My suggestion is this, consider raising the overall capacity of player tridents to 700cu. I don't have a technical justification for it, more psychological. I'm willing to bet that just about all who have built tridents are somewhat disappointed with the decreased ability to haul cargo, although yes hauling actual ships as cargo is cool.
For me anyway, 500cu as a limit when carrying a loader was a tough pill to swallow after experiencing the previous max of 1400cu. To be fair, that maximum required a significant time commitment on the part of at least 4 players at a time. That did not happen often. Unintended or not that was the way it had been for quite a while so the change in that regard was , yes , difficult.
After thinking about it for a while my gut feeling is that being able to haul 600cu with a loader would be a more umm.. inspiring configuration, and perhaps more encouraging to future trident builders. It just feels more reasonable in my own selfish opinion, although i will say that so far my trident has only been used to help others. Much of the time I found/find myself hauling with only a loader anyway because there is no one else available, thus, for others in a similar situation or working towards a trident, it would provide some added incentive to have a loader on a second (purchased) account.
Hopefully this sounds somewhat constructive, now let the criticism roll in }:)

To be fair, the ~500cu crap is kind of a bug, so give them a chance to fix it first.

Anyway, -1 to more space while carrying a "loader" (you mean Behemoth XC). Those ships are gigantic and they barely fit into the Trident's docking bay. I honestly think it'd be ridiculous to fit more than one in a Trident and nerfing that is a good idea.

I don't understand why the same limitations should be applied to much smaller ships like Centaurs, Marauders, and Ragnaroks though.

Any time you're loading or unloading, it's at a station, so doesn't it make more sense to just keep the big transports docked there?

it would provide some added incentive to have a loader on a second (purchased) account.

If you're encouraging people to spend more money to gain and in-game advantage; that's pay to win. We should be encouraging more players to sub, not the existing players to sub twice.

tough pill to swallow after experiencing the previous max of 1400cu.

The previous max was absurd. 4x Behemoths that magically fit inside your trident and weigh nothing taking up no space. Absurd.

TRS you're talking about realism. It is also impossible to store zillions of ships in a tiny space stations like the most in VO. Station cu limitation will probably follow if devs are pushed towards more realism. Just make a quick calc.

For me it's quite OK to have dents limited to a specific cu of ships, and to accept that ships take up cargo space as soon as they (The dents) are capable to dock at least at capitol stations, and it is possible for the captain (of the dent) to hop in a docked craft within the dent and shuttle the goods to a station where no capship dock is present. In that case there's no need for an XC to be docked. A much smaller Tung taur/maud can be a fair compromise.

A much smaller Tung taur/maud can be a fair compromise.

Except that both of those ships currently take up the same amount of space as a 'moth does. 300cu

Fitting even more than one 'moth inside a Trident is absurd. didn't the devs actually have to change it's collision model so they wouldn't get stuck in the docking bay that they were too big to fit into in the first place?

OK first, TRS - "If you're encouraging people to spend more money to gain and in-game advantage; that's pay to win. We should be encouraging more players to sub, not the existing players to sub twice."

It's no secret many dent pilots have second account, its simply a matter of flexibility. One can certainly make 2-3 alts and have them ready near prime destinations, but a second account is nice. It's also handy for lots of other things besides loading/unloading. For instance, say you are in some far off place with Trident and you feel like some pvp practice - oh wait, i have to spend 10 -15 min going back to m7 first.....
Oh and about the absurdness of 1400cu max, did I suggest bringing that back? no. just a slight tweak.. Oh and it wasn't so absurd to every other dent pilot while it lasted. To rats and others wanting to destroy those dents, yes sure.

ok now abortretryfail - I haven't hauled any ships as cargo yet but wouldn't any ship riding along take up at least 100cu? thus leaving about 500cu for actual cargo. And once again , I wasn't calling for 4 xc's in a trident again.

To be clear , my suggestion was based on the current specs. I am aware there are plans to allow the captain of a trident to disembark. If that is coming soon and will enable hauling 600cu without having to carry a loader (by loader i mean pilot in any ship) that would be fantastic. Once again, I'm only suggesting what I did because it feels more "right" in my mind so I thought I'd throw it out there.

Yeah, the smaller ships are only 100cu, once the devs get the bugs worked out, you'd be able to carry 500cu (plus whatever you can fit in the cargo hold of an EC-104)

The way Inc was talking about it was that you'd be able to carry a smaller ship along and undock with it. You could then go to the station, grab an XC, and scoop up all the cargo.

my point, however ridiculous it might be viewed as, was to be able to carry 600 cu *plus* one small ship (for captain or for now a ride along player). Somehow 500cu just feels a little anemic in my mind, and thats all i really wanted to express. 600cu is still a massive decrease from before, but it feels much more useful than 500cu particularly hauling dent components and large cu commodities like hull panels. It's just a gut feeling i get and that's all. I have no technical evidence that this "should" be the case. All we have in that regard are imagined scenarios, etc. anyway. I've never been in a space ship.

