So we have follow and park, but why not some extension to those.

Like:

"run" - pins the turbo and keeps going
"defend" - uses all available non-energy turrets to fire on those who fire on it (not bump it)
"jump [c12]" - jump to a specified sector (if possible, assuming the ship has enough energy), cannot be used to jump through wormholes, only intra-system.
"attack [target]" - uses a string matching to match a player/bot name, then follow and attack them using all missile turrets only.

While we're at it, perhaps make the ship a little less "Affirmative" robotic.
Try. "Following you" or "Parking here" or "Turbo on"

Ray and I have been talking about expanding this recently. It was actually on my list of targets for this week (for a potential release tonight).

Unfortunately, there are some architectural problems that need handling.. basically we need to more completely separate the concept of "player ship" from "autonomous player-owned NPC ship", which is what capships become. Then this should all be a lot more robust.

There are a bunch of pre-existing commands and behaviours, which work on general NPCs, that we intend to propagate across into the autonomous-capship commandset.

That would be excellent

Perhaps some of this functionality can be added to furies as well. At least an attack/defend [target] command. It would be kinda cool to bring them along on escort missions. The defend [target] bit I wouldn't think to be TOO hard, since they already automatically defend you.

+1000000000000000.

Please :D

+1 big time. This would be one of biggest improvements to capships that can possible be made.

Another +1000!

While we're at it, perhaps make the ship a little less "Affirmative" robotic.
Try. "Following you" or "Parking here" or "Turbo on"

Why not take that a step further, perhaps a random selection of replies, for instance;

Follow:
"Understood, we are on our way"
"Roger that, following your lead"
"OK here we come"
"Following you"
"Engines engaged, following at best speed"

Park:
"Holding position"
"OK, we will wait here"
"Waiting here"
"Putting it in park"
"Holding position"

Jump to [sector]:
"On our way"
"We will be there soon"
"Making best speed for [sector]"
"OK, Heading there now"
"Going there now"

Arrived at [sector]:
"Waiting at [sector]"
"We have arrived, Holding position for further instructions"

Hit storm en route to [sector]:
"We've hit a storm in [current sector], will be delayed by atleast [estimated time to clear storm]"

Run:
"Best speed for open space"
"OK, getting out of here"
"Attempting to flee"

Attack [target]:
"Affirmative, attacking [target]"
"Attempting to kill [target]"
"Roger that, attacking [target]"
"Bringing main guns online"

[target] destroyed messages
"[target] destroyed"
"Target eliminated"
"He's dead now"

[target] jumped away
"That one got away"
"Sorry, [target] was too fast for us]

Defend [target]
"Understood, defending [target]"
"Protecting [target]"

[target] destroyed by other
"We were unable to prevent [other] from killing [target]"
"[target] has been lost"
"[target] is gone"
"Sorry, we weren't able to save that one"

+1

hey @look....no hands

that last bit, cant that bit go a bit wonky? like if you tell the capital ship to kill the [target] but someone else kills it wouldn't be awkward if it said "sorry, we weren't able to save that one". shouldn't that one be in its own category?

That last bit is only to be used while the ship is in defend [target] mode. I figured that would be obvious.

+1000

OP +1 duh

+1 :)

Sure but give the commands an interface.