An idea I took from the "Is Polaris dead?" thread... I didn't post it there because it would be a shameless hijack.
Would it be possible to fly some kind of weapons platform? You could even get different levels of it, say small ones would be the least expensive, but they would have the least armor and weakest weapons as well (Weapons are locked, people can't slap on a whole bunch of things that the real weapons platforms don't have. Like pulse cannons), mostly being an anti-fighter platform. Medium would be a step up in everything and be a better anti-fighter platform, and large or heavy WPs would have the most armor, weapon ratings, number of turrets, excell at fighter defense and have some anti-capship ability, but would cost as much as a cruiser, if not more.
Each WP would be very slow, have horrible turning, and power supplies with high regen, but a low capacity. Example, say your SWP (Small Weapons Platform) has 8.33 refire turrets. You could fire all of them for, say, 3 seconds, after which your energy is spent. Wait a second, and it's back up to full. This also demonstrates why the weapons would have to be locked on, and no-one can change 'em. That would simplify things a lot when it comes to power.
This is the real true story of rock and roll; it was not about anything more then, how to live your life, as a gangster, in sartorial splendor, and turning the world into a place where normality would never return again...- Malcolm McLaren