2-5 would keep the erratic ones from buying such a ship. If you lose it, you lose a hefty wad of credits.

3 million is good. Just as it would be hard for a single player to down it, it should be hard for a single player to finance it.

What's the repair/recharge policy on the shields? Perhaps that should be the expensive part.

Shields are currently self-resetting/recharging. Changing that would be very . . . un-shieldlike.

I'm suggesting that after it goes down you can pay to recharge it as opposed to having a little resetting progress bar or something.

While we're at it, let's Supersize it!

1000m long, how about it? I suppose that could make dodging just a teensy bit tougher. And once it's that big, we can set it up so it can carry 50 gunmen max. The price can be 500 mil then, as long as you make the shields recharge at 10000 armor/sec. 1000 cu. 20 L ports, 15 S ports. Automatic battery that allows it to recharge at 500/sec, with 10000 energy max. Built-in radar extender to let it see in ANY SECTOR out to 10000m. TGFT will fly these out by the thousands and pirates will be screwed for life.

If anyone dares to take this post seriously, may this ship fly down from the sky and strike them where they sit.

Well, I did hear a rumor (from the devs) that we're eventually getting a player-controllable ship with specs something like the following:

Armor: 5,000,000
Shield strength: About two ragloads of missiles
Shield recharge: Really bloody fast
Cargo: 320 CU
Weapons 21 Large-turret
Mass: A lot
Length: 733m
Thrust: 20,000 N
Spin torque: 2,000 Nm
Max speed: 30m/s
Turbo speed: 180m/s
Turbo energy: 50/s

I just thought it might be good to start with something a little less extreme.

yeah but like cap ships are big and like easy to hit. and yah the behemoth is big hence its name but like doding 4 sets of swarms and 4 turrets at the same time and like is hard and stuff...like just increase the ship size also to fit it.

man i am so high

Make shield recharge 4,000/s and strength to 21,000 and make it slow... REALLY slow... like 25m/s max speed and 75m/s max turbo. UBER slow. If anyone's played BF2142 NS then I'm imagining a gameplay similar to the Goliath. Lot's of turrets, heavy weaponry, hard to kill, requires teamwork to take down, but UBER slow. It would deal with the "hitting it" problem without it not being able to fit in the dock. I'm not a heavy ship kind of guy but just the act of taking one, that's fully loaded with players, down with a few friends would be very very fun.

Nobody in their right mind would take this tub out until munitions are destructable, if not outright targetable.

The speeds you envision, ShankTank, would make it tactically utterly pointless.

Also, the L ports are obviously for anti-capital ship weaponry (once that is implemented), not for anti-fighter armaments. They could be hard-wired to the frame, for all I care, with a mega-rail or two, and some nukes. I distinctly remember a mega-rail suggestion having been made at an earlier point, not too far into the past. I'm too lazy to dig it up now, though.

Well, I envisioned as somewhat of a tank or APC with heavy weaponry. Say if you're going to go pick up guarded cargo in a sector, then by the time someone gets a Jackal to that cargo then there would be almost nothing the defenders could do about it. In a defense scenario the goal is to get rid of the Jackal before it gets to the point. And if the max turbo is 80m/s anyways, wouldn't it just make it an even better bomber? Tactically, in a pvp skirmish, it would be able to break up tight groups and provide a safe point for fighters with all the turrets it has on it making it the sole advance point in a battle. (very similar to the use of capital ships in battles).

I can see how destructible ordinance would allow it to fit the above roles better, though.

by the time someone gets a Jackal to that cargo then there would be almost nothing the defenders could do about it

Are you really stupid, or just not counting? A single defender could grab a rag, bomb the piss out of it, warp out, refit, and reengage before it even left the sector. Once the shields are down, this thing becomes peel & eat.

Destructible ordinance is not an option, but a conditio sine qua non for capital ships.

WE ARE IN AMERICA TOSHIRO SPEAK ENGLISH

Majority of VO players are educated enough to know some latin phrases and Toshiro used a very common one.
However for you that have IQ of a trout and skipped high school education here is an explanation:

Sine qua non (pronounced as anglicized /ˈsaɪni kweɪ nɒn/ or more Latinate /ˌsɪneɪ kwɑː ˈnoʊn/)[1] or conditio sine qua non (plural sine quibus non) was originally a Latin legal term for "(a condition) without which it could not be" or "but for..." or "without which (there is) nothing." It refers to an indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient.
As a Latin term, it occurs in the work of Boethius, and originated in Aristotelian expressions.[1] In recent times it has passed from a merely legal usage to a more general usage in many languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, etc. In Classical Latin the correct form uses the word condicio, but nowadays the phrase is sometimes found to be used with conditio, which has a different meaning in Latin ("foundation"). The phrase is also used in economics, philosophy and medicine.

Bojan, there are many wise and worthy men who have dedicated their lives to outsmarting the noble trout. Few of them have succeeded half as well as they'd have liked, despite years of focused practice with the fly and the rod, and years more of reading on the subject.

Insult not the trout!

I stand corrected Lecter. :)
Just a small digression.... it all actually depends on how far are you willing to go.
When everything fails you still have dynamite. No trout ever outsmarted that. :P

Well things like capships aren't supposed to go solo. They need fighter escorts indeed (Jackal>fighters>bombers); (fighters>bombers>Jackal); (looped etc.). This is why I think the Jackal will provide a very fun dimension for group skirmishes.

"When everything fails you still have dynamite. No trout ever outsmarted that"

So THATS how you mine for fish!

Btw, this suggestion reminds me of those armored stagecoaches they used in the old west to transport valuable goods. Looks good enough I guess, but needs more tweaking and balancing.