From post: 110138, Topic: tid=7616, author=Jack Dandy wrote:Another small, helpful edition would be a dedicated Fleet/Stored Cargo screen.
Also, a normal nickname generator.
Fleet: Basically show you just how many ships you currently have, their status, current objectives, etc...
Stored Cargo: Show you how much cargo you have stored across stations and hangars in the game, and of what kind. The option to store things for future needs is good, but without a way to track them it gets kind of cluttered. Remember people are jumping across systems here!
Normal nickname: It may be just me, but it bugs me to see people named N.H.K, G.T.H and strange names like that. A simple nickname generator would be better and more immersive to the gameplay.
+1
I like your ideas. Maybe this could be extended to be a form of an "overview screen", where you have different tabs: fleet, storage, quests/tasks (active distress calls, contracts and missions can be reviewed here as some people already requested), ship stats, and more
About capital ships: I think, EM does not need player controlled capital ships.
But I like the suggestion to have a capital ship (or many of them^^) in your fleet, you can use as a mobile base with a limitied jump frequency (recharge time/engine cooldown) to land on, refuel, etc. This has already been written here by someone, but I did not find the post again. Landing on (moveable) ships could make it very amazing e. g. when a capital ship jumps in and releases its hold of deadly fighter squadrons. Reminds me of X3
From post: 110117, Topic: tid=7616, author=Avenger wrote:But I was thinking if it is possible to add some form of extra bite to the civvy classes in the form of limited fire arc point defense lasers that are auto manned by the science ops and the navigator if you have them onboard.
[...]
I was thinking something in the line of adding 2 weapon slots to the civvy boats that only become available if you have a science ops and a navigator on board.
Fire arc of maybe 180 degrees left and right of the ship (or the back and the belly), just a dual barrel cannon of the players choice, no additional barrels from a relay system, maaaaybe the faster firing of a cooling system but not really a must have.
Nice idea. It would make a bit more use of the crew and improve their presence in a fight. I would say there should be certain frames, which have the belly/back or starboard/port side (or other combinations/single turrets) guns built in, but these can only fire if manned by crew members. So there could be more variety in the available ship frames. The built-in turret guns could show up as weapon slots (as you said before) where the player could change a standard defense gun (almost no wepaon energy drain) for more powerful ones (drain weapon energy more).
However, WWII gives a precedent for multi crewed "fighter" aircraft (night fighters and several other types had a weapons op's even before the idea was invented; the Boutlon Paul Defiant even had a 4 gun turret (as used in a Lancaster bomber) amidship behind the pilot. We already have the facilty to have a turret gunner in MP - perhaps an AI gunner in SP would be worth exploring (as opposed to a weapons officer):)
- if you move away from white you can't use the alternative colour more than once. 
About civilian ships: when it gets to the point that most pilots pick a civvy ship over a military ship for combat, you've made a mistake. The scales are no longer balanced.