perhaps players could buy their own cap ships

this would not be done the same way as regular ships however

this is how i would have it go:

player jumps to empty sector,
player brings up mission computer and types "buy cap ship" or something like that,
player has HUGE ammount of creds taken and is now flying a cap ship!
broadcast goes out that someone has purchased a cap ship and the SYSTEM not the sector is given (this is on a special channel just like convoy info is now),
players can jump to other empty sectors in their cap ship

of course there would still be a npc cap ship.

You forgot:

Everyone comes and attacks capship for hours until the guy dies.
Guy who bought capship posts long rant on the forums about how he's broke now, and leaves.

Or, rather than everyone crowding it, a single bored enemy player kills it in his/her/its bus.
-:sigma.SB

It should take HOURS for a single fighter to take down a cap ship. I could see it damaging vital areas ie. engines or turrets, but the hull should be sufficiently armored to withstand an attack from a fighter for quite some time, at least until reinforcements arrive.

Or how about we just add shields for capital ships only. This way their recharge could charge faster than a lone fighter (or maybe a few fighters) could damage it. This would not make it's hitpoints gig'normous and could be something like 20k shields or something. Recharge of 200 a second. (just an example don't bash it, just put up actual numbers that would work)

/givemoney Devs 2c

my idea for capital ships is so:
capital ships are bought at special capital shipyards. capital ships come with an escape pod and a shuttle. the driver can leave the ship with the shuttle to enter regular stations to get missions/payloads/etc. IF a capital ship gets blown up (and mind you this isnt like killing a queen, capital ships would have tons of turrets and a HELL of a lot of armor w/ shields that replenish fast enough for busfire to be ineffective.) the driver would be ejected in an escape pod. Also, capital ships would count as "large objects" so they couldnt be warp-killed, and other people could enter large capital ships for repair/refit like one enters a station

didnt u watch battlestar galactica?

2 warthogs can take out a 1500 passenger cruiser in about 20 seconds by shooting into the engines.

yeah but those guns are freaking... crazy.. and that was only a passenger cruiser. not a capital military frigate.

Thanks Apex, yes, a commercial liner and a battler cruiser have comepletely different armorments and shielding. Totally different. Also, I was implying a "single" fighter, there were three there, but we digress…

"didnt u watch battlestar galactica?

2 warthogs can take out a 1500 passenger cruiser in about 20 seconds by shooting into the engines."

Hehehe... I wonder if anyone else caught that. It's so true though, the Vipers are totally Warthogs.

My take on cap ships is that it should be impossible for any single player to own one, rather a guild could chip in together to buy a cap ship, which guild members who had the required privileges could then access.

For one thing Battlestar Galactica cam before VO (the original series aired in the '80s i believe) so the Warthogs are vipers, not the other way around, secondly if you watched the Mini-series you would also have seen the Galactica survive a near-miss from a nuclear warhead. The same way that a civilian supper-tanker would be easily sunk by the deck-gun on a WW-1 era U-boat a destroier could esily sink the submarien if they fought on the surface.