Why not make a class of capital ship that is essentially a mobile base of operations? I don't mean just a carrier here, I'm talking about a true "mothership" or even a full mobile habitat. Imagine having the ability to just coast in near to a warzone with certain stocks with which you can refill/repair the fleet with whilst allied UIT shuttle in supplies, but AT THE SAME TIME be able to deploy in a relatively "safe" system, purchase a small strikeforce, and set bots to bring in trade goods and mine precious minerals to be sold at your own place? Vendetta is supposed to be flexible, unrestrictive, and fun, right? So where's the fun in building a station to have it destroyed while you're offline, or having a dormant capital ship because the war just isn't happening at the time? By combining the roles of capital ship and station, and making them available to only the VERY BEST of all-round players, then suddenly trading and managing resources becomes... well, a whole lot more fun than shuttling stuff from A to B. You would play the game from that ship. Launch off in your fighter, perhaps, to aid the front lines and leave defense to the AI. Send out repair bots long-distance to the battlefront while you position yourself in a high-yield heliocene sector and let the mining just go its merry way...

Great, I've gone off on a random idea again. >.> Now all I have to do is stop myself hitting the Post button.

EDIT: bugger.

Hmmm. Sort of like adding a StarCraft element to VO.

Me likes it.

all been mentioned before many times in many forms.

We're working on this. We have to redo the station interface menu to make a special one for capital vessels, make cap ships navigate better, and deal with some other problems. But yes, we're headed in this direction.

me does not want to own a cap ship, me wants a station, me will call it Yodia =D

You will be welcome to dock if you dont smell, hehehe

Yoda, you live in a swamp. does that mean we all can dock? :-)

People should not own stations, but merely additions to existing stations, like store fronts for trading there goods with other players.

Guilds on the other hand should be able to get stations, carriers, motherships, destroyers, etc.

John this brings up an intresting idea of how station owning will be brought into the game. It can't be made a guild only thing, MANY rich people would complain. But on the other hand, we cant have systems filled entirely with stations, not matter how big the universe gets,(because it will be expanding hopefully within a year from now) not just anyone can have it. This can be fixed with needed to get ore to build your stations. A suggestion given by someone saying how the cap ships could be given to players.

Think of it this way, no one person owns a city, it's a community project. We elect officials to take care of our city.

Same with stations. Perhaps a guild gets together and builds the backbone for a station and then each gets a small portion as there own personal space. If you have more resources you can expand your own personal space.

The only reason I see having a base NOT owned by an individule is protection, are stations going to be one per zone? multiple per zone? etc. Who's to stop someone from constantly blowing up your station. A guild would be able to protect a station easier then an individule.

personaly i think cap ships should operate a lot likt limited mobile stations. if that was true than there is no need for player owned stations.

player owned stations wouldnt have a limited supply of ships, weapons, etc. Also a player owned station should be able to hold enough firepower to take down a cap ship if it so foolishly decides to attack (Not by default, but your stations automated armaments should be upgradeable)

I think player owned Stations should have limited supplies for ships and weapons.

A crafting system coudl be introduced to allow for certain things to be put into production so by sellign resources and trading with the station it will be able to produce more things.

Also it will need supplies to keep it functional. So it will take some effort to maintain but can work out if maintained properly. Also it shoudl take 1 week to start putting something into production this would prevent the station from producing simply what is requested of it.

Also maintenance on the Strike force btos would be needed as well and repairs would require station resources. (This would prevent players from sitting defending then running back in for insta (and free) repairs (since it is no longer free). Also the stations would be able to sell some resources from its own production. Purchase rates could also be set to help gather needed resources from unassociated players.

So it would take a guild effort just to maintain the station not to metnion the cost of purchasing one as well as the time consumed by taking care of production.

Also a guild standing system could be introduced s guild can start up an entire business. The system would work like the current standing system with the addition of beign able to set standing for entire guilds (neutral stadning, alliance, KOS). Also a command line to do somethign like:
/reputation "Player" total=1000
or
/reputation "Player" +- 15.

Also the station owner(s) could provide missions to promote the gathering of resources for the station.

you guys are talking about an actual supply/demand tree with in the game. That would be great! All the stations user controlled all dealing with real competition.

...Thats years down the road and would require an installed user base of like 5000...

I think that such features will help aqcuire that population.

Supply/Demand only partially exists with the fluctuationg prices of products. So with the addition of player owned stations and such we can provide a much more player influenced economy as well as add purpose to the current cagro that is available. Also this would provide the crafting system that people want.

On the subject of griefing a station. Stations will eb protected by players and bots (bots require resources to be able to be provided for the station). There is only a limited space so stations should be difficult and expesive but worth the time. Also Stations could be outfitted with turrets. So 1 person cant really take out an entire station sicne that would be ridiculous. So the shear health and the NPC traders will help keep stations running while players are offline at times.

There should be no more than 2 stations per zone and there would have to be a limited number of zones that stations could be built on. A free space could be built on but to build in a faction owned territory a high standing would be needed.

Guys.

The stations can FLY. Like ships. That was my point.

really? nifty
I know when i first joined i tried for about an hour to push a roid into a station so I could see some devastation.