I think that once the devs work out all the kinks in the capships, it would be very cool to have a very, very large (500cu+) trade ship that is like a somewhat defenseless cap ship. It can hold a few other ships/pilots, and maybe a couple turrets. It would be very slow, and have a hell of a lot of armour. I would be very large and clumsy. Basically a ship that you wouldn't dare take into grey space alone, but if you did you would stand to make a hell of a lot of money.

We need a high risk ship right now. Something that rewards people highly for taking it on dangerous trade routes, and is worth pirates time hunt.

A loose idea, I'm not very good with specific numbers, so feel free to add your opinions.

I think with that big of a target, it would need to be 1000-2000cu. But yes, I like, L:

Then ppl would make money WAY too fast. All trade routes would be worthless to anybody in anything other than a behemoth or capital ship. There would be little profit in a short amount of time from everyone trading and finishing trade runs 10 at a time :)

but sure if it's weak enough like 200,000 armor then it'd definately be a high risk ship and you'd see pirates goin around in behemoths. :P

LOL that'd be crazy.

Well, it would only be purchaseable by guilds. And might require a certain number of players on, from the guild to pilot it. depending on this number they could make a lot more. But given strong interceptor ships, it could be very dangerous.

a 10 million cred ship with 5 million creds in cargo?

I can't wait to get the drop on that one.

EDIT: ECONOMY SUGGESTION
Another possibility to keep the economy alive, is to have the resources necessary for building any of these ships factored in. So a station that builds one of these ships is going to need certain resources for a LOOONG time to recoup.

It would also be interesting if Certain stations would stop selling ships if they didn't have enough resources.

The only real way i can see to countering the "cap ship players pwn you" is for them to have relatively limited places to dock. If an owner of such a trade ship can only dock in say 5 of 20 stations than there are still large areas where "newer" traders can still make a profit. It could also help prices at those small ship stations when trading among the large ship docks becomes competitive and the large shippers hire/order people/guildmates to buy cargo at small stations and give the cargo to them to sell at large stations, thus driving up prices which small traders can take advantage of. But of course the same can be said about selling the cargo I guess, with less than desirable effects...

A large trade ship should only have enough docking ports for the pilot and the gunners. After that, you can't dock. So maybe with a dorsal and a ventral gunner, you get three docking spaces.

I want a "Porcupine", a ship with 200 small ports, designed exclusively to transport guns.....

Ohh, yes, and then some n00b is gonna put 200 geminis on it, warp into a battle, unload it all and warp out...

would allow for some cool screenshots though :D