I was think...
When Capital ships or even Stations(i don't know if this is considered or not) become available, maybe make them Buildable instead of buyable...for example, instead of buying a capital ship for set amount, make the user/guild have to first build a station which can in effect give them the option to build a capital ship...Say the members of the project would have to buy material and bring it to the build site...this way it would be a team effort to construct such things...just a thought...another thought, maybe make ships more expensive...with options to buy used and new ships...and definately multipassenger ships would be a plus...

You do know that it takes several months to build airliners, and several years to build aircraft carriers, right? Imagine if guilds had to build their own large scale ships on that kind of timeframe.

uhm.... CripppledPidgeon, this is a video game. Keep that in mind :)

I like the idea of constructing, or hiring someone to contstruct cap ships and stations. It would add two elements to the game at once, manufacturing and cap ships. It would allow for construction guilds . . . guilds who hire themselves out to build things for others. Could even add an engineering skill to go along with this. Another idea would be to add ship yards for cap ship constructing, or even normal ship construction too. You then have three options for a guild, a ship yard, a station, or a cap ship. It would have to be limited though so guilds dont get too powerfull.
Then there is the question of what to put inside of guild station's. It would be great if guilds could only offer items their members can make to sell (once manufacturing items becomes available). That way the players get a place to sell their stufff and the guild gets a percentage of each sell. Guilds can even sell non-members items for a slightly greater percentage of profit. As for trade items, the guild manufacturers could put a demand on certain trade goods that the station will buy so they can continue to manufacture things without a lot of travel. That would allow other players to trade with said guilds station. Guilds could also make their own missions to offer but that might be tricky to do.
Yet another idea (for the distant future) would be to allow players with enough engineering or manufacturing skill to modify ship designs and add thier own versions (such as the corvus vulture variant) like other factions do.

Just a few thoughts that came to mind while reading this post.

if a guild owns or builds a station, they should be responsable for every item that station sells. They should either have to buy the items an bring it to the station for the station to sell, collect the items, or bring what is needed for the station to build the items to sell. The station would only have the ammout of the item that a guild brings. So if I put 50 wraiths on my station, an they sell out, then they can not be bought from my station untill I restock it or have the station make more of them. If I have the station set to make items as its needed then the station would need to keep a supply of ores an other meterials to build the equipment.

I do like the idea of haveing to build the capital ships instead of buying them. Or just have a very few lower end ones you can buy from NPC stations and only higher better ones that are buildable only. And if a guild owns a capital ship they need to own a docking station for this ship. Somewhere they can dock it when its not in use so its not let to float around in the way of other players. If a guild owns a space station, then the ship could be docked to the station when not in use. This would add more eye candy to the game to see a capital ship docked to a station when its not in use.

I have alot of ideas on this subject as it is one of the things I am look most foward too be added.

{FRG} TyGeR

Good idea tyger having cap ships docked when not in use, but they should not be limited to guild stations. They should be able to dock at any friendly station with an empty docking port available. Cap ships should have thier weapons auto disarmed if they enter newbie zones (for obvious reasons). All of these things would have to have upkeep too. Cap ships would need refueling and rearming for instance, not to mention they would be costly to repair damaged armor and systems (would like the ability to target and damage specific systems on cap ships so they can be incapacitated and captured/looted instead of outright destroyed if players were so inclined). Stations would have the most expensive upkeep I would imagine, and the controling entity of whatever system they are in should charge a tax to allow them to be there. Ship yards can either be an add on for stations or another kind of station in themselves. That leads to another idea. It would nice to have various kinds of player owned stations, like mining stations (near roid fields), military barracks (near borders), ship yards (self explanatory), and regular generic stations just to name a few.