I also captured an enemy factory (by accident) and thought that it would be cool to be able to build from there eventually. At the time I assumed that the not-letting-me-build was because the gravity well still belonged to the enemy, but I did not explore the issue further. It did seem like I could at least salvage/decomission it for a few credits, so still better than nothing.

I would not say the new TEC cap ship is useless though. It lets me snag a ship or two from the pirates and local militia early in the game when every ship counts, and I imagine the payoffs will be much better down the road when we start running into larger support cruisers. I would love to grab a Hoshiko or an Iconus from an enemy mid-battle. As far as minor tweaks to it's usefulness, I would not be opposed to it getting an additional wave of fighters earlier on in it's growth.

I too would wager it would be unbalanced.  But having an enemy captured frig factory function as your own (making your ships) would be nice.  Those are expensive early on, when every bit of resources counts.   

On the other hand, if they add in some way for the other two factions to also capture enemy ships and modules (maybe not the same way, but the same result), it could add a whole new dimension to the game, rather than being game-breaking.

Example: the Advent could have a capship that can capture enemy ships by directing a "culture beam" at the ship, completely enveloping their communications and (okay how unbelievably sci-fi do we want to make this?) altering time so that they perceive time at a faster rate, thus they spend several months being brainwashed in Advent culture in a matter of seconds, and come out of the "beam" completely devoted to the Advent.

Not sure what the V's could do, but you get the idea. Let everyone cap everyone else's stuff, and sooner or later everyone's using a mixed bag of technology. You could even build other factions' starbase constructors and thereby produce even more ships using the construction facilities on the starbase!

My idea wasn't to nessasarily enable the player to be able to build the other races ships; but to use the captured factories to build your own ships. My main point was that if you could capture and use factories in enemy sectors it would make the whole battle over a sector more interesting and possibly turn the tide of war in your favor or against you if the AI or opponet could do the same.

One of the main reasons I feel the DEVS should allow you to build frigates using captured factories in enemy sectors, is because anyother structure you capture can be helpful to you, so why not make the factories do the same ie: if you capture a research structure it allows you to do further research; same goes for trade ports if you capture one; the trade ships start arriving at the port even if the sector is not in your hands yet so to make the factories non-functional until you dominate the sector seems kind of useless.

Advent can actually already steal enemy ships with the Rapture Battlecruiser, but it's a level 6 ability. I'm a bit wary of obsoleting that ability by making dedicated ship stealing capitals for all 3 races.

Besides which, if the soundfiles are anything to go off of, the Advent are getting another gun-ho Battleship, and the Vasari are getting... a mad scientist with a giant ship and a lot of nanites, as far as I can tell.

Seeing this thread progress I really like the idea about being able to use captured structures to produce your own ships albeit at a greatly reduced speed (somthing like 1/4 the speed as your own factories).

It keeps the strange balance issues about being able to mix fleets and build enemy tech out of the equation, while at the same time it gives a huge advantage to be able to create new ships so close to the battle. I know there are many times when I would gladly accept 4x the build time if it meant I did not have to wait 5 minutes for that new ship to traverse a bunch of dangerous and unsecured gravity wells across the map (only to have the new ship arrive to the battle with no antimatter from all the jumps no less).