We are still debating whether or not civilian capital ships can return to capital ships docks large enough to fit the ship. As docks and the station itself are quite an investment, especially a large one, the station capable of hosting civilian capital ships would itself be a valuable target for attacks. The alternative is lone mining ship operating from a minimal station. Allowing players to risk much expensive station to cut the hauling distance sounds like it would generate interesting content more for pvp'rs too. In ideal world both options would be viable, so both options would be used and the content for others would be diverse.
What is certain is that capital ships are not able to collect directly any resources, so every time a capital ship owner wants to get more resources they have to leave the safety of their capital.
Would not a large station with "valuable docks" be a target regardless if you allowed capital ships to return there or not? Capital ships will have to be built by some station with docks somewhere anyway, correct? If cap ships were allowed to warp to any docks large enough, would this not provide large companies able to hold such stations a pretty substantial advantage when it comes to safety, SZ utilization, and ways to haul ships and cargo 100% safely within the belt when they already have a numbers advantage? What is the drawback of a CCAP now compared to an MCAP that the CCAP can hypothetically enter the belt if our company is rich and has multiple stations that act as personal warpgates?
Clans with very high amount of active players playing 8+ hours a day will knock out multiple stations with docks no problem. Once they get a few stations with cap docks on them in the right places, it will only serve to accelerate the rate at which they may safely accrue rare ore, making it easier to throw up new ones, etc, and more easily transfer smaller ships, supplies, people, whatever, directly and 100% safely between their multiple stations within the belt via their invulnerable
civilian capital ship. You cannot make it expensive enough for large companies without making it impossible for medium sized companies and down to also achieve.
Respectfully, I don't see the motivation in providing even more 100% safe mechanisms to the already substantial variety of them that exist, especially potentially deep inside the belt which has been time and time again hailed as the place where space would be at it's most savage yet the current reality is the very few people that are out there are already quite safe by the sheer vastness of space per capita (per endo?). No one is being forced to be in belt where
theoretically the most valuable resources are, but if they are there, shouldn't we err on the side of allowing pvp in this instance rather than yet another way to categorically deny it? There is a pretty big difference between companies having to leave their capital ship at the edge of the belt vs directly on top of any arbitrary spot within the belt. In the Eos belt, I'd say that's around ~650/2 km to be more precise.
I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong and this somehow, along with other changes, gives an environment that encourages players to choose activity and movement and life (and death) in the PvP areas of this game. Everyone has their own perspective, and I'm fully transparent that mine is from that of a small group of friends that likes small scale pirating/escorting and some large scale pvp built on top of systems that makes it meaningful like mining, industry, and the territory control and conflict that goes with that.
Yes I'd agree that shooting up an unarmed mining ship is pretty pointless but from comments all over that is what many seem to think the game is all about.. shooting stuff.
The "PVP rush" towards the moon, once the new patch drops will, be big, but it will fall off just as quickly as the "pirates" get "bored" due to a "lack of content" again as they completely miss the scale of the moon and underestimate the effort they will need to put in to find people to kill and yeah, it's not about fights here either, just about killz. Fights are scary as they mean a risk of losing.
In general, I think most of the vocal PVP players/groups have a very short term focus and do not think beyond their immediate surroundings. It's the ones you do not see here, the groups you hear little about, that you should be on alert for.
There's a section of the community that wants to profit as pirates or paid escorts to protect against said pirates. We're not the mindless 12 year olds you continue to imply we are and only care about "killz" and "shooting stuff". There's nothing wrong with our attention spans, our intelligence, or our creativity in approaching problems. Every system in this game supports another in some way, whether that's design, "PvE" elements, or the PvP elements. Please stop with the implications and passive aggressiveness. We have just as much a right to campaign for our preferred style of play as you do. There's a lot of issues with PvP right now (or almost the complete lack of it, more specifically) just like any other system in EA, and is EA not marketed as a way for players to be vocal and contribute to the future of the game while it is in development?