Counter proposal: allow cap-ships to collect and deposit /gunners from within a station's NFZ. Then you can ferry your helper without him wasting space with his ship.

I find that to be an excellent alternative proposal, thanks Pizza :)

Hmm, I think taking gunners in NFZ is a great idea.

And I also suggest that captain's ship to occupy no space from the 600 cu (captain's ship, not hauler's). Before anyone attacks me on this idea, I want to add, my reasoning is that there should be a reserved space for the captain's ship at least.

And I agree that the previous '4 XC riding' scheme was too much, but anything less than 600 cu net cargo space is not reasonable for me.

Tokkana Slano

So, just beef their cargo capacity up to 700cu? More than twice that of the NPC flavor!

First, I hereby withdraw my suggestion in favor of Pizza's counter suggestion, it is excellent. Second, all this is only an effort to preserve some use of the trident as a hauling ship. I don't personally know what the NPC variety holds, but if it's 300 cu, what player would want to build a trident that only holds 300 cu? I don't find that a valid comparison at all. There has to be some cargo hauling benefit after all the work of building a dent, and I strongly feel 600 cu is reasonable to hope for. With the gunner load in NFZ thing, so you can actually unload it when you get there. All the anti folks out there would have their significantly reduced trident hauling power even then. Not only that but shouldn't there be some meager payoff for having made it past the persistent minefields and energy drain weaps we apparently will be facing?

As a Dent Capt, I was perfectly content with the carrying of 4 XC with their load, even though I, or many others, actually carried that many at a time. I think the most was normally 2 XC. But now that it has changed, we will accept the change. I agree with Lunchfoot that it needs to be increased to at least 700 if not 800. One thing that extra ship in the hold is used for, that has not been mentioned, is the ability to leave the Dent after an encounter with Rats and be able to repair the ship without having to travel to M-7 to do it.

This being said, my feeling is to increase the cargo capacity, or at least have a small ship (prefer one with large port for Repair Gun) that the Capt can fly out and repair the Dent once the Rats have been lost. Cargo of 600 works better than 500 would (5 FCP are total of 600 cu).

As was said, many Dent Capts have a second account for their loader, and some are getting ready to cancel both subscriptions, if they have not already, due to this being thrown upon us from nowhere after all the work that has gone into Building the Dents.

And, if you want to get more to get and maintain Subs, then do something about all the advantages the Rats have. Come on now, they kill someone in a NFZ and get a "slap on the wrist". They home in a station, kill someone in that sector, get killed by Guards, spawn in the station and come out with the same standings they had before they shot in the NFZ.

I Built my Trident with 4 Cargo Bay assemblies. To me, this means 4 places for Ships to Dock while in the Trident. So, whatever else is said, I should still be able to Dock 4 ships of any size.

It is not "make believe" for a Trident to have room for 600 cu of cargo in one part of the ship and still be able to dock 4 ships.

But if it is the intent of Devs to reduce this cargo capacity, then think on this. I have 4 Docking Bays which hold 1 ship per bay regardless of the size of that ship. When there are no ships on board, I guess you could consider this space as the cargo hold of the Dent. When one ship docks, it uses 25% of the space, so cargo is reduced by that amount. A XC can carry 200 cu so when not docked, there should be a capacity to carry 200 cu in that Docking Bay. Increase the Cargo to 800 cu, which would be the amount 4 XC could carry and reduce it for any ship Docked of any size. A Vulture would occupy a Dock must like a XC would.

When it gets to carrying ships "compacted" into cargo boxes, then the amount of space needed to transport a "compacted" ship, without engine or weapons, would start at 100 for the light fighters and go up to 200 for Moths. So I could carry 8 "compacted" Vultures or 4 "compacted" XC in the hold.

Why not just have 2 different types of hold? 1 for holding docked ships, and another for actual cargo (including crated ships)?

You're forgetting that tridents are support ships, not transports. I say leave the current Trident cargo hold cu where it is. A 600cu hold is more than generous for a support ship. When Constellations are introduced, I'd even go so far as to recommend the cargo holds be reduced to 400cu.

Part of the issue in trying to balance this is that we've been locked in a universe where the only ships we can fly are fighter-class ships, to use the term loosely. Nothing is longer than 18m. We are only recently (in the history of the game) getting access to much larger ships, but there is a dearth of options even amongst those.

Draugath, Tridents are first transports and a distant second support ships. There will never be enough people in VO to warrant building a trident to use as a support ship primarily.

There will never be enough people in VO to warrant building a trident to use as a support ship primarily.
There already is. You just refuse to acknowlege it.

We've used mine as a support ship for station attacks, holding border blockades, clearing border blockes, bombing hive bugs, etc. Nearly every time I undock it, that's why.

Hauling crap usually comes along as a "since you've got the Trident out and we're already traveling..." thing.

I speak in general terms... there are always exceptions to the general terms.