About Convoy's capship bug, here are some ideas to reduce or eliminate is exploiting:

1) Cappie should refuse loaded ships. Or at least refuse moths.

Indeed, what is the sense of making a full voy of moths, atlas and centaurs, while all them could dock in a trident and ride safely?

2) Escort caps should only allow repair/reload docks, and kick out ships immediatly after. And only accept one ship at time.

When you dock in a capship, it should immediatly RR and launch your ship out, clearing dock for next ship. And if you are in escort mission group, no credits charged for that.

3) more complex: For full docking and access to turrets, only small ships allowed, or only Centurions.

Anything bigger than that cannot stay docked, applies #2.

4) Reduced payment for gunner ride.

By far, to make any sense of convoys after all, docking must be severily limited. For every sector you are a gunner, payment is reduced by X.

5) Display docked ship

When you dock to a capship, you dont magically dissapear. Your ship stands there, held by "tractor beams" (suggest a name). So no one else can dock. Visually you will know why.

6) Make other voys ships also repair themselves, at next "safe" sector, when capship that should reduce speed.
Very good and logic after ions storms

7) Make smaller convoy ships allways follow capship, not the opposing as now. Specially in WH.
Makes more sense from tactical perspective.

Simplified version:

1) Access to turrets only allowed for ECs and Centurions

2) All other ships can dock, one at once only, be repaired, reload then automatically launched again. Remain visible in dock.
(If cappie shield's up, they protect docked ship)

3) Payment for gunner ride is shown separated than escorting, and smaller.

4) If a [Hated] person enter nation space inside a capship, this capship must kick out hated one when attacked by turrets, OR be intercepted by another cappie and destroyed, while invader receives the penalties (convoy fail, faction standing)
4.1) You only can take a convoy if you are [Neutral] or better ar DESTINATION and crossed (visited) NATIONS.

5) When capship present, convoy follows capship.!

Access to turrets only allowed for ECs and Centurions

what the hell? Poor vulture. Stop being such a picky bastard.

"1) Access to turrets only allowed for ECs and Centurions"

I don't really have an opinion one way or another for this part. Actually upon reflection I do, who in their right mind uses an EC class ship for escort duty?! I can see restricting it to all cargo and XC class

"2) All other ships can dock, one at once only, be repaired, reload then automatically launched again. Remain visible in dock.
(If cappie shield's up, they protect docked ship)"

This I don't care for... A. If I'm protecting a convoy, I should be able to dock to reload/repair as needed. By limiting repairs and reloads to once, the cappies are actually jeopardizing the convoys survival.

and B. As for the ship remaining in the docking port, there have been times on a convoy where multiple players have taken the same escort mission, now if there is a line where escorting players must wait while the first player repairs reloads, it jeopardizes the player in an instance where he is completely vulnerable to attack and again jeopardizes the mission.

"3) Payment for gunner ride is shown separated than escorting, and smaller."

Agreed though I'd take this even farther, gunner pay is per kill only, and extremely low... also faction increase is is give same as botting 1/4 point per kill.

"4) If a [Hated] person enter nation space inside a capship, this capship must kick out hated one when attacked by turrets, OR be intercepted by another cappie and destroyed, while invader receives the penalties (convoy fail, faction standing)
4.1) You only can take a convoy if you are [Neutral] or better ar DESTINATION and crossed (visited) NATIONS."

Agreed.

"5) When capship present, convoy follows capship!"

I've always found it off that all combat ships jump out, then light/medium the any moths and then finally the cappies jump five to ten minutes later. It would seem more logical for them to follow this flight plan...

A. Take mission.
B. Cappie stops near station an broadcast message, stay with in 1500m if you desire a payment.

Sample Formation...
1. Cappie, front of convoy.
2. Two to sixteen light fighters behind cappie.
3. Two to ten cargo ships behind fighters.
4. two to six additional fighters as rea ssqqqqqqq

who in their right mind uses an EC class ship for escort duty?!

EC-107 ftw, bitch.

Alloh, you seem to have forgotten about valks, proms, vultures, combat centaurs, combat atlas's, combat warthogs, mauds, raptors, and hornets... all viable combat ships. Why are you limiting to EC or Centurions only? I don't get it.

Ok, to make clear:

The central idea is justify why you can't dock a moth at departure and only leave at destination. It requires to limit the now endless storage space at capships.

Access to Turrets - I suppose you are travelling as gunner, probably in a gunner mission, so idea is you dock, ship is "stored internally" while you ride the turrets. So the limitation to small ships. Vults wings are foldable?

Surely what ships can dock can be adjusted. That is 1st proposal. Maybe we allow any ship, but without cargo.

Dock one at once: Its not one time per mission, is one ship at a once. Avoid docking of 2+ medium/large ships.

They stay visible to justify that another ship can't dock at that moment.

You can dock as many times as you want, I'd prefer free RR. But you can't dock if there is another ship docked.

And you can't remain docked enjoying a free ride if you are using a heavy ship. Since I see no reason with allow a rag and not a trident/moth, that seems the logical solution left. Any ship can dock and RR, but will be launched when finished.

Think of an Air Refuelling operation. You connect, refill, leave...

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The "worst case scenario" for the convoy exploit would be:
N traders meet at Odia, fill up their XCs with sedina chocs, cv holos, etc, and then all them take a mission, enter the trident and enjoy a very safe journey home.

I guess I have addressed properly this exploit and gave a RP visual reason for that. How many moths/XCs you can dock at once now? I've seen 5 ships (rags) docked during a Levi party, and it makes no sense. If it fits 5 rags, why not order all convoy NPC ships to dock with Trident?

Condensed again, a Trident Docking Bay becomes limited to:
-4 small ships, internally
-1 Large ship, externally