Right now if I want to unload something from my capital ship at a station that doesn't have capital dock, I need to Jett it, then pick it up with an xc or something & store at the station. And it's really really annoying especially if I forget to load a ship before I launch from a capital station. Then I must go to a capital station or I'm stuck in space.

This will be so capital ships can unload & load ships & other cargo at any station but they will be exposed like if they are parked & not docked like they are in a capital station Docking Bay. If your ship is attacked, your ship will disconnect from the station with you ending up inside the station always.
To start the transfer again you will have to reconnect with the station manually.
It'll allow to load & unload anything just like normal.
Every station(excluding capital stations) can connect with 4 capital ships at once

This increases convenience for capital ship owners who often find they forget to load in a ship & will still have same kind of risk of being attacked mid transfer. (don't dare anyone come saying it takes away the risk of cargo getting stolen mid transfer. That's definitely not intended in this case)

I'll 1+ if you drop everything you were trying to load into the station. Like if it’s a rbh it should take time to move it since it’s huge, so a timer should be implemented that will allow the attackers a chance to steal it if you really trying to load stuff from the cap ship to the station.

The bigger the cu the longer it takes.

-1

There should be risks for you and opportunity for me.

Lets be honest just do trades in nation nfz when no one around. There isnt any risk and u cant shoot in nation nfz. A method of moving items is much needed and nothing to say it cant be limit to say just nation space .
Any ideas to help movie items faster then the tedious dropping and scooping method is a +1 from me.

-1 don't forget to load a ship on your capship

it could be a large port high drain weapon to go in the front, with a cu/sec unload speed. allowing you to connect with the station from like 300m but forces you to drop shields and you cant dock in any station until shields are back. so for sacrificing firepower and defense you have a way to still put you cargo at high risk but helping you still be able to unload. the capitols were made to only be able to dock at certain stations for a reason and i remember they spent time debugging that feature before. idk why they would just remove it.
so for stats on the weapon, make it like a mining beam,
grid draw: 50 (like the qbeam)
cu/sec transfer max is 10 still allowing you to unload the whole goli in 1 min (quite fast)
i think it should only be able to transfer items 2 ways between capitols and other capitols or stations.
you can only start regaining your shields once you disconnect.
make it manufactureable or a drop from voys or something to kinda limit its use.

Related threads:

Cargo Cache (2022)
External Capship Docks in border regions (2021)
Player Cappies: The Next Steps after VO 1.8.257 (2013)
Capship Shuttle Craft (2014)
Remote Capship docks for regular stations (2015)
Capship shuttle (2020)
External Trident Docking (2015)
Shared Inventory (2022)

"The current goal is to expand capship docking capabilities to fully include all Capitol stations. That'll be the next-stage. Other stations may be added ad-hoc after that."

-Inc

Thanks for the insight, jak!

I think it'd be really cool to see some capitol ships berthed at stations occasionally.

If you want to add some convenience external docking arms or whatever seem like an interesting idea. There should be some limitations put in place however. Length of stay for one (10 minutes? 15, I don't know).

As for adding risks, maybe make the ship somehow vulnerable? Deplete the power cell, and slowly ramp up the recharge rate after undocking. No reason to run the ships reactor while docked, use shore power. Drop the shields and let them start charging at their normal charge rate after the power cell is fully charged. This would definitely create some risk, as the ship couldn't just loiter at dock forever. Eventually it'd be evicted and set adrift while it powers up. That means everybody knows that for some little while, that ship WILL be vulnerable pretty soon.

Don't think we need to make caps more vulnerable to anything. Nor I feel like more risk is needed.

Length of staying connected can be 10 minutes after transferring (after the transfer has stopped). Optionally maybe also add ability for other player to request the currently connected player to disconnect. If no response is given & nothing is being transferred, it'll auto disconnect the cap from station & let others connect for transfer.

As for how close you need to be to station, inside NFZ is enough distance or npc will go crazy at times.

U could just sit in nfz and no one can shoot u lol

That's nation space thing. + you can just go out of nfz & shoot missiles. Capships are mostly attacked by missiles only anyways.