My thoughts on how this could be incorprated would be;

- Crews: Uses 4 & 3 times size of a regular cap ship

- Build Limit: 3 - (3 of 1 type, 1 of each etc)
(Types would include - Megacarrier / Super battleship / Planet killer doesn't destroy planets just heavy population/health damage)

- Access: Requires 75% military tech researched or several tier 7 techs followed by a tier 8 on a long timer

- Abilities: Maybe a single powerful ability equivalent to a level 6 regular capship ability?

- Balanced / Why good idea: Build limit / Crew cost / Hi research cost/time = heavy investment
Global message alert to other players (like global artifact discovery message) whilst under construction to allow time to counter & prevent deployment

Get at end game to break stalemate / make late game more fun
Gives the player a proper more unique & cool flagship
Sins = epic so therefore needs epic units / powers
Top rts's like C&c and supreme commander both made epic units a major selling point

thoughts / comments appreciated

Cheers

I'm fine with the present Cap ships, but I would prefer level 10 offense/defense at the outset. The super abilities are not quite as important. What TEC player wouldn't prefer another squadron over the missle battery ability on the Sova? Uber Cap ships wouldn't add anything to an already great game and might even turn a number of players off.

- How many crews would one use???
1 crew and 150 supply points (super capital ships would be roughly 3 times as strong as a standard capital ship).

- What would the build limit be???
1 super capital ship per team with a build time of 3 times as long as the existing capital ships.

- How accessible would one be???
Require owner to have at least 6 colonies and this super capital ship to have the cost be triple that of existing capital ships on top of the earlier crew and supply requirements.

- Would they have abilites or not???
Yes, different for each team.

TEC:
Magnetic Recycling - 3/6/12 (depending on level) structures orbiting a colony are pulled towards the super capital ship, devoured, and recycled into usable resources that go directly into your economy. Tactical structures preempt logistics structures.

Advent:
Purge Heathens - 30/60/90% (depending on level) of enemy ships are completely kicked out of the same gravity well this super capital ship is in and are required to phase jump back if they want to battle.

Vasari:
Phase Ram - 30/60/90% (depending on level) damage done to enemy ships and structures when this super capital ship phase jumps into a system and only slows down when it reaches the inner radius of the planet's gravity well. In other words, a straight line is drawn from the normal jump-in point to the planet and all ships and structures in that line's area of effect are damaged by the ramming.

- What would make them balanced???
All players should be able to tell where the enemy super capital ship is at all times (an icon will suffice), players should be alerted to where the super capital ship would be built, and all previous requirements stand on top of this.

- How many crews would one use???

I would have it roughly 4-6 crew's because it would cut down on normal capital ship use.

- What would the build limit be???

The build limit would be one or if you cant set a specific limit, just have it a high costing ship so people cant AFFORD to have multiple.

(Limited by capship crews or set number?)

- How accessible would one be???

id have it a T8 research item, also id have the ship require max levels of all the military weapon/armor/reactor/hull research items, it is after all a super ship. It would also need max level of capital crew, capital crew training (the skill) and fleet supply.

(Require 75% military research completed? or a tier 8 research with several long research prerequisites all on long timers??)

- Would they have abilities or not???

Its a super ship, id have it have one Unique ability except for the Advent ship which would excel in support unless the one ability was extremely good, other than that have it excel in primary weapons as well as have allot of them.

- What would make them balanced???

Have them move SUPER SLOW, think of it like a fortress, meant to be total ownage but takes years to get anywhere, this also makes them counter able, also like in a previous post, make then announced to others, i also think each faction should have their own UNIQUE ship, ie,
TEC have a battleship that has MANY auto cannons, big, long, blocky type of ship that can kill anything close to it (having no blind spots as well as anti fighter weapons). The goal of this type of ship is to do low to medium damage VERRY FAST.

