Nice! I wonder if you plan to implement the Yutland-class too? If yes then how it will be ballance, since both class are suposed to be heavyli armed combat carries?
Lexington a defensive/support carrier, while Yutland offensive/fast response carrier?

The Jutland will be in there, though I don't know yet what kind of specs if will have. Maybe some torpedo launchers compared to Lex's supplies and anti-air missiles.

Edit: Oh God... I just realized that I didn't configure the shaders properly on every single Kilrathi ship... I'm going to post a massive emergency update that will normally improve the visuals and make the hyperspace working on their ships. :-)

Any more work in progress shots? Like Kilhrati Dreadnouth?

Here you go, a few screenshots at this link: http://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/wc4-mod-for-homeworld-2-in-the-works-june-5-2006.18930/page-61

Great shots! I see you got Behemot too. Although I never really like the idea of giant space cannon of doom.
What about Confederation-class Dreadnought/Fleet Carrier/Heavy Battleship:
http://www.kitsune.addr.com/SF-Conversions/Rifts-WC-Vehicles/Confederation_Confederation_Dreadnought.htm

I remeber it's also in WC:Saga:
http://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/16/15848/screen1146.jpg

The policy is simple: if it's in Wing Commander Saga, it is very much likely to be in this mod.

As for the Behemoth, its role is very clear: it is the hard counter to the Kilrathi Hvar'Kann Dreadnaught. That incredibly expensive Kitten will wreck entire fleets on its own, and with escorts, it will definitely ruin everyone's day. But a slightly cheaper Behemoth will make short work of it while having a very low rate of fire and being _massively_ vulnerable to torpedo bombers. The way I picture it, you would need a lot of time to get either online, and the investment is impractical at best unless you are in a "trench war" situation, to break the enemy lines decisively.

The idea is that each of the four factions will have some perks and problems. For example, the Kilrathi have some excellent long range missile capabilities, some mind-f**kery through stealth and EW crafts, but they have only a single production line for capital ships, while Confed can be more classic and will have more ship production, but its fighters will be a bit less awesome. The Border Worlds, I intend to give them some really cool capture capabilities and perhaps some large area buff/debuff for fights involving them, while the Black Lance should be a great scalpel, with more stealth crafts than anyone else, and their mothership being able to jump here and there to be hard to pin down as a balance to their low number of crafts.

I like it - asymetric ballance is always more fun than trying to make all side the same.
However for the Kilrathi I don't think that single ship production would be a good idea, unless it will be quite fast/effective production line. In WC universe Confederation ships were stronger on 1:1 basis, but Klirathi alway were able to outnumber Confeds.

IMO I'd go for something like this:
Confeds - Flexible turtle - good all round and ballance ships, wide range of ship types, but medium production speed. It would be also need cost & time to develop a full production line (Stations & research), but their stations would offer better defensive capabilities (these HW2 buff fields from Vaygr command corvette) and defensive weaponry (full spectrum, laser, anti-matter, missiles, torpedos).

Kilrathi - Flexible attacker - like Confeds they have wide selection of ships, but they are more specialised (aka Torp. Corvettes etc.) and exotic (these EW and stealth stuff), their stations and production capabilites are cheaper and faster, but their stations offer weaker defensive capabilities than confederation stations.

Black Lance - highly mobile SpecOps - I think that as a special forces they should ditch their stations and be able to call in ships via jump beacon or from their carriers. Better jump capabilities and wide use of stealth should be also nice. They would also have two branches of ship. Cheap cannon fodder "Pirate" ships - no high tech, but cheap and numerous and their "SpecOps" ships tht have all the nasty high tech stuff.

Border worlds - mix of all 3 - Because BW dont have such wide range of ships and they have territory to defend, their stations would offer similar grade of defence as Confed stations or even slightly better (they are the Border so they didn't demobilised as much as Confeds) and they stations would offer very good sensor range for early warning.
They would also have some stealth and EW stuff like Black Lance & Kilrathi, but not as abudant and more expensive.

They would have 3 branches of ships "BW regulars" - the regular BW military with their current set of ships (IMO I'd add to them the outdated Confed Light carrier from WC:S with BW texture and then make thier destroyers a normal warships).

"Confed Defectors" - limited range of Confed ship to call in or if possible randomly spawned by "Defector Outpost".

Third branch would be most interesting, I'd call them "improvised/special warfare ships" - basically makeshift upgrades to their regular and civilian hulls like:
- Kamikaze Freighter loaded with explosives (I think that HW2 Complex mod had such ship)
- Freigher loaded with numerous torpedo launchers that could launch massive salvo to break through AAA defence, but would take long time to reload and would be vulnerable to anything smaller than frigate.
- EW freighter that would provide anti-missile defence (modifed HW2 defence field)
- Anti-fighter freighter with lasers and missile launchers
- Custom/Special Durango Carrier that can have additional upgrades build and/or researched, like stronger Hull, Engine, additional turrets, torpedo launchers, capship call-in ability, jump drive.

Heh, I'll keep the ideas in mind and see what I can do. :-)

OK people, the next feature to come, and which is working neatly in my WIP, is individual turrets. From then on, all Kilrathi ships will have individual turrets that can be attacked by fighter guns to be temporarly disabled. Pew! Pew!

I'm not sure if all turrets is a good idea (never been a fan of too much micro-management).

I'd rather stick to the ship torpedo launcher, Anti-matter turrets, super weapons (Behemot) and engines.

Less work, but still fun.

It won't change your gameplay when you control the ship on which the turrets are installed, which will still attack automatically any and all targets, but when you are attacking a ship, you can now give the order to your fighters to attack the turrets.

In the vanilla game, you don't have to control manually the ion cannon turrets of the Hiigaran battlecruiser, right? Well, it's the same here. Expect a lone cruiser to end up declawed by a horde of light fighters.

Oh, I guess I still have my mind set-up for HW2 Classic where bombers did not auto-engage turrets.

However I still think that basic laser turrets, unless spammed by horde of frigates are at best a slight discourage to a few fighter squads. Making light lasers destroyable turrets will make capships even more vulnerable to fighters.

Oh, seems there was a misunderstanding: fighters will not auto-attack turrets (unless they do it already in HWR, I have no idea), it's just that turrets will still fire automatically without micromanagement. As for the vulnerability, it'll just be a question of balancing, I guess.

Update: all Kilrathi ships are now upgraded with their proper turrets and the Hvar'Kann is under work. Going to take me a few evenings to get it properly done, though. X_X