It's tough to know what kind of feedback to give, since you say that some things are obviously planned but not yet implemented. I'll only give a few that come to mind, having been a defender for 2 different nation cap ships so far:

The turrets need to cover a wider field of fire -- their "cone" is too narrow.

Either that, or put many more turrets on it.

The crews in turrets need to see the name of the turret they are in while they are at station -- when switching around, it's too easy to get confused. What turret was I just in, and what turret do I want to go to?

The docking bay needs to be duplicated elsewhere on the ship -- ideally, a landing bay and a launching bay.

The crews in turrets need to see the cap ship's health, just as single pilots do, so they know when the situation's getting desperate and it's time to abandon ship.

The crew of the cap ship needs to see, visually, where the damage is. It'd be ideal, too, to be able to click a picture to select the turret you want to occupy, but I see how that'd be a problem for a 3D object with turrets on all sides.

The ship should spawn bot defenders according to some formula that you work out depending on your goals: should it always be able to put out a certain number of defenders, or should its capacity to spawn defenders be reduced as its health diminishes?

One last idea that might not be possible: it'd be ideal if players could specify the cap ship as their home station. If they undock to defend the cap ship, and die, they should respawn in the cap ship, ready to undock again or man a turret. What if there's no cap ship when the player respawns, you ask? That's up to you: either have them respawn at the capital system where the cap ship spawns, or at their last chosen home [before they chose the cap ship as home], or the nearest station. Of the 3, the last option seems least realistic to me, since obviously Serco wouldn't be respawning from an Itani station or vice-versa, right?

Some constructive ideas:

The cap ships need some badass CUSTOM missile type that leave trails.

The turrets need to use a CUSTOM gun type that has 400 speed and the same damage as AGT or more in order to make it hard and to spread some fear when coming too close.

The ship needs some turrets that cant be destructed or rather the ship can replace by a new one after some time. These can be AI and player manned.

The docking bay is a bit too small.

When inside a turret it should show what turret I am using by writing it onto the screen somewehere plus there shiuld be a graphic indicating the used turret and showing the ships damaged areas.

yes, the cap ship should have some kind of robot drones, or seeker types or some other NEW ship type that defends against any attacks. Oh and dont forget about the missiles hehe...

Also, Id love to see 3 different Cap ship designs, are they all made by TGP? hehe

GREAT WORK DEVS!!! LOVE IT!
:D
M. Duncan

Agreed on the turret info. Also, perhaps we could have an available range-of-movement indicator. Something as simple red wireframe box showing the point beyond which we cannot turn. This would allow gunners to make split-second decisions regarding when to abandon a target and move on to the next.

I think one of the problems is that shots from a turret don't take on the turret's velocity. So if a shot is going North at 150m/s, and the ship is going 50m/s in the same direction, the shot still appears to go 150m/s, instead of the 200m/s that you'd think it'd do.

I think the biggest thing is that those turrets are really weak. The velocity is the problem. the only reason a 400m/s gun on a normal ship would be to crazy is because you have to get close to that target to hit it, and a 400m/s turret would be way too easy to use. but you can hit the cap ship from 600m away no problem! so I see no problem with having 400m/s gat turrets. I should wanna avoid the capship if I can, that's how dangerous it should be.

This is interesting, o.0 Maybe now that we are allowed to dock on a cap ( could be wrong due to influence of not being able to play any game online for the past three weeks ) >.> The Super Missle should be Super Missle/Turret ><.>< Patent Pending.....

I had a new idea for a cap ship gun while mining, basically i turned on my zazapzazapzazap (chainfire bind) while having two s port minging beams in a maud (dont ask, i was basically heating these roids incase anyone else found them...)

It went zapzapzapzap on the target (like elite beams/lasers) cap ships should also have beams, that instantly hit a target, but do minimal damage.

I want insta-hit beam weapons, but not minimal damage ones. They should be massive damage weapons, but should 1) have no auto-aim, 2) drain battery way fast, and 3) have extremely short range, around 50m.

Of course, for a Cap Ship beam weapon, the 3rd limitation would be too much, and turrets currently don't have batteries, so for Cap Ship turrets the 2nd limitation would be moot.

Cap ships should bee a display of each nations greatest and most advanced technology, and thus, also should actually be feared, instead of the attitude of "yay! lets blow it up!"

exactly.. blowing up a cap ship should be HARD. It should be nearly impossible or only possible, if lets say 10 players, attack it for a couple of hours to wear it down. Plus its defenses should be absolutely fearsome and ueber, compared to all other weapons. Only whats difficult presents a challenge and is really fun. Of course it must have some weaknesses, but as it is now I kill a cap ship by myself hehe.
Again, these are suggestions. :D

M. Duncan

Yesterday the UIT capship was sitting so close to the wormhole that if you flew all the way into the docking bay, you ended up inside the wormhole perimiter and pressing enter would send you through the wormhole instead of docking. Very annoying :D

last night the UIT capship just popped.... Holden scanned it to death.

No kidding. I was using mining lasers and a scanner on it, and it sploded before my very eyes....

What the cap ships need is autofire on the turrets, and to give a player KOS if you attack them (didn't the Nemesis did this already?); the KOS would stay on until the cap ship is blown to pieces. Make the turrets frighteningly accurate shots, too (as opposed to stormtrooper-style shooting or impossible-to-dodge accuracy). Just enough so a lone fighter going against the capship is guaranteed to fry.

They should also have stronger armor, such that you'd need a weapon that deals about 1500 damage to do anything to it. This would mean most energy weapons would be ineffective, so the attackers would have to use missiles and rockets. This would mean in turn the attackers would be vulnerable to defender ships with energy weapons (since they have limited ammo), which means the attackers would have to come in with a fighter screen, and so on and so forth... in other words, make a cap ship assault an organized effort.

using missiles against the capships is so easy it's depressing. you turbo at the ship, fire two-three-four salvos from 1000m until you pass the ship, and start your next pass.

when you're out, you refit and refuel. you only get caught when you're not paying attention. :-)