Was not aware of those.  Do you know anything about them? 

I'd like Vassari had some Capship with passive buff for all ships in some radius. Becouse they have no ship with passive buff except Skirantra with strike craft buff. And they need some ability to turn off star base abilities. Tec and Advent have such abilities, but Vassari have no chance to turn off Advent base abilities meteoric control and switching-off of engines.

Advent needs some repearing ability in the beginning of the game witch would help them in battle with Vassari's phase missles.

And Tec may be realy need a mooving factory))

Intersting, a smaller and cheaper cap ship might be better to help some of the current Capship shortfalls.

They're just old strings left in from the Diplomacy beta. You can still find them I believe. AFAIK, nothing came of them, other than the string files.

Yep

I could see these newer capital ships having more...civilian abilities....

For example, an Advent capital ship that spawns culture...or a TEC ship that boosts trade...or a Vasari ship that boosts resource production...

Not a huge fan of those but they would be very different from current capital ship abilities/roles/classes...of course, you could argue we have envoys to do that...but seriously, who builds envoys?

Cap Ships that help production make little sense... besides... there are already Diplomatic Cruisers that do that for some races.

Whether it makes sense or not, the Sova carrier already boosts production...my problem with simply adding 12 more combat abilities is that odds are they won't be all that unique...not that civilian bonuses are unique, but capital ships in general don't grant such bonuses and you can't place envoy bonuses on your own planets, so it would certainly serve a purpose...

Given the current entity modifiers, etc. that are in the game, additional abilities are simply going to be reusing the same bonuses already given by existing abilities...sure, you can get unique combinations (an AoE ability that regenerates hull and shields) or turn single target abilities into AoE (a debuff that reduces many targets' armor instead of just one), but we are still looking at the same bonuses/penalties...

To truly have new abilities, either 1) they are going to have to make new types of entity modifiers, etc. or 2) they are going to really have to think outside the box...

For example, you could have a time dilation field ability that reduces the linear/angular speed, weapon/ability cooldown, build/construction rate, and passive regeneration of all ships and structures that mimics a slowing down of time...or, you could have a singularity inducer that spawns a black hole on a targeted ship (think opposite of repulsion)...or, you could have an ion pulse that is an AoE ability interrupt...

The problem is, crazier ideas can be harder to balance or actually make useful...not impossible, but it really depends on what priorities the design team has, and good cap abilities may or may not be one of those priorities...

my money is on 3 ships that are functionally the same, but vastly different abilities to round out the factions. My guess right now is an anti-bomber class ship, but the abilities will be completely different between each faction (like, for example darvin's suggestions, but just the abilities). this way, bombers are taken care of, and factions are balanced simultaneously.

Bomber can easily be taken care of with the damage tables...if they need to add a whole capital ship just to deal with one type of unit then that's pretty sad...

Each faction already has a capital ship with a dedicated anti-strike craft ability, so this would be redundant.

TBH, the new caps are prob gonna have some tie-in with some new feature they are adding in, e.g. loyalist/rebel. They may also fill gaps or buff strengths, but thats where my money is.

Hee hee, the joy of mods, eh?

Anti-Starbase Capitals: just set all weapons anti-module, let it fire on anything, and adjust the DamagePercentBonus in Gameplay.constants **POOF** anti-Starbase/Structure Capital.  Then give it appropriate abilities.

Yeah, this is something 7DS has coming.

Anti-Starbase Cap or True Destroyer (Read it kills other heavies very well) are the only viable options I see. Unless its lame like some sort of Eco Support ship.