I was bored while walking home from school, so I came up with several ideas on how I think capital ships should be handled. Here they are, in no particular order:

Jumping
As you know, our current fighter ships have a fairly limitless in-system jump drive. This is very nice. However, it would pose signifigant problems on a capital ship. If a capital ship could travel from Sol II to Itan in a matter of minutes, there'd be no chance to fend off an assault. So instead I propose the following limitations on the capital ship jump drive:

Sector Limits- it is my conclusion that the capital ship should be able to travel no more than one sector per jump. Not only does this make travel slower, it also prevents easy escape and allows interception nets. Right now, if you are attacked, you can just jump to a random empty sector anywhere. If you were limited to the 8-sector grid that is 1 sector from your current position, that would no longer be possible. Attackers could station allies in a net around the target vessel and track it down very easily.

Distance Limits- considering the size of the current "Frigate", I don't think 10,000m from the nearest large object is an unimaginable requirement. Or even 20,000 m. After all, Avalons are slow and we don't want to make assault impossible.

Time Limits- it also seems to me that there should be some sort of a time limit on capital ship jumps. After all, the jump engine on that ship that size probably would take awhile to recharge. Putting a 1-5 minute "recharge timer" on capital ship jump engines would go a long way towards preventing quick escapes.

Interdictor Fields- Yes, I love Star Wars. But my idea is a little different. Basically, the "Interdictor Field" would be an addon to a capital ship that made it appear as a "large object" and prevented jumping in or out of a variably sized sphere around the possessing capital ship. Presumably, more advanced modules would have a larger radius of effect. The key point is that this field would only block the jumping of smaller ships, so the possessing ship could jump out with the field enabled, but its escorts could not. This raises an exciting issue of tactics. A commander can now choose to keep the field enabled and dock his fighters before warping out, preventing enemy reinforcements from warping in, but leaving his ship underdefended during the docking process. Or, he could turn off the field, wait a short time while his jump engines come back online (I'll think of a psudoscientific reason why jump engines would be disabled only during the "turning off" period later), then his whole fleet would jump at once. This would enable him to keep his fighter screen, but at the risk of having enemy reinforcements jump in right on top of him. It sounds like fun to me...

More to come later, so watch the thread. :P

I like all of your ideas except the distance limit. My opinion is that a cap ship would be able to carry better FTL drives, and larger reactors to power them. As such i think a cap. ship should be able to jump to any sector within a system, and even between systems under it's own power. I do however like the idea of a recharge time for the FTL drive that would prevent the cap ship from jumping too far-too fast, also it should be traceable (like ships are now as far as i know). That way the attackers would have time to race the jump plot a coarse and persew (assuming ti wasn't an interstellar jump).

I like most of them except the Interdictor Fields one. You can't just turn off being a overly huge battleship. I've talked about this a little before with some people, but never really posted it.
All ships (centaur and bigger?) should have a no jump zone sphere around them. This would not be a static number applying to all ships, the bigger the ship the larger the field. Smaller ships would be about 10m, very small and not needed, just adds to the realism of the game. Something like the Behemoth might be around 20m to 25m. Et cetera et cetera. This could also apply to asteroids and such so you don't have to get 3000m away from that 3m round asteroid.

When a capitol ship creates a wormhole it shouldn't be, bang, it's there. The ship should sit there for 30 seconds while the wormhole entrance expands for the ships enormous size.

Better yet, have no-jump zone size be a function of mass (i.e., gravity).

lovin the ideas, if the devs make it jump to any system they should make it use all of its energy on the jump, making a delay to get the weapon systems online (say 5 minutes?)

I dislike the idea of the extended distance for the Cap ship being able to warp. I can live with 5000 but anymore is quite a bit.

Consiering that the jump distance is based the ships closest point in relevance to the objects (so this already means that the ship will take longer to escape areas).

With the ships large weapons I think a lock-on time should be required though since the large weapons will be devstating. Perhaps a time based or perhaps based on heat/energy signature.

I'm not aiming for realism. These are all designed because it will be impossible to destroy capships if they can warp every 4 minutes to a random sector.

The interdictor field would be because if every ship were a large object, it would be very difficult for the fighter escort to travel with the frigate.

5000 should do, don't forget this thing aint exactly FAST getting there lol.

I like the interdictor field, and no a cap ship wouldn't create much of a gravitational disturbance without it cos as big as it is, its not a planet and gravitational forces are VERY weak. I think roid fields cause the same effect as a gravity field cos its a safety feature to stop you warping through a roid, not cos they're actually that massive :P

i'd say give it a standard jump distance, but a 5 min recharge

5 mins is a long time :S

I think capital ships should still use wormholes for travel between systems. Otherwise why not return to Earth?

A capital ship should be able to warp in weapons hot, just like in the Battle of the Line (B5). ;)

"Interdictor" sounds nice too.

If only we had the player base for a "Battle of the Line" that would be soooo cool :drools:

Why don't we wait and see how they handle first before we start adding or nerfing the firgate.

Suicidal Lemming,

i think the idea behind the interdictor field was that it was an artaficial field that the cap ship was generating. if the cap ship turnes the field off than sudenly everyone can jump again.

I agree with Lord Q, I think that cap ships should have much better jump drives than fighters, otherwise what incentive is there to dock with a cap ship before it warps? I remember reading somewhere that the devs planned to have cap ships that would "transport guild members into battle" or something like that.

But Phaser, think about it another way. If cap ships have such better jump systems, then how come it takes a long time for the cap ships in the backstory to travel? And how would that balance? A cap ship that could bypass the Itani-Serco border entirely makes no sense...

 

I agree with Margoth on the cap ships needing to use wormholes, then defenders could set up a defense at each wormhole like the safety net idea rogue had, otherwise like previously mentioned, why not go back to earth??

also i think the thing about "transporting guild members" wasnt meant to take them there faster, but en masse