Mimir, many official factions may place an emphasis on smaller ships, but the reason people like me are looking for something like exclusive capship access for official factions is because it would allow official factions to fulfill their role.
Take the [LN], a faction I have the most experience with. We have the Anchorage, the Durango, the Cloverfield and the Maryland. As far as I remember, these four battleships represent the core battleship force in the faction, where the latter three represent its realistically deployable armour (nobody really fights in the Anchorage). There would be more, but there's no reason for it, because you can barely fight in the battleships, and other smaller capships, within the faction.
The fights are usually taken by indies on both sides of the lawful divide, more often than not piling in willy-nilly. That's their right currently, but it ruins some snubfights and severely unbalances others. During my tenure with Joe as the Fleet Admiral, I found myself using these capital ships more often as deterrants to capship indies of either side, to prevent them from severely disrupting a small-ship fight.
I literally used these ships as vessels to police fights, not to actually fight myself. That's their routine purpose now - it is a rare day when these ships are actually deployed in genuine aggression. They're continued to be used this way as their primary purpose - we simply can't fly around in them, because there's too many already.
As for Spiritar's accusation that disco is a medieval society.... I present you the recent riots and demonstrations in the developed world countries where normal people say "we are the 99%". This implies the existence of a ruling elite whose power stems from excessive wealth. My point - the world is like this, not just disco. Accusing discovery of being some social backwater is silly, its just a reflection of how society works and has always worked. You're right, fighting against it is pointless. Better to join it instead, lest you find yourself part of the 99% of oppressed workers, and not the 1% of the ruling elite.
Maybe exclusive capital ships isn't the answer. I don't know what is.
Somebody said earlier that they didn't believe cosmetic items alone would be acceptable, but I disagree. People spend just as much on purely cosmetic items in free to play games as they do on items that actually affect performance. The problem is the volume of data that this would add to the mod. Duplicates of countless ships for many factions, each changing when a faction becomes unofficial and another takes its place sounds... tedious. Furthermore, a lot of effort has gone into keeping the size of the mod low.
I do believe official factions need something. For somebody like me, whether it happens or not wont discourage my participation in my chosen official factions, but it does affect others. Official factions put an awful lot into the game and provide a lot of structure - all the laws you see, the structure that gives people the certainty about their actions ingame, was provided by official factions. All they ask for is a bit of respect for the amount of work they put in, something which has abjectly failed to materialise through my years here.
Indies put things into the game too. Some roleplay, some do it well. Not all indies are bad, but the ones who listen, understand and provide response are outnumbered and outgunned by those who do not. Furthermore, being an indie means that you have made no commitment to actually do anything constructive. Being an official faction member, however, means you're making that commitment, and submitting yourselves to the judgment of those higher in the hierarchy.
What tangible reward do they get for that commitment? Legitimacy? Respect? Faction members are, more often than not, shown neither. This wasn't the case a long time ago, but the nature of discovery is that it changed from a small village where everybody knew each other and new arrivals could be integrated, to a city, where nobody really knows each other because there are too many people.
Faction members have sacrificed their freedom just by their action of joining the faction. When every indy player asks "what have you done to deserve my respect?", it's just frustrating. The presence of factions, relative institutional stability and the formation of rudimentary laws and regulations in different parts of space? What about commissioning somebody to make a cool new ship for the mod? How about trying to advance their factions diplomacy, storyline progress and relative strength in the pixel universe? What about all the work that goes into effectively managing what constitutes an actual labour force, where the motivational tool required is not money as a real job, but fun. Where labour is provided voluntarily, through interest and entertainment?
Forgive me if I look down on indies, but I think the vast majority of them have done sod all compared to their respective official factions. Some of them date back several mod versions. The [IND], which doesn't even have to deal with many of these issues, dates back to before I joined the server.
I already earned my place here, I wont be proving the legitimacy of my place to anybody. Nor should factions be expected to do the same. They earned it already.