Vasari have a missile ship with short ranged, hard hiting missiles, also having anti fighter missiles. also i would limit it to JUST missiles with long reload times, to balance it out. due to size, maybe 1-2 fighter squads MAX. Also would have a Phase stabilizer node, however no RA comes out of it, it would be big and slow, so this would equal it out. The goal of this ship is to do HEAVY damage slowly

Advent would have a super carrier. The carrier would be meant for just that, a carrier, not a front line battleship with beams, a anti fighter, super carrier who can launch lots of strike craft at once, start off with 10-20 squadrons, again it would be VERY slow. Also i would modify the fighters so that it carries special squadrons with reduced health (easy to kill, hard hitting fighters, something not hard to counter but can kill a frigate/heavy cruiser in 1 hit sort of thing, although to prevent pure frigate spamming of Anti strike craft, also have them build faster than the average fighter/bomber. The goal of this ship is to spam fighters/bombers which are easily killed however it can build them fast enough so it is not left defenseless against the other ships. it is essentially a support ship compared to the other 2 ships which are main role battleships.

Also make em expensive, im talking a super capital ship for LATE game, so im thinking like 50-100k credits, 30k metal, 30k crystal. Also make it take like 10-20 min to build, and have it level like a normal ship with 20-30X the normal cap ship hp. Also have em do super damage, but make it so that a fleet can still take them out with enough force (proper built fleet)but can own a small fleet, keep in mind, a proper fleet should be able to take it out, it should also prevent plain ship spamming.

(research time / access??? / Build cost / time??? / Global alert upon construction/completion???)

thoughts / comments appreciated

well, we all got our own opinions, you COULD modify the existing ships but IMO id prefer something that is going to be considered a super weapon more or less just mobile. and they don't really exist the way i describe it, although it comes down to if you play online where games tend to take place in early game, or if you play single player where they usually do not (i like to draw out games). keep in mind everyone has an opinion on what they think is cool or not, this is something i wouldn't mind seeing in the game, and may even create myself, its just an idea that is thrown out there in case anyone wants to do anything with it, the person asked a question in the OP and i answered it.

personally i hate playing against other players for games like this, i enjoy building an economy and exploring over worrying about getting my but kicked in the first 30 min, i like to defend rather than attack, this is my preferred play stile, you do have a valid point tho, the cap ships now are like, that is suppose to be scary (laughter). I was looking for something that would make a battle between 2-3 ships last for 30-40 min sort of thing while still keeping true to each races tactics/weapons. TEC is mostly autocannons, and nothing looks more sweet than just say, 50 low damage high burst rate/reload rate weapons going all out constantly. Vasari are a missile race, however, missiles are usualy heavy hitters, so i was thinking medium range or close range cruise missile type of deal which hit around 2000 dmg a hit, have 8 missiles shoot, and take 60 seconds to reload. as for Advent, a ship that HAS to say at the back of the fleet to survive, a ship that HAS to rely on massing fighters/bombers left right and center to win, of course strike craft are hard to kill with a fleet not designed to handle them, so what you do, you lower the health, and increase the range to 3-4 times what it is now. im thinking of a strike craft that hits 200 damage a craft but has like 50 hp, so it gets off one or 2 hits before it dies. of course this would require allot of tweaking to balance but it could be done.

On another note, i hate how this game has no units truly unique to a race so having only one ship for the super capital is also a must. that way you have a strategy to use which is unique to that race.

Also i might draw up some concept art or look around for a few pics/ideas of ships, i got a general idea of want im looking for in a "super capital ship" its just getting a model done of it and then coding it. Worse comes to worse i get myself a modeling program and take a but of time to learn how to use it and make them myself.

I agree with you. A drawn out game is much more enjoyable for me as well. I sit back and defend against pirates and AI strikes until my 4-5 Kols are all around level 8-10 then I go out on the attack with full ballistics/shield/armor research. Multiplayer with multiple star systems allows this kind of play as well, although I don't get to play them much.

Don't know if your a Babylon 5 fan, but the Earth Federation ships remind me of the TEC. Take a look...

http://www.b5tech.com/earthalliance/earthallianceshipsandvessels/earthcapships/earthcapships.html

Like the super-faction that's tailing the vasari? I like the idea of a super-capital 'anchoring' itself to a resource patch and becoming a factory - This would be interesting with a more organic universe system, where you could actually hide in an out of the way sector, using electronic warfare research to keep your opponents from getting a precise deep-scan on your activities.

No, MMO's ask too much cash and time, EVE seems like the only one that's remotely interesting though - since I'm a sucker for space.

When i think of a more natural universe I think of something like Independence War 2, with ships able to freely travel about a solar system, but only able to travel *between* systems from specific points, which would open the way for blockades in a strategy title.