...get caught in the planet's gravitational field and begin to slowly start a freefalling orbit.

yes, I want that extra step of "hahaha" and strategy.

but mostly "hahahhahahahahhahahahaha"

Impossible.

well, that does kindof stink...

i'm pretty sure the AI are smart enough to stay out of the planets gravitational pull. i mean i'd rather park my taxi above the atmosphere safest distance from the planets gravity. come on, it's not like the planet is a backdrop part like hw2 uses, it's the real thing that is constantly moving and always in animation regarding rotations of the planet and cloud movements. wow speaking of cloud movements couldn't you guys somehow alter some of those clouds and replace it with some sort of light as if it is seen as another ship cruising by?

imagine the activity of your planets airspace live in action. talk about future specs that would really set the realistic accord of the games depth.

There are no parts in Sins and you can't blow the engines away. As far as I remember Ironclad looked at the possibility of modular ships but decided against it for now.

no, from what blair said they agreed to modularity on only the largest of ships. i.e. capships and not frigs

dont underestimate me SV.  I've been with this longer.

Wow, this thread has really... um.. progressed.

All i have to say is i wonder how close to the planets surface we can actually get.

Enough not to get destroyed.   And since Schem is more likely to be correct than me, I don't know what will stop the capital ships from crashing (unless engines aren't one of hte modules).

FEAR THE MIGHTY BATTLETAXI!
Perhaps a special weapon where a load of battletaxis get near a ship, get it in a tractor beam and throw it into a planet/large astriod

Back to the realms of sanity (dont worry only for a few mins my loyal fans), i think Lharrs system might be a tad too much micro (if i understood it right, only just woken up from naptime), perhaps having my system exept maybe a slider bar which you use to select the ratio of escorts to actual trader ships? would be good as too far one way and your open to attack and too far the other way and your not going to have a very large inflow (also means the trade rouits in safer areas can have less escorts while the ones near the enemy can have more).
Amount of ships per trader station wise, couldent it simply be each 'trade station/market' or whatever were gonna call it has a set amount of tradeships (both escorts and trader) avaliable.

who leaked the great US's army plans...
(( <_< >_> ))

if the US army tried this they would probably end up getting a British ship caught by mistake...

Back onto Sins, are astriods going to actually be damaging in some way? i mean is it possible that an astriod field is a place that your ships should avoid (as you may loose a few ships) but you can decide to anyway (to get the surprise on someone).

ah, I think I heard something about this WAY BACK WHEN. (like, way WAY back when...)

I think asteroids if collided with are damaging, and something about how one of the TEC's magnetizing abilities can cause debris to accelerate into (and damage) opposing ships.

now that would be cool, causing damage to v ships by just flying into an astroid field...