld stations, important stations, or just really busy stations being made much bigger. I believe the devs have said that some of the stations will be more like sprawling cities than the medium sized outposts we see now.

Maybe some of the stations will begin to grow as more users home in a station or as more players dock? That would be cool. Growing the physical size and complexity of stations depending on how busy a station becomes. Sort of like the dynamic economy :)

I can picture a massive holding dock with a capital ship and its escorts sliding in, and a set of huge blast doors closing behind them...

-s-

I wonder what'll happen if the pilot of a capital ship suddenly logs off.

FutureRuler: like he has a connection problem?

If the ship is piloted by multiple players, the First Officer gets command then :)