I personally would think that the ability to dock, say, 3 fighters on a space
ship the size of an M1 would be a given. I enjoy the flexibility of landing on my Elephant and instantly being in command of my flagship. And when the fight starts, I enjoy hopping into my fighter and taking care of business even more. Flying or sending out a fast little M5 is also very useful, as is the abilty to dock a small transport ship like a Falcon Hauler or Mamba Raider for quick emergency supply runs of larger freight. Without a lot of hassle involved. I really see no threat of the battleship taking the place of the carrier. As one of the guys said, it would take a billion dollar fleet of them to equal the fighter capacity of a single carrier. You can do that anyway just by telling a horde of M3's to follow me, protect me, whatever. I'd even like to see the M6's dock an M5 for the times I feel like tranfering to the M6 and flying it. Not to mention its use as a lifeboat if things go badly. Heck, the TS's should also carry a lighter of some sort.
It's the awkwardness of the resupply thing that bothers me most, tho. I've just spent many hours provisioning my little fleet of one TL, two M6's, two TS's, and about 25 fighters. I have only one transporter device, a capture, and it's on the TL. The Gomers won't sell me any. And the time spent buying jumpdrives one at a time from TerraCorp is ridiculous.
I don't think that any ship should be able to dock TS's internally, tho. These are very large ships and the space they would require, and the damage one could cause if things went bad, is not feasible. I do like the external docking idea, with the straight and level flight/no jumpng caveats. Those make sense. You couldn't be careening about the sector with a many thousand ton ship attatched. And given the vagaries of the jumpdrives and gates, jumpng or transiting a gate while attached would result in massive crashes every time. External docking of fighters to TS's (one at a time), and TS's to TL's and M1/M2's would be great, very useful.
Just my two cents worth.
