"Now, witness the firepower of this halfway decent but not entirely operational battlestation..? Hell, I don't know, just roll with it, okay?"
Precisely
What about a mechanic where troop transport ships carrying marines could dock with and board a disabled station?
Just in general, I'm not a fan of in-combat boarding. If it's already disabled, I think any such things should be handled in the campaign.
All that's needed to accompany the ISS Placeholder is the ISS Slightly Lopsided Isosceles Triangle and we'll have a complete defensive line!
Let's not forget the
ISS Unlikely to Survive.
and especially mine fields.
I can neither confirm nor deny that these were or were not a topic of discussion internally.
(There's a todo item somewhere, but it's such a gratuitous and potentially not workable feature that I'm not sure its priority is ever going to be high enough to do.)
I'm super excited for the new stuff, enough so to pull me out from lurking! 
Mission accomplished
Welcome to the forum!
What do you think of player commissioned orbital stations protecting a player outpost? It would have to be a massive investment, and it wouldn't be in the player's direct control but it could stand guard if you had a super valuable outpost you'd like to protect. Could these be a possibility or are player outposts generally so small they don't warrant such investments?
Well... this is another one of those "natural implications of the mechanics" that I don't really want to delve into because you never know just how things will turn out once you try them. Certainly something I'm thinking about, though.
One last thing that comes to mind, is that with all this new stuff coming it could take a while to polish it up for public consumption. Now I know dates and times can be iffy with games and it's not my place to demand them, but do you feel you could share something in general about what you plan on doing before you even consider releasing the next public build? Are there still some secret features you are experimenting on, or are you going to focus mainly on polish for a while? No time frames, just something in general. (Feel free to skip this bit if I'm too prying 
)
With the caveat that I'm allowed to change my mind: the way I'm thinking about it right now, there's one big feature to get in (plus lots of procgen and exploration stuff to wrap up). And, of course, lots of polish.
That feature is not outposts, btw - as much as I'd like to get them into this next release, and as much as it makes sense given the rest of the feature set, it would just end up taking too long with everything else. But, going to take stock along the way.
The big one is: Can modules be moved around? I know you loved Scy's Nemean Lion opening armor, so will it be possible to do that with the API? I see modules are spawned on top of "module" mounts, but those aren't movable (yet?). So if I manually move them via everyframe scripting will the game force-replace them on top of their mount?
Hadn't considered that, but easy enough to put in. Added ShipAPI.getModuleOffset(), which you can .set() to move it around relative to the slot. Aside from that, yes, the position is force-set every frame.
How are collision handled with the modules? Are they on an intermediary layer between ships and fighters or do they need bounds that do not touch their core? Do ships and asteroids collide directly with the modules or only with the core? If they do, are collision forces and weapon impacts automatically transmitted to the core? Can weapons on the core fire through a module? (that was one of the biggest issues with twigLib, most of the issues it currently has stems from this)
Modules can't collide with the body or with each other while they're attached to the body. Other stuff collides with both the body and the modules normally.
When a module detaches, it's able to collide with both the body and other modules, which generally causes it to fly off.
Weapons on both the body and the modules can not hit either the body or the modules.
Regarding collision forces, that's a great point - kind of forgot about that, truth be told. Changed it so that collision forces act on the body, as acting on the modules makes no sense since both their velocity and location get reset every frame anyway.
I suppose the module's AI is a fair bit simpler than a ship AI, but can they still use ship systems?
Yeah. They can also vent. It's actually just the ship AI, including collision avoidance checks etc, since those are needed to figure out shield use.
For something like a pure armor module, it'd probably make sense to provide a custom "do absolutely nothing" AI so that it doesn't use up CPU unnecessarily.
You said the modules take time to repair, that is nice but will the refit UI indicate that? With Debido we had a nice system in place (it is not working in 0.72 because I'm nowhere near his coding skills and messed up his stuff but it was a thing previously)
And how does the game handle repair cost? Are destroyed modules visible in campaign view?
Not really, beyond how the armor looks. IIRC it'd show up in the simulation, though.
Repair cost: I believe as long as any modules are repairing, it counts as if the ship was repairing.
Re: campaign view, destroyed modules will not show up.
How are modules stats handled in the ship codex info card? Are they added to the core stats? Or not displayed at all?
The stats aren't displayed at all, but the modules themselves are shown in the "Weapons" list, which is renamed to "Ordnance". So, a station will show its modules as its weapons, basically.
You can see the detailed stats if you go to refit the station/ship-with-modules and switch to that module by clicking on it.
I'm not sure this one has been asked, but do emp weapons hitting a module arc only withing said module of do they hit the core too? Do they also hit other modules?
They only arc within the same module.
This probably falls under the category of "a lot of work for virtually no reward", but what do you think of tugs moving these things around in battle?
Well, pretty much what you said
Now while I'm aware that you have perfectly good reasons not to be specific about the potential size of stations, would you be willing to comment on how much the engine can actually handle?
I mean if we are fighting a station that can dock the largest capital ships then they would have to be at least 10x the size of anything in the game at the moment. It could potentially cover 25-35% of an entire big combat map. Are units that large even possible?
One thing to keep in mind is that the combat scale isn't *really* to scale in terms of the campaign. For example, fighters are bigger than they would be, battleships are relatively smaller. So, say, a station that's 3-4x the size of a battleship would be appropriate representing a "station battleships can dock with in the campaign" in combat. Stuff in combat has to be scaled so that gameplay works, basically.
Regarding what the engine could handle, that's such a tricky question. In theory, you could probably make a station that's half the size of the map, provided you built it mostly out of modules, with the "body" sprite being something sane. Would this be fun to play against? Would the AI be able to handle fighting it reasonably well? I really can't say without trying it.
Nice
Would've gotten bonus points for some ascii art in there, but I'll take it.
getting sniped from 3 screen lengths away by the citadel ship is already a little annoying.....
please allow more zoom since things are getting bigger
(even if it is only situational - when ur in range of a station - or conditional - cruisers and capital ships can zoom out farther than frigates and destroyers)
I actually ended up adding 1 more level of combat zoom a while back, so, yeah.
That said, stations are a bit of an exception since you always know where they're going to be, they don't move, and so it ought to be less "annoying" and more "devastating" and "part of the difficulty of fighting them". I do get what you're saying, though.
Very exciting! Interesting to hear that officers can be on stations - raises a whole host of hype questions from which I will refrain...
An uncommon degree of restraint
I can't imagine the strength of the stations guarding core worlds, though, I must speculate: if you do take out the station(s) guarding major hubs, do those markets/planets become "vulnerable" in some way?
Yeah, I wonder about the whole dynamic of orbital stations. Are they active in any battle close to the planet, or just if you engage them directly? Will they be the first level of protection when attacking a planet, or are they all the defense there is? What happens to the market of a station when it is defeated? Can you blockade a station and lower its CR before battle? Is the faction controlling a planet always the faction controlling its orbital station?
I'm not sure if I even want answers to all these question at this point, or just find out for myself
Yeah, this is all stuff that's purely speculation at this point. I mean, the mechanics point towards these types of things, right? But they're currently not in the game, and I wouldn't be surprised if these specific kinds of things were not in the next release. All important design questions to be answered in due time.
