I can fly by the current caps in less than 10 seconds.

Can we make them real big? Like, say, 10x a Constellation?

maybe non player operated ones.... but then we'll all bitch about not being able to have those ones.....

like we have any anyhow.

Let's say you turbo past a capship at 200m/s in 10s; that capship is 2km long... Let's say you cruise past a capship at 65m/s in 10s; that capship is 650m long. A Nimitz class carrier is only 333m long and the longest ship in the world (the super oil tanker Jahre Viking) is only 458m long...

I know ludicrously-sized ships are cool, but I think ships larger than 2km should wait for a bit...

I dunno, I think eventually it'd be cool to introduce a class of ships longer than 1500 meters (the HAC is around 800m long). They'd be rare and might be classified differently than the current cappies.

They could be called 'Command Ships' or 'Executive Ships' or something like that. Each nation might only have 1 or 2 of each. These would be the ships carrying the most important officials of a nation. I'd make three models, one for each nation, but have them be very similar looking, like slight variations of one original design (so you don't have to design 3 completely separate gargantuan ships). This could be explained by making them very old but upgraded and maintained over the years.

Since there would be only a few of them, everyone would know their names, like "The Excelsior is all the way out in Latos". They'd basically become permanent fixtures in the Universe. I'm actually hoping that the player/guild-owned cappies that are managed well enough to survive, will be rare enough to also have this status.

They'd have rediculous shields and armor. They would be heavily guarded at all times and it would take the organization of an entire nation to destroy one, figure at least 20 players to even stand a chance, or a couple player-owned cappies. These are not ships that should just come and go. Losing one of these would be a huge deal.

I'm not sure if having ships of this size would cause lag problems. If not, it'd certainly be cool, but by no means at the top of anyone's priority list, especially since there would be so few of them. They'd be like the icing on the VO cake. We should probably see bigger stations first, because even now it seems a little strange when you see a Connie near a station.

Anyway, I'm sure there have been other threads/posts on this topic but I couldn't find any to link.

It would suck if player owned cappies were so hard to get that there would be "1 or 2" around.

Especially Tridents shouldn't be all that expencive!

Yeah. I want bigger ships and stations like in Homeworld, or Star Wars, or Aliens... Sense. Of. Scale.

(Can't find the Sense of Scale thread by entering that search term. I must be doing something wrong because I KNOW the Search function certainly isn't broken at all.)

Zed1985, I wasn't saying there should only be 1 or 2 player-owned cappies. I said that if there was a class of ship bigger than the current cappies, I'd imagine each nation would only have 1 or 2.

I did say that I hope once we do get player-owned cappies, the ones that are well-managed and survive on the order of months will become known by name. This would happen if they were sufficiently expensive and hard to build, which I think they should be. I'm sure there will be many others that do not last more than a few days because their owners do not have the resources to maintain and protect it, especially when player-ownership is first introduced. My comment was in regards to the ones that last.

For instance, if TGFT had 2 cappies named George and Gracy that they maintained and sufficiently protected, they would be known by name after a while.

"CLM launched a huge attack on Gracy last night and got her down to 60% armor".

That's all I meant. It was more of a passing comment on the way I hope the player-owned cappie system ends up. Obviously there might be dozens of other ones that are only around for a few days (or minutes). I'm assuming that cappies will never disappear within stations. They will be available to shoot at 24/7. Very few people or even guilds would have the resources to protect them, so the few that do survive will become famous.

Ah okay. That makes sense then :)

I agree and approve now. I suppose the uber-caps would be a bit like motherships maybe? Bigger than most stations but mobile and armed to teeth.

I'm so calling mine Kuun-Lan :D.

I also agree with the passing comment about the maintenance, while a trident or even a teradon should be simple enough to repair (bring it back to a station with adequate docs and have it repaired). Bigger ships might require more exotic materials to repair, say xith ore for the armor or heliocene for the shields. If the sation has the ressources it will repair the cappie (for the right price) or else you must bring the ressources yourself.

Though then it brings up the question, what about the repair beam thingy? All you'd have to do is get your guildies to come out and repair it. And while it would take a while it would be doable.

That's when your "guildies" are online... Who's going to babysit 24/7?

Plus, a relatively small group of players can kill an unescorted cappie. I wasn't even thinking of the repair costs. I just meant the cost of time, money, and resources to keep it from getting destroyed.

Meh there is always a random [Itan] around

And what you mean babysit?

I'm assuming cappies won't ever go away, even if the player that owns it is off-line. Arrangements will have to be made to somehow protect it at all times.

Well mega cappies I agree, tridents and teradons not really... Maybe the mega stations that can build em have garages(fine hangars)? So you can park inside and then they go away?

And the mega cappies? Well leave em close to a big nation staion, it will still have auto defences, but no movement capabilities. So only a big attack could destroy it.

I wasn't talking about the mega-cappies. I haven't even thought about player-ownership of them. I'd guess there wouldn't be, at least not for a very long time. I'm not worried about them. They'll have tons and tons of NPC protection at all times.

The way I understood it, cappies will not be able to just hide away in some huge dock. They can't now, and I haven't heard any plans for that in regards to player-ownership. It seems to me that Cap Ships shouldn't be able to. It'd be too easy to own one then, but who knows.

Instead of huge docks, I'd imagine hire-able NPC escorts. They'd cost a lot to run 24/7, but that'd be one of the costs of owning a Cap Ship.

I guess we'll see.

It would make it too hard to own one. I think that the smaller cappies should be relatively low maintenance, so you can keep people like me interested in the game (I can usually play 1hour/week)

Don't take this offensively, but I don't think a Cap Ship will be available to someone who plays only an hour a week. I've heard the devs say that they won't be easily owned by a single player and that it'll probably take the organization of a guild to realistically own and maintain one.

I don't think most players will be able to own even one trident. Maybe some of the more active players will, but it'll be more realistic for guilds.

If everything is easy, the game won't be much fun. You need things that are a challenge for people to work towards. If every player who invests an hour a week can successfully own a cappie, everyone would be flying around in them and it'd be silly, IMO. I think the successful ownership and maintenance of cappies should be a benefit and privilege of player cooperation, not a right endowed to every individual casual player.

Any capship that is persistent will be destroyed. No problem. You've seen the way players team up to take out the Levi? Same thing will happen with Capships. Seek and Destroy missions for a Capship will become all the rage, and eventually no one will buy one since they don't want to see their investment go down the drain.

No, Capships need to be protected just like other player ships. Even the gigantic ones. Which means they'll have to be able to dock (or at least "moor") with a station. Which means we'll have to have even BIGGER stations. Ha! See how this spirals out of control?

I'm still all for bigger capships. I'm even MORE for bigger stations.

yeah. some people like to stay in stations and blab all day.

i'd rather have cappies we *can* use.

and before that, moth heavys we can use. and i mean multi-player moths heavys.

FatStrat: I don't take it offensively, but I think that the minor capships should be doable easily enough that a single player could get one.

A trident isn't all that powerfull or a great trade ship. It doesn not offer incredible advantages, and therefore I don't think it should be off limits to players that don't play all that much, or to relatively new players

I am not saying they should be REALLY easy to get. Give it reuirements like 10/10/10/12/10, a cost of a couple of millions plus 2-3k various ores. And there you go.

Even if there were docks, I think they should cost money to use (for Cap Ships). I'd imagine there would be a charge per hour or something, regardless of whether you were online or not.

Plus, any dock or station you can park a cappie at, should itself be destructible and open to attack at any time (especially if it is free). So maybe you can dock somewhere, but you still wouldn't be 100% safe.