I managed to read about half this thread and found a few things that are repeated over and over again.
1. How to restrict cap ships ( from any old joe blogs who has enough cash )
2. How to restrict top end gear ( from the same joe )
3. The faction or no faction question.
First off might i say i am not an experienced roleplayer as some of you guys and girls are and that i dont fly anything bigger than my large train for tradeing and my VHF for dieing :rolleyes:
But, i have played on a server who would issue a player with an XML of a ship or guns or high end gear ( shields etc ) only when they had shown maturity and sense when playing on said server. This would be issued by an admin or faction leader ounce an amount of time had passed. Ounce this was issued you could then insert this xml into your game files and voila, one set of gear could be bought at a named station.
I dont know the tech's of this or indeed if this was doable on Disco, but it made the player actually work for his right to fly large or faction specific ships. And to work more on his rp rather than log on, powertrade, buy a cap 8 ship and whore away.
This is just something that i have seen before and it seemed to work. For factions it was generally easier to get your xml because you were under the all seeing eye of said faction. For indies it took a bit longer as it was an admin who issued the xml, and they couldn't watch them a lot of the time. ( real life takes first spot in my eyes )
So from first starting you could fly up to bomber then you had to earn anything after that.
Just a thought that would encourage rp and sensible play.