Is it possible to limit a ship to one per player?

Sure, make it use XXXX fleet resource. That way, you only got room for one.
But back on topic, I have not seen any options that would allow you to do so.

Firstly, I think people may need a little more info:

You mean one for the whole game, or just have one fielded at the same time?

Is this the only ship they will field at all?

Do you want Capitol Ships available?  (If not, make it cost 16 Capitol Ship slots)(Question for that, were this to be the case, anyone know if you can set a game to start with a certain ammount of fleet supply points or cap ship points?)

Those, in my opinion, should be answered for anyone who may have an idea as to whether this can be done, and if there's not a direct way, perhaps somebody can find a back door, like dedjal's suggestion.

That said, I'm not a modder.  Try asking one of the Distant Stars mod staff, they may know.  Ryat and Draakjakkt come to mind.  (Not sure if I spelled the second right...)

-Twilight Storm

there is no true way to limit a ship to built once/one at a time only

Twilight_Storm did give a good work around by making it cost 16 Capitol Ship Slots but that limits your ability to build other caps (settting the max cap ship slot to 31 may help with that but would allow someone else to just build 31 caps and defeat the purpose of having a single ship, remember quantity has its own quality)

First capitol ship is free--make the cost of that one completely ridiculous.  Then there will be only one.

@Twilight_Storm Yes, you can set how many fleet supply and Cap ship points you start with. It's a value in the first tech for the fleetsupply (tech 0)

The only REAL way of only being able to ever have one ship of a certain type is to have the homeplanet START with a special building that has an ability that can spawn this ship. (You can even make this ability cost resources) Then you can tie the ability in to a self destruct option for the building, so that if you build this ship the building self destructs.

Riviaguy- that sounds pretty awesome, actually. Except I'd planned it to be 'One at a Time,' not 'one ever.' as in, they can have one out but if it gets fragged it's replaceable... still, I might do what you said here

Could you tie low health to an autocast long-term phase-out?  I.E., if ship health gets very low, phase-out kicks in, and it "leaves the battle".  This gives you the option to return it to friendly space & a repair bay, to get repaired.  If you lost it, you'd lose it permanently - but losing it would be much harder.

One ship at a time, might be accomplished by using the spawn ability of the fleetbeacon, which is predominantly used by the vasari, however i have seen some mods give this to the other races as well.

But if you spawn a ship this way, you can determine its lifespan, i believe, same as spawning from combatturret, though combatturret spawns only frigates (you can build "like" capitals here (frigate equivalents, but without leveling) and other frigates of course)

say a lifespan of 900 seconds = 15 min. Have the respawn time, at whatever cost you want and set the re-spawn time to something after the 900 second life of the ship that was made.

It has been sometime since i looked at the fleetbeacon, so i may be mistaken on the ability to limit lifespan. You could consequently make the hull/shields a particular value if you expect the ship to only survive a particular time. Say at half normal value, those ships may only last one or two encouters (even with Pirates, especially in Diplomacy where they are so powerful!). And have the re-spawn time out enough that there would not being any overlap with a ship that has already been created.

The destruction of a "special" building or craft to create the ship is interesting, and i see no reason why it wouldn't work, except how do you control the re-creation of the buildings?

hmmm....

Interesting problem.

Would be fun to look into it though, 

Let me know if you get anything workable.

I can look as well and let you know if i find something that is worth trying.

Take care,

-Teal

p.s Tymestar.... nice idea!!  

tymestar- as in, complete immunity to damage or extremly reduced?

Hmm inspired by the others I think it is possible. Make a spawn ability which subtracts health from the spawner and apply a buff to the created frigate which will heal the module when the frigate is destroyed by using ApplyBuffToLastSpawner. That way if the person try to make a secound ship while the other still is there he will loose the module instead.

The only flaw is that you can use healing abilities, but you could give the module a redicolous amount of health.

Or make it immune to taking damage from ships/abilities and Immune to healing.  Is that possible?

-Twilight Storm

Twilight- I don't think so. I think all you can do is make it invulnerable- but it still takes healing.

Maybe an ability on the building, then?

If healed by this ability, X ammount of damage is applied to self for whatever duration the ability is.  So, a Hoko heals 20 pts(Not sure if that's right, but this is just example) for 15 sec.  The building ability takes 20pts damage for 15 sec.  Then it'd cancel it out.  Make an ability for all of a faction's heal powers and bingo.

-Twilight Storm