Picture this:

The Serco nation invades into Itani space, causing a gigantic battle to ensue. You are riding on the Itani Cruiser H.M.S. Reliant, one of the largest ships in the fleet. As you leave the craft in your Valkyrie to join the interceptor battle, the Reliant suddenly explodes behind you. Odd, you didn't see any projectiles hit it... As you fly in to retrieve the black box along with the rest of your squadron, you discover that, coincidentally, the Serco want the black box too. Of course, the black box is in the most protected part of the ship, its center. You zip through the wreckage of the hull, dogfighting with Serco pilots. Some of them, as well as some of your squadron mates, aren't well trained in cramped fighting, only used to the openness of space, and destroy themselves on large floating chunks of the hull. You slowly make your way to the center of the Reliant, and retrieve the black box. You are chased by a few dozen Serco fighters, but manage to shake them off in the hull of the Reliant and the other capital ships that have been destroyed. Limping back, you discover that the Reliant was hit by an energy blast of immense magnitude. You must now lead a covert team into Serco space and steal the plans for their new energy weapon.

Wheee story... Anywho, imagine if capital ships left behind large metal hulks to fly through... With damage holes and everything... It'd be friggin' awesome, I know it would take a lot to code (I think, anyway...), but I think it'd be great if this were implemented sometime before Vendetta goes gold... Lemme know what you think... :)

Yeah, that would rock. The Serco would have their missions in chasing you after the initial incident, then leading a daring suicide spear-raid into Itani territory in an (ultimately successful) effort to copy the contents of the box, because unbeknownst to the Itani, it wasn't the Serco who caused the Reliant to explode. The Neutrals (read, the Ordos in Dune II) may know something, but they're not telling. At least not cheap. When it comes out, it's revealed that the Furies ordered several hundred kegs of Sercan Ale prior to the day of the explosion. This ale was stolen from a Serco Brewery cargo transport, then delivered by NT fast courier to the Furie base in Sector 17. I wonder what they had to celebrate...

the huge debriss stuff sounds cool, however, that debris should be mineable or destroyable or something, or else after a couple space battles a given sector would be so crowded with junk it would no longer be navigable :o
(nice place to hide however :)
I like that

I see my tavern has become popular on the forums...

/me reads genin's post
/me drools

Yeah, I was thinking the debris would be destroyable (e.g. you can blast a hole through it to make a little tunnel, etc.). It'd be even cooler if it were minable... You'd see all these little mining ships flying around the capital ship hulls after a big battle...

Cool, but... lagtacular?

like ants on a corpse...

Precisely... :D

Very profitable ants.

/me applies to be a corpse hunter/ant!

~The Penguin

/me shivers.
you could make an entire story arc out of these miner thingies.
imagine this: a giant alien spaceship/carrier comes into your space. combined forces can take it out just barely (hmm... ok, that's just pathetic, ripping off most movies out there. but it would help bring down the international conflicts for an amount of time). then the miners start disassembling the ships and use it in new products, maybe also to boost technology (do i hear anyone say "StarCraft"? must be my imagination).
BUT according to many eastern ways of thinking, everything (every thing, _with_ the space) has a soul, spirit, consciousness, w/e.
now let's say, the spirits of the aliens inhabits the parts we salvage and turns against us (ok, ok that too is ripped off from several movies/books).
and you wondered why the ships were empty...

ok, now for something completely different... (Bkoom!-- eheh)
no, seriously... i would found a guild that hunted those corpse hunters (just hunt to kill, and destroy the cargo if possible). why? i think salvaging corpses (if humans do it on humans, we can transmogrify that to have it apply on ship/ship) is disrespective of the dead.
that is my personal POV however and i'm sure it would add to the game having corpse hunter/corpse hunter hunter battles going on. the moralists (corpse hunter hunters) against the realists (corpse hunters).
if there were a space-dwelling species that lived on those ships, ok. i could agree with that (space ants?)

and let's call the corpse hunter CHuDs, people (Corpse Hunting (Space) Dwellers).
hmm... ok, don't.

I like the idea.

CHuD: A clan of religious zealots fervently opposed to the recycling of objects in which sentient life has died. Actively hunt corpse hunters and miners and destroy their cargo so that the trapped souls may continue on to a better life.

Hehehe... Too bad CHUD stands for Caniballistic Humanoid Underground Dweller... :P They'd probably be the corpse hunters themselves...

magus, you didnt get my drift...
pyro is closer to what i meant. to clarify things: it is the recyclers i'd call CHUDs.
and i was very well aware that this particular acronym already existed (i was alluding to it...)
but what magus envisions is pretty much what i thought up.
just for another example: in japan, cooks honour their cooking knives (that stayed with them for about 10-20 years) with a proper funeral, to have them melted and reforged. according to some religions in japan (unsure which one exactly, please don't kill me), if you use a tool/space, it acquires the characteristics of the wielder/inhabitant.
in some literature in the western civilisation, this occurs, too.