Talking about all the one-man-battleship comedies, plus other 'unreal' or weird stuff...
Those large crafts must take some time to build (yeah, yeah, it's a game...)
The problem is... those are being bought by single individuals as if they were just shopping in the supermarket. The shipyards for those are huge, you need huge resources, and even then ... would the House state organizations take their chances with selling them to unstable individuals, when such a huge ship can cause immense civilian casualties when in the wrong hands? If I was the Navy general, I certainly wouldn't sell a Carrier to a private company, not even the Bill Gates himself or whoever is the richest in the world.
It could be a little radical, but how about restricting battleships and cruisers to official factions, where their usage can be limited by the "Gods" aka admins / "ones blessed with the Common Sense" aka faction leaders?
(might be a stupid idea, I don't even know why I wrote it when I might not like it)
Believe it or not, the next thing I'm really looking forward to do is run a BH character in a Piranha up to 30, then getting a Sea Serpent, to see things from the real side for once. I'm going to be the B.H. in a B.H. Light Fighter, and I will make money by bounty hunting only. Let's see where that takes a real Bounty Hunter for once. Care to join the B. _Hunter_ guild which brings a pack of fighters to _hunt down_ a particularly dangerous criminal?
I fail to see how can you actually hunt anything through a debris field with a battleship/cruiser. In fact, you can't hunt a lootcrate!
(except for the underrated Liberty Cruiser which is in fact a Liberty Elite High-Tech Anti-Capship Metal Stick - genuine and cool...)
I've been a pirate for quite some time (check my signature). Recently, I've started running a set of independent characters, to try the other ways to play and see things from different angles.
I found one thing: Those new people who want to fly their first battleship must be quite determined or have abundant amounts of time. Lone trading is the most boring thing I ever did... sometimes I even hire civvies off Manhattan just for amusement.
