Suggested locations :

(a) Into Sol II or Itan (so if you want to tour the universe hop on a capship)
(b) New sectors
(c) Shortcuts from one end of nation space to another

In corollary, make those damn capships do raids into enemy nation space.

Could have a very expensive piece of equipment that is Capship only that would give the Capship the ability to create its own Wormholes that can reach any system within a certain number of systems.

Kind of like the White Stars from Babylon 5 which are able to create their own jump points.

The catch could be:
1) Expensive item or drop-only item
2) Can only use it once
3) You arrive with your energy totally drained
4) No fixed point of arrival inside a system
5) Chance of a calculation error landing your ship inside an asteroid, planet or in the middle of a swarm of enemy ships.

1) agreed
2)yes
3)yeah... like all jumps ;)
4)Okay fine
5) Hell no.

so I agree with 80% :)

How about

5) you can try and go further than the specified range of the unit but the chance on an error starts increasing. So you can push it and go from one end of the universe to the other but you could end up buying the farm.

:)

[stamp of disapproval]@mouserider

This game is already way too fast-paced. I mean, I know we have a small userbase and we need a small universe, but it's possible to cross our universe in 26 minutes. Compare this to the backstory, where it takes days for attack forces to get from Serco space into Itani space alone. In my opinion, cap ships should have more restrictions on jumping, not fewer.

The universe will suddenly become very big if you make the wormholes to capital systems accessible only via capships...

Ayuh, the stamp was to mouserider. I like your (a) and (b), WWL. It could be rp-explained by saying that the home sectors are access-restricted to prevent incursions and that new sectors don't have stable enough wormholes for the wormhole-openers on little ships to operate. It would confuse the noobs if Itan and Sol II were inaccessible, though. Maybe we should put a ferry there? :-P

I agree with roguelazer. However I think expendable fuel would be a more interesting way of encouraging ride-alongs in cap ships.

Although I seem to recall reading somewhere that the devs were planning on restricting wh use for newbs anyway...

26 minutes is for racers that have pre-mapped, distance-optimized routes.

it's way too long and boring for someone to cross half this galaxy to get in time for an event.

last time i did that was 15 minutes of pure boredom for a < 5 minute fight.

i recall other times where x player wouldn't budge from his location to go pick a fight with y player because the travel time is too long/boring.

we need bypasses, travel (/ fast observer) ships, or other means of swiftly making it to "the other side".

The fuel idea is a good one, and if cap ships can make their own shor-range wormholes, that would be interesting and encourage working as teams.

Something like player run taxi services.

So like, where are the player controlled cap ships?

they're undergoing crash certification by the underwriter's laboratory.