Actually, a guy named -Blackseraph- did this.  What he did is he gave certain ships abilities that spawned certain frigates and cruisers.  It was really cool actually, and if he updates 1.1 it gets even better since abilities can cost you credits/metal/crystal.  What it was was a way to circumvent the 9 slot limit on frigates and cruisers, and it worked great.  I think he gave the ability to spawn the spawners to the construction frigs, and then he gave each spawner 4 different abilities for 4 different ships.  Like I said, real nice work.

Hey that's great news. I love seeing how people figure out solutions in modding. There are some really creative ways to achieve results.

To build on this, could we make hangars that build frigates/cruisers?  Is it possible to make those cruisers/frigates not jump out of the grav well?

I'm thinking of making a militia where you can level up a hangar. 2nd level the hangar spawns 5 frigates 2 squadrons, 3rd level spawns 1 heavy cruiser, 5 frigates and 2 squadrons.

It would be pointless though if they could just jump out of the grav well and join another fleet lol.

It is also important to note that if you plan on your mod to be played in singleplayer as well, keep in mind that the AI is not really equipped to handle "exotic" approaches to shipbuilding. One of the early ideas I had for my mod is to have one of the factions as mobile as possible, with mobile ship production facilities (essentially ships with abilities to spawn other ships which is, as was mentioned, quite doable) - but I had to abandon that approach because I realized the AI probably wouldn't know which ships to build in which quantities, or if it would even get stuck at the beginning phase because it couldn't create a capital ship factory per se.

I see no problem with "hangars" which are essentially capital ships with no movement ability. You could level them up and adjust their "fighter squadron" building capacity just like they're adjusted with vanilla ships. But keep in mind that, unless I'm mistaken, each capital ships can have up to two types of fighter squadrons. So at least some of those ship spawning abilities would have to use regular ability slots and then you'd end up with a regular ship which can, if it can move, also phase. Unless you can spawn fighter squadrons directly via an ability, I have no idea about that.

Yeah, I forgot about that. So I guess you could simply tie a custom fighter squadron using whatever ship meshes you needed to produce the effect Tkins wanted.

Wow really cool.

So those squadrons of frigates, how would they act? They would still have frigate properties right? Like they would move and act like a frigate, similar damage?  I don't want to have a bunch of frigates flying around like fighters at super high speeds, turning on a dime type o' thing.

EDIT

Is it possible to make ships spawn from planets? ie. planets spawn construction ships, could we add in frigates and cruisers?

Interesting. How effective are they in combat when they act like that?

I felt Kiedjor's mod! I'm helping him with it!

Yes they do rip..and the vessels they ripped was my 100+ ship army vs 6-7 of his carriers... now only a few brave souls in escape pods scattered across space ! But he changed it back, and now the mod is a 180% degree turn from what it was before! But is 10 000....% better!

 Proud to be his helper!

Justin S. 

EDIT*

Never mind the below. I see now that you are responding to each comment as you read them so my response is no longer valid.

Also, I'd be glad to work on that mod together. I have no clue what to do at all but wouldn't mind learning from you so I can do mine.

Thanks!

Uhh Teal, did you read what Blair and Sparda said?  It's the complete opposite of what Major Stress said!

Very very interesting, thank you very very much for letting me know about this. I think i saw some of blackseraphs work on the wincustomize sins mods site. i will have to recheck, but none of my old mods work with the new 1.1, but that is cool, i will just have to make some new ones?    Thanks again SpardaSon21 for the info.    Take care,

And keep Modding!! 

-Teal

Edited:       You are fine Tkins,    i like your posts, interesting questions.    thank you,

-Teal

Yes!!     I would be happy to see if we can get it to work. Let me see if i can get my mobile defense back up and running on 1.1 and then we can try your mod based on if i can get the md to work?  Is that okie? I'm still a newbie, a few months experience at modding, so im not close to anything these other people can do. But sometimes i get these neat ideas and with some luck and help i get them to work, haha, i've been fortunate.    Anyway, it would be my pleasure to see if we can get your mod to work. Take care,    See ya on the forum, holler at me if you want or need something.   

-Teal

 Escape pods now?  Hmmm... i would be very very very interested in knowing about escape pods   haha, that sounds neat, the ripping part too, haha..... but mostly the escape pod part.