This idea has been bouncing around different discord chats and has been getting input from members of the dev team for a little while now, so you might've seen some earlier iteration of it already. Here's a condensed version of the general outline of the idea so far:

Three main issues this project is hoping to address:

1. Only viable way of taking down a properly maintained POB is to capspam it to oblivion, and the only way of countering that is to capspam the capspam right back, so unless the fight is between two well-populated factions, your typical base siege ends up bein half a dozen BS on each side logging, dying, waitin out the respawn timer, repeating - which doesn't lead to that exciting of a gameplay loop.
   
2. The Heavy Lifter/Hercules, while lacking any practical use, was a nice little piece of worldbuilding - Literally a space forklift meant for taking cargo pods off of transports moored on planets and hauling it to port. The only reason it was picked as the base builder ship when the plugin was first introduced was because it was the least used ship on the server at the time.
   
3. Once you have your base up and running, the builder ship has no use anymore and it's often just scrapped.

That is why Hercules is going back to being the space forklift that it was, and a multipurpose ship is being made to cover all manners of POB shenanigans.

The ship itself would have a unique set of stats:

• Small/medium transport size
  
• Generous powercore
  
• Beefier-than-usual shields/hull
  
• Faster impulse but no thrusters
  
• No gun mounts other than 1 special "gun" hardpoint

The "gun" would be what gives the ship its multipurpose role, and it'd function as more of a module, not a conventional gun. it'll be able to mount one of 5 special modules (shiplocked so only this ship can use em) each with their own specific function:

• A Construction Module that'd have no firing capability but will enable the ship to function as a base builder.
  
• A Demolition Module that'd essentially be a big scary forward gun, balanced specifically to be super-effective for base sieges (and more viable than typical capspam).
  
• A Repair Module that'd essentially act like a repair gun, using Jaz's POB repair idea/plugin. This part needs testing, but could potentially make it a force_ori gun with the hp_fire facing to the side rather than front, which at least in theory should allow the ship to kinda "orbit" the base while repairing under fire.
  
• A Smelter Module enabling the ship to make use of mining bonus system. Mounting this module will add 900 cargospace to the ship (subject to change).
  
• A Freight Module allowing the ship to be used as a transport (mainly intended for base supplies). The ship in this configuration will be considerably tankier than other transports but will have no defensive firepower. Mounting this module will add 1800 cargospace to the ship (subject to change).

So when you build your base instead of havin to toss the now-useless builder, you can keep the ship and instead just swap out the construction module for a repair module and park the ship on the base for defensive purposes, or if your base is centered around mining you can swap it for a smelter module and start using it as a light miner, etc.

Additionally, once an all-in-one ship like this is made into the go-to choice for various areas of POB interactions, that could make rebalancing actual siege encounters something worth considering, since at the moment that's not a feasible option as it'd require a full cap balance overhaul.

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Multipurpose POB Ship
Sketch

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The plan is to make the ship itself along with construction and demolition modules first, implement them and adjust the pob system around it, and once all the kinks are ironed out come back and add the other three modules for ingame use.